Herald of Joy, page 46
part #2 of Wintercombe Series
‘I think he’d rise to the challenge,’ Tabby said. She looked at her mother, her eyes wide and serious. ‘You think I’m joking, don’t you — you still think I’m a child. Well, perhaps I am, in years and experience, but I know people, I can understand them, somehow. Yes, I do hate Rachael, no, I don’t think I will ever forgive or forget what she did to Kate, and to you — but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to help her. She is my sister, after all, and if we don’t do something about her soon, she’ll make our lives unbearable.’
Silence could only stare at her, somewhat bemused. After a pause, she said, ‘You’re quite right — you are no longer a child. And perhaps you’re wiser than all of us — except for Nat, of course.’
‘He’s much more cunning than I am,’ said Tabby. She looked as if she was about to confide something, but hesitated. Then she went on, ‘What’s going to happen? What will they do with Captain Hellier?’
‘I don’t know. Captain Humphreys doesn’t either, but he says it’ll be Colonel Pyne’s business, when he arrives. Humphreys has sent for him, and he’ll probably be here in the morning.’ She gave Tabby an encouraging smile. ‘You may have to tell him your tale all over again.’
‘I don’t mind,’ said Tabby. ‘They can’t do anything very much to me, can they, and still less to Deb and William. I don’t mind if they think I’m a stupid child. I know I’m not, and so does everyone here, and their opinions count. Colonel Pyne is a corrupt and arrogant despot, everyone knows it, and I don’t give a toss for what he thinks. Mother, don’t look so unhappy — I chose this, this whole business was my fault, I asked Captain Hellier and that other man to come here, and I didn’t want you or Nat to know anything about it. Patience was different somehow, I knew it would seem like an adventure to her, and it did. It’s only fair I should take the blame, I want to — and if by doing so I save you and Nat from fines and disgrace, or worse, then I’m glad to do it! What can they do to me? I’m not afraid of shouting men, or a good scolding. I remember what Colonel Ridgeley was like, and after him no one can ever seem as bad.’
‘I feel rather the same myself,’ Silence confessed. She looked at her daughter’s emphatic face, and wondered how she could ever have thought this child vague, or dreamy. That serene and lovely countenance concealed a strength of will that was astonishing. ‘Tabby — you deserve all our thanks.’
The girl’s mouth twisted ruefully, much as Nat’s did. ‘No, I don’t — not for doing what I think is right. But there’s one thing we haven’t really talked about, which is the most important thing of all. How are we going to help Nick escape?’
As her mother stared at her, dumbfounded, she added, ‘Well, we can hardly leave him to Colonel Pyne’s mercies, can we? Can’t you put a sleeping-draught in the soldiers’ food this evening?’
‘Tabby, he is hurt,’ said Silence, torn between shocked laughter and bitter tears. ‘If we try and put him on a horse, he’ll fall off it, and likely die from loss of blood — he’s quite unable to ride. He is sleeping now, and that’s the best thing. I would much rather he was a prisoner, and alive, than dead.’ She added urgently, ‘Please — don’t do anything else. We may all survive this, but if you try to spirit him away, Pyne’s retribution will fall on us all like a wall. For your sake, and Nat’s, and everyone’s, and most of all for Nick — please, please leave it be.’
Tabby’s eyes, the same hazel-green as her own, but, she saw now for the first time, far fiercer, far more uncompromising, met hers for a long moment, and then dropped. ‘Yes,’ she said to her hands, clasped on the table. ‘You are right — I will leave it be.’
‘Good,’ said Silence. It’s — it’s not that I don’t want him free — I do, most desperately. He has asked me to marry him — we had been making plans…’
‘Wonderful!’ Tabby said, leaping up to embrace her. ‘Oh, Mother, I’m so pleased — it’s the best thing possible — now all he has to do, is to convince Colonel Pyne that he won’t fight against the Commonwealth again, and then they’ll let him go!’
Which, Silence thought miserably, as she bade her beloved child goodnight, was undoubtedly an extremely optimistic view of the circumstances.
Rachael’s chamber lay next to Tabby’s. She paused outside it, steeling herself for the unpleasantness of the next few minutes, and then knocked.
There was no reply, and the door remained obstinately shut. She knocked again, and then lifted the latch.
The door swung open, creaking gently. The chamber beyond was impenetrably dark, and she sensed its emptiness. She walked in, holding up her candlestick, watching the long black shadows move round the furniture. Bed, clothes-press, table, chairs, books — but no Rachael.
An indefinable prickling of dread crawled up her scalp. She glanced around once more, and even, feeling foolish, peered under the bed. But there was only the maid’s truckle there, pushed out of sight. The fire was unlit, and there were no candles. Rachael had not, it seemed, been here since before darkness fell.
Her maid might know where she was. Silence walked down the corridor that ran for most of the length of the north wing, and looked into the chamber occupied by the serving-maids, Meg and Hannah, and, the dairymaids, Jane and Anne. It was dark and unoccupied, for at this hour they would all be downstairs, cleaning the dairy or helping to make ready for supper. Still disturbed by that feeling of apprehension, Silence closed the door and went down the back stairs to the servants’ hall.
Jude Hinton, Rachael’s long-suffering maid, was laying the table for their supper. Her plain, placid face creased with puzzled anxiety at Silence’s question. ‘No, no, m’lady — I ain’t seed her since afore the soldiers come. She towd I she were a-going to see Mistress Apprice, and gived I some sewing to do — and I’ve been a-sewing in here, m’lady, till the soldiers come. Wherever can she be?’
‘We must find her,’ Silence said. ‘Supper can be delayed for the moment, and I’ll organise a search.’
Captain Humphreys, impatiently awaiting his longed-for meal in the dining parlour, was not best pleased by the news that it was not, after all, imminent. Nat, his face suddenly serious, excused himself with apologies. ‘My sister is missing, sir, and must be found. I will return to you shortly — in the meantime, help yourself to more wine.’
Rachael was not hiding in any of the store-rooms in the north wing, nor in the chambers above. The groom, Tom Goodenough, who had been at Wintercombe for nearly half his life, directed his lads and the garden boys in a brisk and thorough search of the buildings around the barton, with no result. Nat and Silence, with increasing anxiety, hunted all through the eastern part of the house, even looking in the now deserted roofspace. But dust and shadows were all they saw, and when the seekers gathered, as arranged, in the hall, no one had anything to report. Rachael was nowhere within the house.
The last anyone had seen of her was in the confused and frantic moments when Nick Hellier was fighting for his freedom. Eliza told Silence that she thought Rachael had run down the stairs when the captain fell: Carpenter, however, had been in the hall, and had not seen her. It was as if, Silence thought with terrible foreboding, her stepdaughter had vanished from the face of the earth, spirited away by the forces of darkness.
‘I think I know where she might be,’ said Nat suddenly. He glanced around the servants, and at his stepmother. ‘She might have taken refuge in the summerhouse. If she isn’t there, then the Lord alone knows where she is. And…perhaps it would be best if I went alone. In her probable state of mind, it can do her no good if we all come bursting in on her.’ He smiled reassuringly at Silence, whose face now showed, indelibly, the marks of the strain of this long and terrible day. ‘I shan’t be long.’
She waited in the garden room, watching the small yellow light from his lantern bobbing down the terraces and away out of her sight. Her view of the summerhouse was blocked by the small angled turret which carried the stairs to her chamber. She slipped outside the door, and stood shivering in the chilly September night, wondering why she should feel so apprehensive. Surely, this was no more than another of Rachael’s tantrums?
*
But Rachael, fleeing the house, had known that, this time, she had put herself utterly beyond the pale. She had seen Nick fall, surely dead, and it was all her doing, as certainly as if she had wielded that lethal sword herself. Anguish and remorse had ripped through her, and, like a wounded animal, she had turned and run blindly, seeking respite from this bitter torment.
Almost of their own accord, her urgent feet had taken her to the pretty summerhouse at the end of the terrace, where, only an hour or two before, she had hurt and frightened her five-year-old sister into revealing the deadly secret. She fell, sobbing, down the steep wooden steps to the little-used lower storey, smelling of apples and damp and dust, and curled herself into the furthest corner, behind a group of pots.
But she could not hide from her thoughts, from the stern ruthless voice which shouted her sins to her until she put her hands over her ears, but still could not shut it out. She was a traitor, and wicked, and evil. She had caused a man’s death, from spite and for her own selfish ends, she had alienated and disgusted her entire family, and she knew now that, whatever hopes she might have entertained, Jack Harington would no longer want anything to do with her.
And with good reason. In the long silent hours, as light drained slowly from the dim little room, Rachael looked herself fully in the face, for the first time in her life, and shrank from what she saw. And yet the voice went on, shouting in her head, cataloguing the evils she had done in the name of duty and religion, remorselessly describing, in minute detail, the myriad little cruelties, the despicable arrogance, the general abhorrence of her conduct over the past few months.
As the voice reminded her, unhappiness had been no excuse. Other people were unhappy, but did not take their misery out on innocent victims. She did not have to marry that pompous bore: she had only needed to say so, and her brother would have gently but firmly apologised to the Haringtons, and torn up the contract. In short, she was vile. And the future, ostracised, loathed, unwed and shunned, seemed too appalling to be borne.
As dusk had grown, the idea had come to her. She did not have to go on living with this dreadful guilt, this unutterable emptiness. It was a sin, but what was one more, against those which she had already committed? Her family, to whom she had never really felt she belonged, would be free of her. If I were them, thought Rachael, I would dance on my grave.
Her sense of purpose grew. She got stiffly to her feet. It was cold, and dark, but she had been so long in the dim light that her eyes had adjusted to it, and she could see quite well. She knew what she wanted, and where it could be found. A length of hempen rope, round and prickly. A sturdy wooden tub, upturned. And a hook or beam, around which to fix the rope.
She could see none in this lower room, and almost sobbed in frustration. She had turned her face towards death, and any delay now seemed intolerable. Then she remembered that there were hooks in the wall in the upper part, from which garden tools were hung. Moving with the dead implacability of a sleepwalker, she found her way by touch and instinct to the wooden stairs, the rope in one hand and the heavy tub in the other. It made a noise as she hauled it bumping upwards, but she was past caring.
There was more light up here, for there were three windows instead of one, and they were comparatively clean. She found the strongest-looking hook, lifted Diggory’s pruning saws down, and slung the rope around it.
She realised then, with sudden panic, that she had no idea how to make the knot. She knew what was required, but the form it should take was a mystery to her. Sobbing, her feverish fingers experimented until they were raw and bleeding, her desperate purpose increasing by the minute. Soon, they would come looking for her, and she did not want to face their accusations, their loathing, their anger and disgust.
At last, after what seemed like hours, she managed an acceptable slip-knot. She pushed the tub close to the wall, and stood upon it, one end of the rope tied round the hook, the other looped around her neck. And now, whether she went to Heaven or to Hell, she was ready for the final act of contrition.
*
Nat opened the door. The stony cold, the silence, struck him with sudden dread. He held the lantern high, saying softly, ‘Rachael?’ He saw his sister, his twin, her distended eyes staring at him. And below, wound like some life-squeezing snake about her neck, the thick, lethal noose of rope.
Chapter Nineteen
‘The lie circumstantial, and the lie direct’
(As You Like It)
Silence waited on the steps, listening. Nat had gone within the summerhouse, and she could see the lantern light, window-shaped now. It moved and dimmed as, presumably, he set it down. She wondered what he would say to Rachael, if he found her there. The twins, outwardly so different, had nevertheless once been very close, and Nat understood his sister as, perhaps, no one else did. But what could he say, however understanding, however compassionate, to someone who had betrayed all her family, who had behaved so monstrously to Kate?
‘Silence?’ His voice, disturbingly altered, echoed softly along the quiet dark terraces. ‘Silence, I think you should come down here.’
And the dread which had been pressing down on her so hard, became certainty. Her heart lurching, she ran down the steps and along the terrace. The pale gravel between the knots was easy to see, and the moon, nearly full, drifted with callous serenity between the leisurely clouds.
Nat stood in the doorway, his face ghastly in the lantern light. She said, gasping, ‘What’s happened? Where is she?’
Beyond his still dark figure, she saw Rachael, lying on the cold stone floor, her head pillowed on a pile of sacking, her eyes closed and her face drained of all life and colour. Around her neck, a great scarlet mark stood out, shockingly vivid, against the pallid skin.
‘She tried to hang herself,’ said Nat, and in his voice, usually so light and cynical, she heard the harsh rags of a desperate, tearing grief, and pity. ‘Thank God, she didn’t make a proper knot — no, she isn’t dead, but she could so easily have been.’
Silence knelt beside her stepdaughter. The thin chest rose and fell, and the breath rasped in her bruised throat. ‘She fainted when I cut her down,’ said Nat, his voice still almost unrecognisable. ‘Oh, the fool, the fool — why does she have to be like this?’
‘Because she is Rachael,’ Silence said bleakly. She felt for the girl’s pulse and found it slow, but firm. ‘And I suppose she found that she could not live with what she did today.’
‘But why? What did she think we’d do to her?’ Nat cried. His face was twisted with anguish: Nat, who was so clear-eyed, and detached, and level-headed.
Silence, close to tears herself, shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Oh, Nat, I don’t know. No one understood what went on in her mind. She must have felt such terrible remorse for what she did.’
Nat stood, looking down at his twin, his face shadowed. He said at last, in something approaching his usual voice, ‘We must take her inside — and somehow, I don’t know how, keep this quiet. She will find the next few days dreadful enough, without everyone whispering that she tried to murder herself.’
‘And what if a justice should hear of it? Suicide is a crime, is it not?’ said Silence sadly. She brushed the tears from her face. ‘Can you carry her, Nat? And wrap something about her neck, as if keeping her from the cold — you can say that you found her collapsed in here, that she’s taken a chill — anything, so long as it’s convincing, and no one suspects the truth. If we put her to bed and keep her to her chamber for the next few days, until the marks have faded, perhaps no one need ever know.’
‘What about her maid?’ Nat was untying the knotted rope. He coiled it around his arm, and dropped it over one of the other hooks, replaced the saws and pushed the tub, right way up, into a corner. The summerhouse was once more empty of significance, innocent of any sinister resonance. He knelt by his sister, and with a gesture infinitely and uncharacteristically tender, stroked her lank black hair back from her brow.
‘Jude can be trusted not to tattle,’ said Silence, after considering the question. ‘She will be loyal to Rachael, I should think, though her task hasn’t been easy, even at the best of times.’
‘And we must ask Mally to come back, if her grandmother is better,’ said Nat. ‘We’ve been in sore need of her, the last day or so.’
‘And may be yet,’ Silence said. She found her lips quivering, the tears spilling over. ‘Nat, Nat — I know this is not the time to say it, but I am so frightened for him, so despairing — what are we going to do about Nick?’
‘One thing at a time,’ he told her. ‘My mind has not neglected that particular problem, you know. But at this moment, I think that Rachael needs us more.’
She watched as he removed his doublet, and then gathered up his sister’s unresisting body. Once, years ago, Rachael had been the taller by a head, a stalwart, sturdy girl who had looked far older than her frail, undersized twin brother. But Nat had put on height and strength as he shed his childhood ill-health, and had caught her up and passed her. In addition, she had lost a good deal of weight over the past few months. He lifted her with no apparent effort, her black head laid against his shoulder. Silence took up the doublet, and tucked it warmly around her stepdaughter’s neck and shoulders, hiding the ropemark completely. Now, they must get her safely to her chamber.
The waiting, anxious servants crowded round as Nat walked slowly, burdened, into the hall. Silence answered their questions briskly and firmly, hoping that they would not sense that there was more to this than might meet their eyes. ‘She was in the summerhouse, and she seems to have taken cold.’
‘I’ve lit the fire in her chamber, m’lady,’ said Jude Hinton anxiously. ‘And I’ve put a warming pan in her bed, too.’
‘Well done,’ Silence told her. ‘You need not stay with her tonight — she said she wanted no one near her, for the moment. I’ll give her a sleeping drink, and she will probably be better in the morning.’
