House of Splinters, page 2
‘Well, I cannot tell what was in Wilfred’s mind back then,’ she said awkwardly. ‘But he intends for us to live at The Bridge now: that is an absolute fact. I received a letter just this morning, instructing me to be ready to leave next week.’ Warily, Belinda raised her gaze. Her mother was a statue, even her hands utterly still on the saucer.
‘I forbid it,’ Mamma decreed.
An old, childish panic flared inside Belinda’s chest. She placed the tea down. ‘You cannot forbid me. Only my husband has the power to do that. I answer to Wilfred now.’ Perhaps it was cowardly, blaming everything on him, but it was the best she could do.
Mamma seized her own bowl of tea and threw it against the wall. The birds shrieked as it shattered. She sobbed bitterly.
Belinda curled into herself, protective arms wrapped around the baby. ‘Please, Mamma. Don’t be upset.’
‘Upset!’ her mother echoed. ‘This will break my heart. I might as well put an end to myself immediately.’
She often threatened this. Sometimes, unforgivably, Belinda wished that she would. One quick, sharp bolt of agony compared to the prolonged pain of her displeasure.
‘You must think of Freddy and his future,’ she tried. ‘This is his chance to become a proper gentleman. Landed gentry! He need never go anywhere near ships or trade. That part of his legacy will be erased.’
Mamma’s chest was still heaving. ‘That’s all very well for the years to come. But right now, he is so young! He ought not to be moved. He should be kept where he is safe.’
‘Will… will he not be safe with his own parents at The Bridge?’
‘I do not know!’ Mamma cried, driving her fingernails into the arms of her chair. ‘I have no acquaintance with that part of the country. Anywhere new, anywhere you do not understand, is unsafe.’
‘But… But Wilfred knows it. He was bred there. I have visited before – why, Freddy was even born in the house!’
Even as Belinda spoke, a cold finger touched her heart. For Mamma had used a word that described exactly how she’d felt during those first weeks at The Bridge with baby Freddy. Unsafe. Hunted, somehow.
But many ladies experienced such feelings just after childbirth. It was nothing out of the common way.
Sunlight slanted through the windows onto the floor, touching the patch of tea soaking into the carpet and the little shards of porcelain that lay in it like broken teeth. Shadows cast lines across the mess. Long, narrow shadows, the bars of the birdcages.
‘Children are so fragile,’ Mamma protested. ‘One false step may scar them for life. Do you not realise how much damage can be done to a child by a bad environment?’
The irony that Mamma should say that here, in the very room where she had kept Belinda her prisoner for nearly twenty years.
‘Nothing bad will happen,’ she blurted out. ‘I won’t let it. I’d never let harm come to Freddy. And The Bridge is not a bad environment! It is a country estate. Wilfred will be there, and Sawyer will be there… Everything will be under control.’
‘You think you know the world now.’ Mamma’s hands drew together again. She picked at the skin on her index finger, already red and raw. ‘But I once spoke as you do. I gave my mother every assurance when I married. I said Kipling was as loyal as a hound and would always keep me safe.’ She shook her head. It was more like a spasm, a quiver that ran into her lips. ‘Look, Belinda. Look what became of me.’
CHAPTER 2
The Great Hall at The Bridge felt cavernous by night. Although logs were piled high on the fire, heat only crept out a short distance, never reaching the shadowy corners. Overlooked as it was by a gallery above, the room could boast neither comfort nor privacy. So why had his father been sitting out here the night that he died?
Wilfred gazed up at the walls. Firelight trembled across the swords fanned out there and the display of old guns. A small space, the size of a pistol, was conspicuously blank. It was baffling. His father must have taken down an ancient shooter and… what? Sat guard against his own death?
Wilfred shook his head. How like the old man. He’d felt the end approaching and simply tried to bully it back. He wasn’t always so wizened and crotchety. At the edges of his memory, Wilfred stored a version of his father who had taught him to shoot and ride, a man whose praise had been more precious to him than jewels. But that man had perished long ago. Wilfred had finished mourning for him. Now, with this second death, all he could feel was curiosity and a vague sense of unease. What had his father seen to make him fire? A mouse, a shadow? Maybe nothing at all. Old triggers were light. Hands could spasm at the moment of death. The whole episode was probably an accident. And yet…
Wilfred moved his candle closer to the mark, tilted his head to inspect it from a new angle. He’d always considered holes to be dark places, but this crater remained shockingly pale, singed only at the edges. The bullet had burrowed too deep to prise out, right through the dark panelling into the lighter wood at the centre.
There was no debris, no spray of splinters. Knowles must have swept them away. The only mark visible on the flags was a stain that had been there for years, a stain you wouldn’t even notice unless you were looking for it. Or unless you remembered, as Wilfred did. He shivered through the thick material of his mourning suit. Of all the places in this huge hall, his father had shot precisely there… Coincidence, surely?
Or maybe he was viewing this the wrong way, maybe the target wasn’t in the Great Hall at all. Beyond this wall lay the music room. It had barely been used since his mother died some seventeen years ago, but perhaps the old man thought he’d heard an intruder within?
Wilfred pulled the door open. No sconces were lit, but the glow from his candle brushed over the wallpaper inside: pink, like gums. He remembered happy hours spent here, listening to his mother play. Now there was dust on the piano and a smell of pot-pourri. Neither he nor Nathan had learnt to play music. The instruments gathered inside couldn’t speak again without a lady’s touch. But soon Belinda would come and make this room her own, she would set that harp singing. The Bridge was theirs now, as it was always meant to be. They would make a fresh start.
Shaking off his memories, Wilfred turned, ready to shut the door and lock the past behind him. But he paused. Something lurked in the shadows behind the music stand, poised as if to play a tune. A shape as tall as a man’s. For a moment his breath was suspended. He took a step closer, brandishing his candle like a shield. Softly, it illuminated the face that watched him: painted and flat.
‘For pity’s sake,’ he exhaled. Hadn’t they agreed when he last visited? All of these wretched antiques were supposed to be rounded up and confined to the attic. With his mother gone, there was no cause to keep them on display – and who would want to? There was no joy to be had from a collection of wooden screens designed to look like people. ‘Silent companions.’ At best they were absurd. But to a child, to him and Nathan anyway, they’d always appeared sinister.
This one was the very worst of the bunch: a footman with a pair of hooded brown eyes that seemed to move with your every step. Wilfred couldn’t deny it was a good likeness, and that only made him hate it more. Those full lips, better suited to a woman, twisted in their habitual smirk. He could not meet its gaze.
Why the devil would the old man suffer this to remain in his house?
‘Sir?’
He wheeled round. Young John Knowles hovered in the doorway, wearing the same livery that was painted on the wooden figure: a blue coat with yellow facings.
‘What do you want?’ Wilfred snapped.
The youth shifted awkwardly. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to startle you.’
He drew in a breath, ashamed of the way he’d spoken. The boy’s father had served The Bridge since time immemorial; this wasn’t an insignificant lackey to be sniped at. It was just the shock of confronting that face again… ‘I was not startled. But please try not to sneak up on people in that fashion.’
‘Yes, sir.’ John peered with a frown at the music stand and the gloating figure behind it. The same distaste Wilfred nursed for the thing registered on his pimpled face.
‘Well?’ Wilfred demanded.
John raised his brows. ‘They’re ready for you, sir.’
For an instant, Wilfred couldn’t think what the boy meant. He’d become so lost in his investigation, he’d forgotten why he was waiting down here in his best suit to start with. ‘I see. Thank you.’
Puffing out his candle, he walked past John and back into the Great Hall. The temperature must have risen in his absence. The air beneath the high, wood-beamed ceiling felt positively warm compared to that of the music room.
John helped him on with his greatcoat, hat and gloves. Wilfred was certainly dressed for the part: the new master performing his solemn duty. Why, then, did he feel like a sham? He’d thought it would be simple, that he’d been born for this, but it turned out power and status were weapons he must learn the weight of before he could wield them responsibly.
He closed his eyes briefly, saw that awful painted face again.
The door opened on a damp and musical night. Rain pattered on the gravelled drive, plopped into the swelling basin of the fountain and drummed against the roof of the old carriage. Wilfred strode through the drizzle, horribly conscious of the hearse at the front of the procession. The coffin and pall would be drenched.
He took sole possession of the mourning coach. The old man hadn’t used his carriage for years, and it showed. There were threadbare patches in the pea-green upholstery. It was just as well that his father hadn’t been a popular figure for Wilfred would be ashamed to invite others to ride in this contraption, to squirm uncomfortably on the lumpen squabs and hear the grinding of the wheels as they moved. The whole thing was damnably ill-sprung. It bumped him from side to side like a weaver’s shuttle.
At least the journey was not far. On another day, another occasion, he could have walked across the grand stone bridge and taken the road that ran alongside the river, sheltered by chestnut, larch and elm. But it was as well to start as he meant to go on: with dignity. He must show people he was the master now.
Silver needles of rain flashed before the carriage lights. By the time they neared the village of Fayford, it was lashing mercilessly at the trees. Given the weather, he’d not expected to see any tenants watching the coffin pass, but there they were, shadowy figures gathered at the doors to their broken-down cottages. The old man may not have been beloved, yet he’d managed to engender the respect that comes from fear, enforcing the Game Act to its full extent.
Wilfred felt a stab of misgiving. There were so many of them and he was just one man. A sudden, desperate longing for Nathan burnt in his chest. He should have invited his brother to attend the ceremony, or at the very least sought him out and informed him of the death…
The wheels bumped over a rut. Wilfred jolted in his seat, and the motion seemed to shake him out of his panic too. He was being ridiculous. He’d spent his boyhood here, the villagers must know he was not cut from the same cloth as the old man, and if they didn’t, he’d soon show them. He would show them even now, by his deportment at the service.
All Souls Church was an ancient affair. As they drew closer, he saw the original wooden spire reaching up into patchy moonlight. Little had changed from the days of his youth. The place was slightly more worn, perhaps, but that was only becoming for a venerable building. He’d expected worse after seeing the state of the cottages. Yet whatever his father had skimped on, it clearly wasn’t the upkeep of the church.
Knowles opened the door, an umbrella poised. Wilfred climbed out and stood silently beside his manservant. The church’s incumbent, Mr Chapman, did not reside in the parish. He’d made the journey down especially for this occasion and stood beneath the dripping lychgate, looking thoroughly disgruntled.
How sad it was that no one truly wanted to be here. The old man had died unloved, scarcely mourned except for show. Relatives had declined to travel down and attend the service. Even the pallbearers unloading the coffin were hired hands, no connection to the dead at all. Wilfred felt a sliver of shame. Could matters have been different? Would the villagers have liked his father any better if it had never happened?
‘Are you ready, sir?’ Knowles asked kindly. He was a good fellow, had been from the very start. Wilfred couldn’t remember The Bridge without old Knowles.
‘One is never ready for this,’ Wilfred admitted. ‘And it doesn’t seem right, does it, squirrelling him away under the cover of darkness like this?’
Knowles pressed his lips together. ‘It’s for the best, sir,’ he ventured.
Perhaps he was right.
The coffin was ready for its final journey. Without a word to Wilfred, the vicar set off down the grave-lined path towards his church. More villagers were huddled behind the low walls, watching. Their silence, their very stillness, seemed to pose a threat.
Wilfred let his gaze travel across them, wondering if he would recognise any faces from his youth. He didn’t. The night was too dark, too wet, to make out individuals. They were one solid mass, unflinching beneath the rain. He hated how they stood on the fringes, as if they dared not cross the boundary into holy ground.
He’d make the past up to them somehow. He would. When his own time came to be interred here, the villagers would truly grieve.
He began the slow shuffle towards the church. For the first time that night, the moon broke wholly free from the clouds, lighting a man who hovered at the edge of the graveyard. Something about him was unpleasantly familiar. Although he’d removed his cap and held it clutched before him in both hands, there was no humility in his expression. It leered.
Wilfred’s feet stumbled.
‘Sir?’ Knowles caught his arm, surprisingly strong for his years. ‘Careful there. It’s slippery in the wet.’
Wilfred righted himself, hoping no one had noticed. ‘Yes, yes, thank you, Knowles.’
He searched for the man again but there was only a patch of compressed grass where he’d stood. That face… It had the same full lips, the same heavy-lidded eyes, as Wilfred had just seen, painted on the wooden companion.
CHAPTER 3
‘Mamma, look! Sheep! Baby sheep! Lambs.’ Freddy pressed his nose flat against the window, excited breath misting the glass. ‘Baaa!’ he bleated.
Belinda laughed. The glee on her son’s face made up for two days of arduous travel, stopping only briefly at insanitary staging inns. It was even worth the inconvenience of urinating into a Bourdaloue when the baby bounced on her bladder.
‘I see them, sweetheart. Perhaps Sawyer can add some lambs to the picture she is drawing for you?’
‘Doing it even as we speak, ma’am.’ Rather than gazing out of the window for reference, Sawyer’s eye remained fixed on the sun-splashed piece of paper before her, conjuring a landscape from memory and invention. It was a marvel she could keep her hand so steady, with no stray lines or patches where the pencil had pressed too hard. Belinda couldn’t even read in the carriage; it made her feel sick.
Instead, she looked up to the powder-blue sky and its fluffy clouds, so reminiscent of Freddy’s sheep. Fine weather had blessed their journey: another good omen. Her spirits rose. All her life she’d envied her brothers as they set off for exotic climes with Papa, leaving her behind to mind their mother, and returned with thrilling tales to tell. Next time they met, she may have some stories of her own.
‘How far away are we now?’ Freddy demanded.
‘Close enough,’ she said, trying to remember. ‘Not far until Torbury St Jude and from there we are on the home stretch.’
Home. It was strange to think of The Bridge by that name. Nowhere she’d lived in her twenty-six years had truly felt like a home. Her father’s house had been a penance to escape at every opportunity, whilst Wilfred’s establishment was her first testing ground. But she had proved herself worthy of his choice, hadn’t she? She’d managed that household, provided an heir, and now there was another on the way. Perhaps The Bridge really could be the home she’d pictured when playing with her dolls as a girl.
Freddy fell back from the window and snuggled against her. ‘Will we see Papa again soon?’
‘Yes, love. I’m sure he has missed you very much.’
These past days could not have been easy for Wilfred, burying a parent and putting the estate into order. At least her arrival would provide him with a helper. She remembered the first time Papa had brought Wilfred home to dinner, dressed in a green velvet suit and formal bag wig. Papa’s voice had purred warm against her ear. ‘You’d be aligned with an ancient family, my gal, landed gentry through and through. One day that young buck will inherit an estate, and you’d be lady of his manor.’
Now it had come to pass.
But she was under no illusions about the quality of that manor. It would need elbow-grease, as Sawyer would say, to make it liveable. After they passed through the medieval market town of Torbury St Jude with all its bustle and colour, the landscape fell into a state of decline. The fields, bare of any crop, were edged by broken hedgerows. Less livestock grazed. Even the road was derelict, jolting them about as the wheels cast up stone chippings. Freddy giggled as if on a merry-go-round.
Sawyer was forced finally to put her pencil away. ‘What an adventure, young master! Come, sit with me and give your mother some space.’
Belinda clenched the strap beside her seat with one hand and tried to keep her belly steady with the other. The last thing she needed was for her waters to break in the carriage. Yet Sawyer was right; it did feel like an adventure. There was even beauty in the untamed foliage outside. While the weeds were messy, they were thriving, every shade of green imaginable.
Slowly, they rumbled through Fayford, the little village that served the estate. That, too, was in dire need of work. But once the cottages were rethatched, the bracken cut back and a few of the walls repaired, Belinda saw no reason why it couldn’t be a charming place, so close by the river.
