THE CHAINS OF FATE an utterly compelling and romantic historical saga (The Heron Quartet Book 2), page 1
THE CHAINS OF FATE
The Heron Quartet Book 2
PAMELA BELLE
Revised edition 2025
Lume Books, London
A Joffe Books Company
www.lumebooks.co.uk
First published by Pan Books Ltd in Great Britain in 1984
© Pamela Belle 1984
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is British English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this. The right of Pamela Belle to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems. In accordance with Article 4(3) of the Digital Single Market Directive 2019/790, Joffe Books expressly reserves this work from the text and data mining exception.
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CONTENTS
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Historical Note
Part One: The Last Hero
Chapter One - The Unfortunate Travellers
Chapter Two - A Candle in the Dark
Chapter Three - The Last Good-Night
Chapter Four - Annus Mirabilis
Part Two - The Cruel Mother
Chapter One - Returnings
Chapter Two - Kit
Chapter Three - Stones Against the Wind
Chapter Four - Bounden Duty
Part Three - A Loyal Sacrifice
Chapter One - Beleaguered
Chapter Two - Homing Flight
Chapter Three - The Worm in the Bud
Chapter Four - The Trumpets of Heaven
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The Lume & Joffe Books Story
Also by Pamela Belle
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For the Lion, with love
Historical Note
Like its predecessor The Moon in the Water, The Chains of Fate is based on fact, and save for the parts played by my fictional characters, the Herons, Sewells, Grahams and their closest connections, all the events described actually happened, including the events leading up to Montrose’s invasion of Scotland, the rebellions in Essex and Suffolk in 1648, and the part played therein by the Jermyn family. Some idea of the social life in West Suffolk at the time may be glimpsed in the letters of Tom Hervey to Isabella May, and my portrayal of local characters (including the formidable Lady Penelope Gage and her dreaded bowls matches) owes much to these.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those people, friends and family, who helped me both with this book and its predecessor, especially the late Lt-Col. J. M. Langley, and my uncle, Noel Wilkinson, who read the typescripts and made many helpful comments and suggestions; all the library staff in Oxford, Hawick, Bury, Ipswich and Hertfordshire who found obscure books for me, some of them dangerously weighty; and last, but definitely not least, my mother, who introduced me to the Jermyns and Rushbrooke, where she had lived as a child, and who has read and re-read both books ad nauseam searching for blunders major and minor. Without her practical mind there would have been many more: and so all the mistakes remaining are my own.
P.D.A.B.
Part One: The Last Hero
He either fears his fates too much,
Or his deserts are small,
That puts it not unto the touch
To win or lose it all.
(The Marquis of Montrose)
Chapter One - The Unfortunate Travellers
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Oh Western Wind, when wilt thou blow,
That the small rain down can rain?
Oh, Christ, that my true love were in my arms,
And I in my own bed again.
(Traditional)
I had thought my true love to be dead; and so I had married a man I hated.
So close were my cousin and my lover Francis Heron and I, that I had known of his death before I was told of it; in my dreams that terrible night in December 1642, I had shared the moment when, a sentry’s bullet in his body, he had been flung into the chill winter waters of the river round Oxford Castle, and was lost.
As I was also lost, for his attempted escape from the Castle had been a desperate, hopeless bid to reach me, to spirit me away north to a haven where we could be free to marry, to fulfil at last the powerful desires and passions which had held us enchanted for two years of peace and civil war. I was bereft of Francis, my soul’s companion, and of the love that bound us; and therefore as incomplete as one half of a map, a song without music, a traveller struck dumb in a land full of strangers. Believing him dead, numb and uncaring of my future, dazed with grief, I married Sir Dominic Drakelon, my vivid, dashing, compelling cousin who had been my betrothed for seven years, since I was ten. And thus, without really thinking of the consequences, gave up my old, independent, self-willed identity, Thomazine Heron, heiress to the house called Ashcott in Oxfordshire and many lands besides: to become Lady Drakelon, the chattel and possession of a man I did not even like very much.
Soon after my marriage I came to loathe him; for too late, tied to him by the chains of matrimony and, more significantly, our unborn child, I was told the truth. Dominic had concealed from me the fact that Francis was not dead, but alive, and in Scotland. He had also told Francis with triumphant glee of my marriage, and so my lover believed me false and fickle, ready to cast away my feelings for a poverty-stricken third son with no prospects in favour of Dominic’s wealth and title. And I deserted my husband and my baby son Kit, and began the long journey north, through an England ravaged by a year of civil war, to bring him the truth.
As my dreams had once carried his death to me, so much were our minds in tune, so now, on that long, arduous and terrible journey, my thoughts fled northwards each night, and each night I dreamed the same dream: our reunion.
I had never seen Catholm, the grim Scots Border tower that belonged to our Graham cousins: but Francis knew it well, for he had spent two very happy years of his childhood there, and Malise Graham was his great friend. So in my dream the house was indistinct, a grey bleak blur amongst threatening bare hills: and although my travelling companions were with me, they had no place in my dream. All my being, my eyes, ears, every sense of brain and heart were focussed on the road ahead, and the man standing there.
He was tall, slender, with an unconscious, casual grace that touched every movement that he made, and would have marked him out to me in the furthest corner of the earth. His pale, ash-fair hair had distinguished him always as different amongst his three dark brothers and his sister Lucy: as apart from them in his looks as in his temperament. Francis, with his complicated, quicksilver nature, his love of music and laughter and freedom, could not have resembled his self-righteous, humourless, dutiful elder brother Simon less, save, fatally, in one respect: their stubbornness. Francis would not bend his neck to his brother and meekly submit to being the sober, godly lawyer it was intended he should become; and neither would Simon allow him to live his own life, to follow his own rules and heart and desires — to marry me.
He could not marry me now, for I was tied to Dominic Drakelon until death should part us: but Francis’s thoughts had always been firmly rooted in the earthly present rather than in nebulous future threats or promises of the hereafter, and I doubted that he would be much inhibited by the sin of adultery. Such was my love and desire for him that I had at last defied the pressures upon me to be a good, conventional, dutiful wife to my despised, treacherous, deceitful husband Dominic, and was willing likewise to risk the flames of Hell and torment for my love’s sake.
In my dream, I came nearer, so that I could see his face at last, the face I had last seen so many months ago, bruised and unconscious, on the night Simon had had him flung into the Castle for trying to elope with me. How well I remembered that thin pale face, cast in the long Heron mould, with the far-spaced eyes and flexible, humorous mouth, an expression misleadingly, mockingly perfect, like a mischievous and anarchic fallen angel. He did not smile, but his eyes, that familiar, strange, shadowy green, coloured and changeable like the sea, seemed to have a life of their own in his still, clear face, and burned with delight into my soul. And suddenly I could not move any further: my bones turned to water by my love and desire, and my joy that at last we were together again, and for ever more.
‘Hello,’ he said, always, and the gentle, loving mockery in his voice barely disguised the depth of f
At his use of the Suffolk endearment, I knew that all must be well, and yet I could not project my overwhelming love into my words. ‘I came to find you,’ I said each time, hesitantly. ‘I thought you were dead, and they persuaded me to marry Dominic; and I grieved so much for you that I did not care whom I married, until too late.’
‘But you care now,’ Francis said. ‘You cared enough to leave him, and go through danger and hardship to find me again; and so you are forgiven.’
‘And here, despite everything, I am,’ I said foolishly, each time: never daring to mention the baby I had left behind in Oxford, little Kit Drakelon, a month-old infant I had tried not to love, for I had feared from his birth that I would have to abandon him. I knew full well that Dominic would never have allowed me to remove his longed-for, most precious son and heir, and would undoubtedly have pursued me to the ends of the earth had I done so. I would not mention Kit now: there would be time for that later, when I was certain. Nor would I mention the poem that Great-Aunt Elizabeth Graham had copied and sent to me, the bitter, cruel poem that Francis had written, revealing all too clearly the extent of the hurt I had unwittingly, unwillingly done him. But there had been another poem in her letter, a sonnet possessed of such truth and beauty that the balance was tipped and I had realized, reading it, that whatever the perils of the journey, however great the risk of humiliation and rejection at the end of it all, I must leave husband, child, friends, wealth, safety in Oxford, burn all my bridges behind me for the sake of this self-contained, enigmatic, strange young man who stood before me now in my dream, on the road to Catholm. And because of that sonnet, I added softly, breathing life into our stiff and stilted talk, ‘Remember the Unicorns — do you still remember the Unicorns that we created in our minds when we were children, the summer I came to Goldhayes and met you all for the first time? The Unicorns all made of “water and light and ice and fire”, you said? Do you carry them still, in your heart?’
‘For ever,’ he said simply: and I knew that the memory of that day still held us both enchanted, far away and long ago at Goldhayes, the jewel-like, lovely Suffolk house that was home and heart and lodestar to every Heron. The remembered magic prompted me to quote his own words to him, part of that sonnet which I knew by heart. ‘“The moon, that in the darken’d water dwells, Is’t that which danceth in the sky by night? And does the Unicorn exist?”’
‘Oh, it exists,’ said Francis, ‘how could you doubt it? And one day, my dear brave lady, one day I shall bring you a Unicorn’s horn for our chamber, when we are wed.’ And for the first time he smiled, vivid and loving and real: and held out his hands. ‘Welcome to Catholm, my own dear love: and may we never more be parted.’
And each time I dreamed that I walked forward to reach him, to feel again the light deft touch of his hands, and the kiss that would melt my soul and blot out the sun: and yet somehow, no matter how fast I moved, my feet stood still and I could not touch him: his slight, smiling, mocking figure vanishing back down the road beyond my reach, still with his hands outstretched, forever welcoming but never, ever to be caught and held close.
It was then, always, that I woke, weeping with the most terrible and desperate sense of loss; for although I had set out on the long journey with high heart and hopes, knowing that Francis was worth more to me than all the other people I valued, yet secretly I dreaded my arrival at Catholm. I feared above all else that the poem, which warned me that ‘should we chance to meet, some bitter day, My heart, beware’, would prove a truer mirror of his feelings towards me than the sonnet. I had been admitted, long ago, to his private world, a dazzling enchanted place inhabited by dragons and Unicorns and other fantastical creatures of his strange imagination, and all coloured and surrounded by the music we both loved, lute and flageolet, virginals and viol, the dances of Dowland and the songs of the people: and now, I knew, I could not bear the pain, should I come to Catholm, riding up to the gates like some long-lost lover in an old ballad, and find them barred to me, and his love turned to the kind of malicious cruelty I knew he could employ towards those who had betrayed him, as my dream had betrayed me.
So I could not hide my tears on waking and, inevitably, Grainne soon realized what happened each night at the beginning of our journey. Not only was she by nature blessed with an uncanny perception into the thoughts and feelings of others, she had also been my dear and close friend and confidante since the day, five years before, when she had come into our lives and hearts as the young Irish bride of Henry Sewell, the friend of Francis’s elder brother Edward who had been so tragically, uselessly cut down by a Parliamentary bullet at Edgehill Fight. Her calm, smiling strength and wisdom had supported all of the Herons through grief and stress, though she herself had lost husband and baby daughter in the war. Unasked, she had insisted on accompanying me on my journey to Francis, despite the danger to herself and to her two surviving children, four-year-old Jasper and the posthumous baby Henrietta, and I had never felt I truly deserved such unthinking, unselfish friendship. So, on the first two nights of the journey, I succeeded in concealing my tears from her; but on the third occasion, as I tried desperately to muffle my sobs in the pillow, I felt her gentle hand on my shoulder, and her soft Irish voice, whispering so as not to wake the children: ‘Thomazine! Oh, Thomazine, what is it? Did you have a nightmare?’
When I had first known the power Francis held even over my dreams, when my nightmare had contained not his mockery of welcome, but his death, it had been his sister Lucy, who was also like a sister to me, who had woken me, whose curious, insistent, overwhelming sympathy had failed entirely to penetrate my grief. Now, I was glad of Grainne’s unseen company, her understanding and intelligence very different from Lucy’s romantic, impetuous nature: and felt no doubts about unburdening myself to her, as so often before. For Grainne, too, had lost the man she loved, and had known sorrow and despair.
So I said, shakily, trying to control my voice, ‘No, not a nightmare … except at the end, perhaps. I dreamed of Francis, I’ve dreamed of him every night since we left Oxford … I dream we meet again but … but we can never touch … and oh, Grainne, I am so afraid it will all come to nothing, and he will not want me any more!’
In the dark, her fingers found my face and proffered a kerchief, doubtless used earlier to mop Henrietta’s infant tears. I scrubbed furiously at my eyes and nose, glad of her presence and yet also ashamed that I should need her yet again. Grainne said, her voice invisibly encouraging in the thick darkness behind the bed-curtains, ‘What was that poem by Shakespeare, that you always quoted to each other? “Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments”? You have had to contend with Simon’s hatred, with the misfortunes of war, with death and betrayal: and above all with Meraud, though precious little good did all her treachery do her, she should have known that Simon would always be honour and duty bound to marry Nan Blagge, for all Meraud’s charm and beauty.’
The charm and beauty of a viper, I thought. Meraud Trevelyan, a cousin of the Herons, was a little younger than I, and like me was Simon’s ward. Unlike me, however, she was enchantingly, delicately lovely, a fair and fragile blonde whose sleek silver-gilt curls concealed a selfish, ruthless and scheming brain. She had long and secretly harboured an unrequited passion for Simon (or for Goldhayes, which was his), and in an attempt to creep into his favour, had betrayed to him my plans to elope with Francis. From that treachery had followed directly Francis’s imprisonment in Oxford Castle, his supposed death, and my marriage with Dominic. All my woes could, with justification, be laid at her door: and I was very glad to know that she was behind me, in Oxford, and that I was free of her prying, cold, assessing blue eyes.
‘You no longer have any of those in your way,’ said Grainne softly, consideringly. ‘Your love has been strong enough to overcome all these obstacles; you have sacrificed your husband, your son, your home, all your friends save me, and I don’t doubt you would have left me behind in Oxford too if I hadn’t offered freely to come with you.’
