Pale as the Dead

by Fiona Mountain

  After a moment, he slipped the knife back in his pocket, strode back to his car.

  Natasha sank back against the garden wall, and breathed.

  * * *

  As she indicated right out of Kelmscott, she caught a final glint of the river.

  The law would take its own course. But it wasn’t there to protect those who chose to test the boundaries of normal behaviour. Children who played with adult toys, played with fire. Jake Romilly was probably right. If Bethany reported what he had done to her it might not even make it to court. There were no photographs of bruises, the police had found no fingerprints around the desk but Natasha’s own. But so long as Jake Romilly thought there were, so long as he was worried enough to keep out of the picture, Bethany should be safe from him.

  Fifty

  THEY WERE WALKING, Bethany, Adam and Natasha, up through the deer park on Broadway Hill.

  It was deserted, except for the grazing Cotswold sheep and the red deer themselves, like allegorical creatures, standing still as statues, or skitting elusively between the shrubs. In the distance, shaggy highland cattle foraged in the rough grass.

  The gatekeeper was a lad from Snowshill, and he had let Natasha drive James’s Land Rover right up to the top of the park, for Bethany’s sake. It had coped easily with the rugged terrain, which was why they’d taken it, rather than Adam’s Lancia or the Alpine, to the hospital to collect her. Three people could sit fairly comfortably along the front seat. Adam had been at the far passenger side, Bethany in the middle, between him and Natasha, all the way from Oxford.

  Bethany was wrapped up in black woollen gloves, a thick red scarf, and Natasha’s black coat, which was so long on her it trailed to the ground. She was too thin, but the fresh air had brought colour to her cheeks, light to her eyes.

  She was scheduled to go back for tests at the cardiology department in a fortnight’s time.

  It had been Natasha’s idea to come here, and it was the perfect day to visit the Tower. The sky for once was bright blue, and the sun shone between occasional fluffy white cumuli. There was a strong breeze but it wasn’t a cold one, and beneath the trees were the first scatters of snowdrops.

  Ahead of them was the tower itself, a George flag flying high above its Saxon-style battlements. It was like a castle from a gigantic chess set, a stark presence, its stone darker than any found locally, a beacon that had been lit to warn of the approach of the Spanish Armada, and the end of the Second World War.

  ‘What is it?’ Bethany asked.

  ‘Nothing particularly,’ Natasha smiled. ‘A folly. It was designed in the eighteenth century for the Earl of Coventry.’

  ‘No wonder Morris and Rossetti wanted to spend their holidays here,’ Adam said.

  They entered the base of the tower, paid for their tickets, and Adam briefly studied the exhibition which explained the history.

  Then, taking it slowly, they began to climb the narrow, curved stairway that wound upwards like a corkscrew, with a rope banister attached to the wall. Natasha led the way, followed by Bethany, who reached back her hand to hold Adam’s as they ascended.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Natasha asked, turning her head.

  ‘Perfectly.’

  ‘It’s worth it when you reach the top, I promise.’

  The bracing air buffeted them as they stood overlooking the turrets, the flag right above them, cracking like a whip, fields and valleys and rolling hills undulating all around. You could see Edge Hill, seventeen miles away, and in the opposite direction, the Black Mountain and Wales.

  ‘You’re supposed to be able to see thirteen different counties,’ Natasha said, not looking for them but for something in Bethany’s face, as the girl compared the landmarks on the horizon to those on the 360 degree map that ringed the circumference of the tower.

  In the photographs, Natasha had believed she glimpsed a similarity to Lizzie, even before she’d known the truth. But now, in the flesh, there was little sign of it, not even with her fragility making her eyes seem enormous and her head too heavy for her long, slender neck. In her chestnut hair there was no replication of Lizzie’s fabled red tresses.

  Adam took Natasha aside. ‘That note in the journal. She says it was just something she’d jotted down, some lines that kept going round in her head. She thought they might be from a song or something. She says it meant nothing really.’

  Lines that kept going round in her head.

  A secret that had been passed on, hidden, like a coded message, in the lines Lizzie Siddal had scribbled on a piece of paper before she died, lines that had been handed down through the generations, like all the best stories and legends, in songs or poems or the words mothers whispered and sang to their children.

  Say no goodbye

  I am gone to the unknown land

  Where at last you will be mine.

  Inciting Bethany to do as Lizzie had done, or warning her not to?

  Bethany was ticking the counties off on her fingers. ‘Staffordshire, Shropshire, Dyfed, Hereford, Gwent.’

  Natasha said, ‘You thought Jeanette Marshall was one of your ancestors?’

  ‘My grandmother told me she was.’

  ‘It’s not Jeanette you’re related to.’

  Bethany stopped counting, turned to Natasha, who took Jeanette’s letter out of her pocket and handed it over.

  When she’d finished reading Bethany looked up. ‘You mean Lizzie?’

  ‘She’s your great-great-great grandmother, yes.’

  Her eyes flew to Adam, then back to Natasha, as if she’d made her wishes come true. She brushed a lock of hair away from her face ‘I was sure there was something,’ she said quietly. ‘It was like I knew her, as well as I know myself.’ She curled her small hand into a ball, held it in the centre of her chest. ‘As if she was here with me, all the time.’

  ‘She is.’

  Adam slid his arm around Bethany’s waist. She did the same to him, still holding the letter in her hand. She leant into him, smiled, shook her head in disbelief. ‘I’m going to wake up tomorrow and think this is all a dream.’ Then she turned to Natasha again. ‘It’s through my mother’s side?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Granny said she felt she was destined to buy her house in Kelmscott when she saw it was for sale because she had the diary, that was all. She wasn’t particularly interested in Lizzie, in any of it really. And Dad told me he wanted me to be called Elizabeth, but my mother wouldn’t have it, said she didn’t like the name. She wasn’t interested in her either.’

  ‘You were different,’ Natasha said softly. ‘There was a connection. Lizzie was a mother who’d lost her baby daughter, and you were a little girl without a mother.’

  As soon as Natasha said it and saw Bethany’s face, she wished she hadn’t.

  ‘Lizzie’s baby was blue when she was born,’ Bethany said. ‘There was something wrong with her heart.’

  ‘We can’t know that now,’ Adam cut in.

  ‘Eleanor lived until she was sixty,’ Natasha said. ‘I’ve got a copy of her death certificate to prove it. And your grandmother was twenty years older than that. Your great-grandmother and grandfather all made fifty. Not bad going in those days. They all had the same genes as you. Even Lizzie might have lived a long life if … it had been happier.’

  ‘Natasha’s right,’ Adam said. ‘If Rossetti hadn’t messed around with other women, if they’d been able to bring up a family…’

  ‘Things have a way of coming full circle,’ Natasha said. ‘So far your lives are not so very different.’ She smiled at Adam, meeting his eyes. ‘You fell in love with an artist, modelled for him. What happens next is up to you.’

  She handed her the little note, Lizzie’s words. ‘Those lines can stop going round in your head now.’ She let Bethany read it. ‘Dr Marshall, Jeanette’s father, found it on the night Lizzie died. Proof it was Lizzie’s own choice to end her life.’ Natasha looked at Adam. ‘Secrets can be like a curse. But Lizzie and Eleanor’
s story isn’t a secret any more.’

  Adam moved closer to her and they stood together, staring out.

  In her mind Natasha travelled to another hill. Fish Hill. When Marcus had asked her if it was possible to step back into the past. She should have told him yes. She should have said the past is always with us, is part of who we are. But he’d asked the question, hadn’t he? That was the thing. He wanted it to be possible. He was willing to give it a try.

  ‘That’s Warwickshire over there.’ Bethany pointed. ‘I wonder where dad’s house is.’ Then she turned to Natasha. ‘Your village is near here, isn’t it?

  ‘Just half a mile up the road,’ Natasha said, puzzled. ‘Didn’t you try to come and see me there, on New Year’s Eve?’

  Bethany frowned, shook her head. ‘No, I was still in Kelmscott. Too ill.’

  ‘It must have been someone else,’ Natasha said.

  A girl in a grey dress with long pale hair. A ghost?

  The sun passed behind a cloud. Natasha saw Bethany shiver.

  They watched a lark wheeling in the sky, riding the currents.

  Bethany suddenly stepped towards the edge of the wall, as if to launch herself into flight. Natasha saw Adam’s fingers clench tighter, pull back. She’d wanted to do the same.

  Bethany was gripping the ledge, leaning right over to peer down. She was only watching a family below, tiny as dolls. A man and woman and two little girls.

  With her eyes cast down then, her features in shadow, there was the most fleeting glimpse. Then she stepped back, looked up, and the ghost fled from her face.

  Bethany turned her head, backlit by the sky. The sun drifted free, struck golden rays across the hills to the tower. It picked out the natural highlights in her hair, made it shine as red as fire.

  Epilogue

  A WEEK AFTER the opening of The Ravens’ exhibition, Bethany contacted the Oxford Times to offer herself for interview. What she told them caused a commotion. The following day the paper ran a double page spread of Adam’s photographs. The story was picked up by the national press and television news programmes. Queues to see the exhibition stretched down Turl Street. There was talk of a nationwide tour for some of the works, kicking off at the prestigious Photographers’ Gallery in London.

  There was only one photograph everyone wanted to see. The photograph of Lizzie Siddal’s great-great-great-granddaughter in a reproduction of the image which had made Lizzie immortal. It would give Bethany a degree of fame and immortality too. Everyone wanted to know about the photographer who had found her.

  So, Natasha thought, Jake Romilly lost in the end, in the way he most hated to lose.

  Afterword

  THE CHARACTERS IN this story are a mixture of real and fictitious. The real ones are Lizzie Siddal and Gabriel Rossetti of course, as well as some of the Marshalls. John Marshall was Rossetti’s physician, his practice was in Savile Row and he did have a wife called Ellen, and a daughter called Jeanette who left behind a series of journals. John Marshall regularly attended to Lizzie Siddal during her long illnesses.

  Lizzie and Gabriel’s story is true in every part except for details concerning their baby daughter, who was stillborn. The exhumation in Highgate and Rossetti’s request to be buried in Birchington, as well as him calling Marshall back to his apartment because he believed Lizzie was still alive two days after she had been pronounced dead are all true. Beata Beatrix was painted as a memorial to Lizzie.

  There were rumours that Lizzie left behind a suicide note but this has never come to light.

  I have taken a further artistic liberty regarding Chatham Place. This was the apartment where Lizzie lived with Rossetti and died, but sadly it was demolished to make way for the roundabout at Blackfriars.

  The 1861 census returns for the district of Westminster St James are indeed lost.

  Acknowledgements

  NUMEROUS BOOKS ON both the Pre-Raphaelites and genealogy were invaluable in writing this novel. In particular Jan Marsh’s The Legend of Elizabeth Siddal (Quartet Books, 1989) and Dante Gabriel Rossetti Painter and Poet (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1999) were crucial. All the details of Lizzie and Rossetti’s lives, and in particular the descriptions of the Highgate exhumation, are taken from these books. (I take full responsibility for any errors in reworking.) Without Jan Marsh’s extensive research and inspiring depiction of the people around which this novel hinges, it could never have been written.

  Ancestor Syndrome: Transgenerational Psychotherapy and the Hidden Links in the Family Tree (Routledge, 1998) by Anne Ancelin Schutzenberger also inspired this novel.

  Details of Julia Margaret Cameron’s work comes from Julia Margaret Cameron’s Women by Sylvia Wolf (Art Institute of Chicago, 1998).

  Jeanette Marshall’s diaries and the lives of her family are quoted and recounted in The Precariously Privileged: A Professional Family In Victorian London by Zuzanna Shonfield (Oxford University Press, 1987).

  * * *

  It was Marion Edwards who conducted the first research into Lizzie’s history using PRO records.

  I used numerous genealogical reference works, primarily, Never Been Here Before (PRO Publications, 1998) by Stella Colwell, the Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (Oxford University Press, 1996) and the Good Web Guide to Genealogy by Caroline Peacock (The Good Web Guide Limited, 2000).

  The main sources for Cotswold and Snowshill history were The Cotswolds by Rod Talbot and Robin Whiteman (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986) Snowshill: Portrait of a Village by Caroline Mason (Thornhill Press, 1987) and Susan Hill’s Spirit of The Cotswolds (Michael Joseph, 1988).

  Other books that were useful include The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child by Nancy Newton Verrier (Gateway Press Inc, 1999); Making Faces: Using Forensic and Archaeological Evidence by John Prag and Richard Neave (British Museum Press, 1997); Highgate Cemetery: Victorian Valhalla by John Gay and Felix Baxter (John Murray Publishers Ltd, 1984); The Victorian Celebration of Death by James Stevens Curl (Sutton Publishing Ltd, 2000) and Love Beyond Death: The Anatomy of Myth in the Arts by Rudolph Binion (New York University Press, 1993).

  Thanks to William George Hunt, T.D., B.A., F.C.A., Windsor Herald at the College of Arms and to Kathy Wilshaw, who, just like Natasha, is a professional genealogist who lives in the Cotswolds.

  Without the fascinating input of Professor Andrew Wilkie, Professor of Genetics, University of Oxford who offered information on Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy and gave me a crash course on genetics, this novel would have probably been much easier to write but nowhere near as satisfying. For additional information on HCM, thanks to Dr Richard Winsley of the cardiology research unit at Exeter University. (Again, any errors regarding genetic or medical details of HCM are mine.) For advice on police procedure, my thanks to Detective Sergeant Rebecca Mountain. For rare insight into the workings and world of the Sunbeam Alpine, I am indebted to Geoff Woolf of the Sunbeam Alpine Owners Club!

  For unfailing inspiration and encouragement and for giving me the necessary prod that brought the idea of Natasha to life, my thanks to Jane Wood at Orion. Thanks also to Rachel Leyshon, Sophie Wills, Laura Morris, Carole Blake and Julian Friedmann.

  Fiona Mountain

  December 2001

  Also by Fiona Mountain

  ISABELLA

  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

  An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

  PALE AS THE DEAD. Copyright © 2002 by Fiona Mountain. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  ISBN 0-312-32323-9

  EAN 978-0312-32323-3

  First published in Great Britain by Orion, an imprint of the Orion Publishing Group, Ltd.

  First U.S. Edition: July 2004

  eISBN 9781466863453

  First
eBook edition: January 2014