THE CHAINS OF FATE an utterly compelling and romantic historical saga (The Heron Quartet Book 2), page 8
I grinned at the thought of a heathen Liddesdale, and wondered whether Master Scott had heard the story. Great-Aunt added reflectively, ‘There had been Kirks, there was one at Ellestoun down by the Park, and Wheen Kirk up at the head of the dale, as well as Castleton, but they fell into ruin long ago …’ Her voice tailed away oddly, and I looked up from my own sewing to see her staring past my shoulder out of the window. ‘My dear,’ said Elizabeth Graham, her face at once hopeful and compassionate, ‘I do believe he is coming.’
On the track up from Liddesdale two men were riding. There was one I did not recognize, mounted on a tall chestnut horse with four flashy white stockings, whom I guessed to be Malise. The other, with his relaxed way of riding, the pale hair pulled out behind him by the April wind, I would have known had he come riding through the gates of Hell, wreathed and shrouded and disguised in smoke.
At last, it was Francis.
Chapter Two - A Candle in the Dark
The miserable hath no other medicine
But only hope.
(Shakespeare, Measure for Measure)
Francis was coming at last, and I felt no great uprush of joy or happiness: instead, I felt suddenly sick, and faint. For a moment the bright image rocked and grew unreal, and I shut my eyes, seeing instead that other Francis, the haunter of my dreams, who had promised me my heart’s desire and denied it to me the next moment. I could not bear the memory of that terrible betrayal, so vivid in my mind: I snapped my eyes open again and saw my real love, closer, close enough to see that he was talking to his companion, close enough to have a sudden, heart-stopping glimpse of his smile. Great-Aunt got to her feet and touched my arm. ‘You stay here, Thomazine. I will send him up. Do you wish me to say that you are here?’
‘No,’ I said, feeling panic rise in me, ‘no, don’t say it’s me, just say, just say, oh, I don’t know, just that there’s someone to see him.’
‘I will,’ said Elizabeth. She smiled suddenly, her aged, creased face made abruptly vivid and alive, as she must have looked in her captivating youth. ‘In a strange way, he reminds me of my Gil, and I do not wish to see him hurt any more … good luck, my dear child, for your sake and for his.’ She gripped my shoulder and went out. I walked back to the window, blinking back the stupid, weakling tears, and stared down into the barmkin, at the stream which rushed just beyond it, and the dun-coloured hill behind, growing faintly greener now with the new grass. The two horses, chestnut and bay, forded the Water and walked sedately up the rise to Catholm. Great-Aunt emerged suddenly, directly below me, white head surrounded by black skirts, and I saw her wave in greeting as her grandson and his friend rode in through the gate. I lurked furtively at the edge of the embrasure, peering round the shutters to see them dismount and greet her, Malise with a stooped kiss (he was as tall as Francis, but more broadly built) and Francis, I was interested to see, with a clasp of the hand as if she were a male comrade. I devoured him greedily with my gaze as they stood talking, looking for any signs of change in him: for, I remembered with a shock, I had last seen him sixteen months ago, on that dreadful night when Simon had had him thrown into the Castle at Oxford. All that while, I had held his image in my mind like a talisman, and now that I was faced with the reality, I was disconcerted. There was something about him, some alteration, which at this distance I could not identify. Sim led the steaming horses into the stables, and the three turned to walk across to the house. For an instant, Francis glanced up at it, almost as though he were seeking me: his face flashed vividly, and I saw the brown skin, bleached-straw hair and the impression he always gave of casual, unthinking grace and power. Then I ducked behind the window opening; when I looked out again he was gone from my sight.
Drake lifted his head from his muddy paws and surveyed me enquiringly, his tail drifting softly from side to side as if he knew that something was about to happen. I did not want anyone sharing our reunion: I snapped my fingers gently at him. ‘Drake! Here, boy!’
He heaved himself up and came trotting over to me, keen and expectant, and I felt like the worst kind of traitor as I put my hand around his collar, pulled him into my empty inner chamber, and callously shut the door. For a moment, I heard his puzzled whines, followed by the sound of his heavy body flopping down in front of the fire. Then the enormity of what was about to happen overwhelmed me, and I stumbled to the window-seat and sat down before my legs could give way. I found that I felt sick, and my stomach was clenched, and a chill sweat made my hands and back clammy. I gazed at the faded, much-repaired hangings, and thought with fierce concentration of what I would do, and say, when he opened the door and found me …
There were footsteps ascending the stone stairs towards me. I heard them remotely, my whole self, heart, mind, body, fixed upon the thought of him, rigid and trembling with anticipation. The steps reached the top and paused on the other side of the door. There was a perfunctory knock, and the latch lifted …
I turned my face towards the door and saw Francis, poised under the lintel, staring at me in total astonishment. For a second I thought I saw in his face an unguarded delight, and leapt to my feet, and then, so swiftly that I wondered if I had been mistaken, it vanished, and his expression grew closed, and cold, and empty, the green changeable eyes as bleak and hostile as a winter sea. He said, his voice hard, ‘What in Christ’s name are you doing here?’
I stood, numb with shock, not daring to believe it: for if I did believe it, if I did acknowledge the bitterness and contempt plain in his face and voice, then I was lost for ever. I whispered, my throat suddenly dry and painful, ‘I — I came to see you.’
‘To see me?’ Francis queried, frankly incredulous, and laughed. The noise echoed in my ears like a passing bell. He shut the door, and his eyes lingered over me, in a stranger’s face, the face of a man I had never loved, never laughed with, never been friends with: not the boy who had built a bridge of Unicorns between us with the power of his imagination, or wakened in me the first flowering of desire and delight. Bewildered, utterly lost in this suddenly uncharted, threatening sea, I stammered, ‘I h-had to come, to explain, you see …’
‘Explain what? Has he tired of you then? Or have you wearied of him, so soon? Most likely,’ said Francis, with a casual, calculated cruelty, ‘he has expended all his money in the King’s cause, and there is none left to keep you in the style you expect — and so you come crawling back to me.’
‘No,’ I said desperately, ‘no, Francis, you don’t understand, it wasn’t like that … I hate him, I never want to see him again, I never loved him, ever, it was always you I wanted, no one else …’
‘Why did you marry him, then?’ Francis said, his eyebrows raised in enquiry. ‘Though of course, now I come to think of it, he never mentioned love. There were other attractions entirely. What’s he like in bed, your fine and handsome husband? Well, My Lady Drakelon?’
I could not answer. I had no words, no defences to ward off this sort of attack: protesting was as futile as the crash and foam and fury of the sea beating against an implacable cliff-face. I stared at his inhospitable figure, realizing suddenly and with a curious detachment what it was that had changed in him. We had parted as young lovers, and his cynicism then had been only on the surface: underneath had still been the eager, idealistic boy who had communicated to me his delight in so many things: words, ideas, music, laughter, love, friendship. Now, I saw as though looking through glass, it was all gone, burned away in those sixteen months as though the friend of my childhood had never been, leaving only the hardness and cruelty, and I wanted to weep, not for myself, but for him and for what he had lost. The silence stretched taut and desperate between us: then Francis said, ‘You can go back to him now. There’s nothing for you here, nothing at all.’
‘No,’ I whispered, and turned away so that he would not see my tears, the final humiliating degradation. ‘No, I’m not going back, I can’t.’
‘It would be more pleasant for both of us in the end if you did,’ said Francis, in a matter-of-fact way, as though he were discussing some banal everyday event. I heard the implied menace in his voice, and knew what it meant. That, and his manner, finally spurred my temper: I whipped round, heedless of the tears washing my face. ‘God, you fool, you’re worse than Simon! Will you not see what happened? I thought you were dead, and it didn’t matter to me what I did any more, I married Dominic because I was sick of all their pestering, there was nothing left for me to do! Then the Widow found out what had really happened, and I was trapped. It was not my fault,’ I said desperately. ‘Can’t you see, it was Dominic? He let me believe you were dead, and while he was trying to persuade me into marriage he was making sure that you wouldn’t have anything to do with me in the future. You’re doing just what Dominic wants,’ I finished. ‘You’re choosing to believe him rather than me, well, you can ask Grainne for the truth of it, she’ll tell you.’
‘Grainne?’ he said, and something approaching warmth touched his voice for the first time. ‘Is she here too?’
‘Yes, she is,’ I told him, ‘and you should be grateful, for we brought Drake with us, and Hobgoblin too, and if you think it was easy to come here, then I’ll tell you, it took six months, and Holly nearly died protecting us from soldiers who wanted to steal Goblin, we’ve been cold and wet and gone hungry for your sake, and whatever you might think it wasn’t easy to leave my friends and my baby …’ I stopped, appalled both at my loose-running tongue, freed by grief and anger, and at the look on his face. ‘You had Dominic’s child?’ Francis said, and his eyes showed me the depth and extent of the hurt I had done him. ‘Then you are all I thought you to be, you whore.’ With that, he turned and went out. The door slammed behind him, but I did not hear his footsteps on the stairs, descending, for the terrible nature of my situation overwhelmed me, and I abandoned myself to the anguish of my grief.
*
That evening, Malise came to see me. I was calm now, I had spent my desperate tears, and had listened to Grainne’s and Great-Aunt’s comments and advice as they comforted me. ‘Why?’ I had demanded of them both. ‘Why? Why won’t he believe me?’ Great-Aunt had shaken her head, and said something about his perversity, and that she had feared all along that it would be like this. Grainne, with her usual precise insight into other minds, said at once, ‘You have hurt him once, most terribly — oh, I know you didn’t mean to, but you did nevertheless, and that’s what counts. Just as a child, once burnt, will not pick up another hot ember, so will Francis be reluctant to accept you once more, in case you betray him again.’
‘But I won’t,’ I cried, striking my fist into my palm in my anger and frustration. ‘Why can’t he understand that?’ And Grainne answered, her bleak green eyes staring out at the dusk-shadowed hills, ‘Because he can never trust you again — or so he thinks. You must stay here, try to win him round — don’t give up, Thomazine, not now.’
‘I wasn’t going to give up,’ I said savagely, getting up and resuming my restless walking around the floor. The candle burned, a gleam of hope in the shrouding dark, and I took it and lit others, heedless of the hot wax dripping over my fingers. ‘I wasn’t going to. I have nothing left now save him. My husband, my baby, all my friends but you, I have given them up for his sake, and I do not intend to be so easily thwarted. But Grainne, tell me, he seems so changed, so different, unreachable, a stranger to me, as if it was all a dream, what we had …’ I paused, my eyes on her face, and she said quietly, ‘Thomazine, do you think he is now worth the struggle?’
The silence was utter. The wind sighed mournfully round the walls of the tower chamber, out in the chilly blue April dusk. The fire smoked and smouldered gently amongst the dark earthy peats, and the candlelight flashed on the rhythmic movement of Elizabeth Graham’s needle as it wove in and out of the fabric she held. I sat down softly on the windowseat. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I still love him, more than I can ever say, and I cannot believe he does not still feel the same for me. He would not be so cruel and bitter, if he did not.’ I remembered as I spoke what Francis had said once, surely on the afternoon we discovered our love, that he was tempted to hurt most cruelly those whom he loved the most. If that was true, then I had some reason for hope. I had to have it, to cling to it, for if I did not, I no longer had any reason to go on. ‘I think I am right,’ I added reflectively. ‘I pray God I am … it hurts my pride sore, to play the beseeching, begging supplicant to his indifference and hostility, but set in the balance my pride is such a small thing, beside the love we had once … I thought in Oxford that I had lost him for ever, and against all hope I found him again. I am not going to lose him a second time.’
In the ensuing pause, we heard footsteps coming up, two pairs, one quick and eager and childish, the other heavier and adult. ‘Henrietta’s only a baby,’ said Jasper’s voice with some scorn. ‘She can hardly walk yet, so she’s no fun to play with. I used to have another sister but she was killed ages ago, I can’t really ’member her at all. Will you really teach me to ride, Master Graham?’
A deep Scots voice, not Gib’s, said just outside the door, ‘I said I would, and I didna say it lightly. There’s a nice wee horse out on the hills that I used to ride, old now but steady enough. He’ll do you grand, Jasper.’
‘Thank you, Master Graham!’ Grainne’s son said in an excited squeak, the door burst open and he galloped in. ‘Mother, Mother, Master Graham says he’ll teach me to ride!’
Behind his exuberance stood Malise Graham, a big man, as large-framed as his brother, but gaunt and wiry where Gib was flabbily fat. His face was very like his grandmother’s, the same green eyes and crimson hair and fiercely-hooked nose, but for all the uncompromising qualities of his features and colouring, there was something oddly diffident and awkward and likeable in the way he stood in the door: and the smile with which he greeted us had, I could have sworn, something of shyness about it, an uncertainty of his welcome, which was very endearing.
‘Jasper,’ said Grainne, ‘do you not remember your manners?’ Her son, with a guilty grin, let go of her arm and turned. ‘Master Graham, may I present my mother, Mistress Sewell, and Mistress Heron?’
True to the game of formalities, we rose and curtseyed, and Malise bowed, and Jasper said again on the same urgent note, ‘Mother, Master Graham’s going to teach me to ride.’
‘I heard you the first time,’ said Grainne, smiling. ‘Has my child been importuning you, Master Graham? I’m afraid few find him resistable, and it’s very bad for him.’
‘On the contrary,’ said my cousin, ‘it was I who offered it. I found him in the stables, getting under Sim’s feet, and I thought it best to bribe him away afore murder was done. Sim’s a grand old lad, ye ken, but a wee thing hasty in his temper.’
‘I thank you,’ Grainne said, smiling more broadly, ‘but you do that young ruffian too much honour, Master Graham. Will you not sit down?’
‘Aye, that I will,’ he said, and shut the door behind him. ‘And no more of the “Master Graham” now; we’re friends, I trust, as well as kin, and my name is Malise.’
‘And mine is Grainne, and this is Thomazine. I think you already know Mistress Graham.’
‘I do, for my sins,’ said Malise, grinning at his grandmother. He sat down on one of the fireside chairs, and all but struck his head open on the corner of the court-cupboard as he did so. ‘I’ve heard Francis tell of you, when he was here years ago,’ he added. ‘Not so much of late, though.’ I felt his grass-green eyes, so like Elizabeth’s, resting sharply on me: then he added, his voice lowered for Jasper’s sake, ‘Forgive me saying this, Thomazine, but is there anything between you and Francis? No, nobody’s told me, but it’s not verra difficult to guess when you know him as well as I do.’
‘There is,’ I said, recognizing that in Malise I might well have an ally, ‘or rather, there was. That’s why we came here.’ And briefly, softly, against the hissing whispers of the fire and wind, I told again all that had happened in the past two years. Occasionally I glanced at Jasper, whose attention had wandered, and who was practising his writing at the table, using a badly-cut and spluttering quill. Grainne sat calmly by Great-Aunt, her long slender hands folded in her lap, and the soft light deepening the fine contours of her face; more than once I saw Malise glance towards her. But he kept his attention for me and my story, and when I had finished, nodded slowly. ‘Aye, it’s a sorry tale, is yon, and no wonder he’s changed, different, ye ken? As though …’ he paused, searching for the words to explain, and I said, ‘As though something had gone, and left him a stranger?’
Malise’s eyes widened and met mine with sudden understanding. ‘Aye, that’s it. And … well, we were friends, before, Francis and me, and at the end of it we had few secrets from each other — save for that Armstrong girl, but that’s another story. I knew him. It isna like that any more, there’s something wrong. He’s said nothing of why he came back, nothing of any of all this, that you’ve told me. And there’s another thing, too. Before, we used to go with Gib sometimes into Carlisle, for the hell of it, but there was aye too much else for him to be doing for him to get verra interested in wine, women and song — save for Kirsty Armstrong, o’ course, and I’m thinking you’ll be wishing her to the Devil, Thomazine. But now, it’s like he’s interested in nothing else. With that, and the way he’s taking no heed of what he does, volunteering for all the dangerous duties, well, I’m verra glad of your coming, Thomazine, even if he’ll have none of you. Are you staying here, then, to fight off Kirsty Armstrong?’
