by Emma Jameson
“The gentry is notoriously naïve,” Juliet said.
“As you say.” Duggin inclined his head. “Bolivar served his country with distinction until last month. Then, quite unexpectedly, his estranged wife nearly destroyed the operation.”
“Me?” Juliet stared at him. “How?”
“You helped Dr. Bones uncover a pair of English traitors in Plymouth. While the matter was meant to be kept secret, parts of it leaked out. Now Lord Rothermere and his fine friends know Bolivar’s wife not only helped expose them but plans on giving evidence against them.”
“Of course I plan on giving evidence,” Juliet cried, the water rising higher. “You talk about serving our country. How can you fault me for doing my duty?”
“I’ve no doubt you take pride in doing your duty,” Duggin said. “However, from the viewpoint of my friends, and indeed, the men at the very top, the completion of your duty is infinitesimal to Britain. Worse, it would be counterproductive. It would aid the enemy by removing a talented spy from the chessboard.”
Juliet couldn’t speak. Soon the water would be over her head. She wanted to stop the proceedings, hurry up to Ben’s room, and ask him to join the conversation. But thanks to Duggin and the Official Secrets Act, she’d signed that right away.
“Yet all is not lost,” Ethan said. “Men who live by their wits are accustomed to reverses. I secured a meeting with Harry—Lord Rothermere—and pled my case. I told him the Ellisson family was split on the issue. I said Reggie and I had the right of it, but my dear bride remains under the spell of her Jew-sympathizing mother. I said this difference in philosophy was, in fact, the secret reason for our estrangement. I promised Harry I’d prove my devotion by returning home and… well.” He smiled hopefully. “Taking my wife in hand.”
“What in the name of heaven does that mean?” Juliet asked.
“It means….” Ethan had the decency to look abashed. “It means I’ll bring you into the fold. Or failing that, I’d exert my authority as your husband and forbid you from giving evidence.”
Juliet and Lady Victoria exchanged shocked looks.
“It won’t result in the guilty getting off, I assure you,” Duggin said.
“Of course it will,” Juliet cried. “I was the hostage! Mine was the life that was threatened. If I don’t speak against them, I’ll seem afraid to repeat the charges under oath. Like a hysterical woman. An attention-seeker.”
“The trial is in camera. It’s not a public spectacle with an audience awaiting your appearance. And forgive my candor, but the counsel for the defense has already painted you as such a person with some success,” Duggin said. “They’ve used your situation—a wife living apart from her husband—and your long association with the guilty parties to paint a rather damning picture. They claim your allegations are merely the fever dreams of a woman scorned.
“However, the physical and circumstantial evidence is strong,” he continued quickly, before she could erupt. “All that’s needed to ensure their conviction is the testimony of a respectable citizen. We have that in Dr. Bones. The guilty will be condemned and they will hang. If you do as we ask, Lady Juliet, you will not subvert the course of justice, I assure you.”
“But I’ll be perceived as subverting the course of justice,” she wailed, thinking only of Ben. “To change my mind… to withdraw as if I’m a liar who daren’t show her face during a trial, even a secret trial… it would require the performance of a lifetime. And even then, I’m not sure anyone would believe it.”
“Of course there will be personal difficulties,” Duggin said. “You did bring up questions of ego and grandeur—”
“None of that, Jack,” Ethan interrupted. “Lady Juliet deserves nothing but your deepest respect.” To her, he said more gently, “Ju, darling. I understand how you feel. No, truly I do. Can you imagine what it’s been like for me, pretending to side with the BUF? Acquaintances cut me. Friends pretend not to know me. I’ve never been so alone in my life, surrounded by people I despise. And there’s no guarantee I’ll stay alive to celebrate the war’s end….”
Juliet let out a harsh laugh. Duggin regarded her stolidly, without a trace of humor.
“Do you expect me to believe that’s true?” She looked from face to face. “That can’t possibly be true.”
“How many times have you wished to be a widow?” Ethan countered. “It may come to that. But I’ve made my choice. Twenty years in prison? I’d exit a broken man or sealed in a box. Better to go out doing what I do best—drinking, dancing, and listening when I seem to be talking.”
“Let me see if I understand,” Lady Victoria said. “For Ethan to continue spying for Britain, he needs Juliet to disavow her story about those—those people. Ethan will take credit for her reversal, restoring his relationship with the Nazi sympathizers.”
“Yes. But your good name won’t be sullied, your ladyship,” Duggin said.
“I don’t give a fig about my good name. I want to understand what you’re asking of my daughter,” Lady Victoria said. “Earlier, Ethan said something about Juliet ripping up the divorce decree.”
Ethan and Duggin exchanged glances. Duggin said nothing. Ethan sighed.
“Please understand,” he said with uncharacteristic humility. “My calling card, as it were, consists entirely of my connection by marriage to the earl, and to Ju, and to you, Lady Victoria. The truth about my family is less than exalted. My mum was a charwoman. My father was a self-made man and I won’t speak a word against him. But he died in Pentonville. I can’t expunge those facts. I can only obscure them. With regard to the gentry, I look the part and I speak the part. But without my marriage to you, Juliet, I’m no one.”
Juliet shivered. The waters had closed over her head. “Ethan. Don’t do this to me. Please.”
Duggin cleared his throat. “Perhaps I can offer some perspective. Although this concerns Dr. Bones, he was never told, and will not be told, because vital details of national security are only disclosed when it furthers the war effort. But at a party he overheard two words: chain home. Do you remember?”
Juliet nodded.
“Chain Home is a secret initiative. Its purpose is to detect and neutralize certain advantages enemy aircraft may have in attacking us,” Duggin said. “England anticipates heavy casualties from German bombers. It’s often said that the bomber always gets through. But the technology of Chain Home is unprecedented. It may save countless lives. By overhearing a chance remark and passing it on to the authorities, your friend Dr. Bones protected Chain Home. And Bolivar’s work is every bit as consequential to our national survival. Perhaps more so.”
No one spoke.
“Ladies have so few opportunities to do meaningful war work,” Duggin continued. “Some fill in for men in factories. Others type memos or sew bunting or hold bake sales. If you choose to answer your country’s call, Lady Juliet, you will aid England on an altogether different plain, by permitting Bolivar to continue his mission.”
It took Juliet a moment to find her voice. “And if I say no?”
“The operation is rolled up,” Duggin replied. “We discard Bolivar. He stands trial and goes to prison. Sir Oswald Mosely, Lord Rothermere, your uncle the earl—all will carry on with their treasonous activities. But your conscience, in the strictest sense, will be clear.”
“You make it sound simpler than it is,” Lady Victoria said. “She’ll not only have to decline to give evidence. She’ll have to pretend she’s reconciled with Ethan. To lie to everyone she knows and loves.” She paused as if someone might correct her. When no one did, she asked, “How long do you expect her to keep up such a charade?”
“How long will the war last?” Duggin asked. “How long will fascists at home seek to help bring down Britain from within?”
“Good grief, man. You needn’t be so black about it all,” Ethan said. “Look, Ju, no one wants a war. No one can even bring themselves to fire a shot, apparently. It could all be over by this time next year. Or I might say t
he wrong thing, or be caught snooping in the wrong room, and make you a widow in a month.”
This time Juliet couldn’t find her voice. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
“Leave us,” Lady Victoria told the men. “You’ll have her answer in the morning.”
Duggin touched his coat pocket, where the two envelopes resided. “I must remind you of—”
“Come on, old man.” Ethan slung an arm over the detective’s shoulders and steered him toward the door. “The die is cast.”
Juliet controlled herself until the door closed. Then she sank to the floor, buried her head in her mother’s lap, and cried.
Two Ghosts
Ben thought an early turn-in would do him good, but he had trouble falling asleep. Some of it he attributed to his hand, which still ached despite liniment and a dose of aspirin. The rest he put down to his guest room.
Clearly, Lady Juliet and Lady Victoria had wanted him to see Belsham Manor at its best. His window overlooked the garden, which was starkly lovely even in winter. The hearth’s three-bar electric fire made the room toasty, and the heirloom furnishings seemed sumptuous enough for a palace. But the featherbed had an odd aroma—not revolting precisely, but unpleasant. Unfamiliar creaks and rattles kept drawing him back from the edge of slumber. In Birdswing, Ben was frequently asked how he could sleep in a haunted cottage, but he found it far easier than sleeping in Belsham Manor.
He was lying in bed with the duvet pushed aside, a bit too warm but also a bit too lazy to get up and turn down the electric fire, when he noticed the stars. Above him, a river of diamond pinpricks flowed through the night sky, trailing violet and silver toward a destination unknown. Part of him recognized that ribbon of brilliance, and knew he must someday rejoin the flow. The idea wasn’t troubling. It wasn’t a reminder of life and death, but a reaffirmation of life and Life; the small realities that made up his days, and the great reality far beyond his ability to contemplate, at least from the beach at St. Agnes.
Or is this Port Isaac? Ben wondered, looking around.
On his Sunday rambles, he’d visited both, walking the cliffs wrapped in a wool coat. But it didn’t feel like winter now. The damp sand was cool rather than cold; the sea was calm. Along the shore, where the shingle gave way to roots and leaves, a pair of tall gorse bushes swayed in the breeze. They beckoned, reminding him of something he’d discovered during waking life.
That’s a wreckers’ tunnel, he thought, remembering what a Port Isaac local had told him. After they plundered a shipwreck, they had to get the spoils off the beach before the militia rode through. And they couldn’t go home, because the soldiers would inspect every dwelling along the shore. So the tunnel led into the cellar of a pub or a church. A place they could hide the goods, and themselves, until the militia gave up and went away.
Those tall gorse bushes had spikes, but he passed through them harmlessly, entering the tunnel. He expected walls of damp earth, studded with rocks and teeming with bugs. Instead, the passage was surprisingly ordinary, with white walls and a lino floor.
Am I inside Belsham Manor now?
The passage ended at steep stairs. Climbing them, he emerged in another place he recognized: All Saints, a Lambeth church he’d frequented during his rotation through St. Thomas Hospital. The congregation was singing “O Sorrow Deep.”
Spying a blonde in a smart black frock, Ben slipped into the pew behind her. When the undertaker asked what Penny ought to be buried in, he’d picked that frock. It was a relic from their brief courtship, when he’d known how to love with abandon.
“Why are you haunting me?”
Penny didn’t turn around. “There was no viewing,” she said, somehow speaking even as she sang. “As for the funeral, it was a paltry affair. My brother didn’t come. Neither did you.”
“I couldn’t stand. I was in too much pain to even sit in a wheelchair.”
“Pity. Did you see what the lorry did to me?”
“No, but I heard the sound. As the wheels… well….”
“Passed over my head. Do you want to see?”
Suddenly he was beside her, looking upon the wreckage of her head and shoulders. The fresh injuries were precisely as he’d imagined. For many the sight would have been unbearable, but Ben knew the flesh was weak in life and weaker still in death. Only saints picked up their decapitated heads and restored them, or lay in their coffins like jewels upon velvet, immune to decay.
“It didn’t hurt.” Just like that, she was restored again, beautiful, never to age another day. “I didn’t have time to be afraid. From a purely selfish standpoint, it was an easy end.”
Relief washed over him. “I’m glad. Truly. I was afraid….”
“Afraid I suffered as much as you used to wish I’d suffer?”
“I didn’t—” he began, then stopped. Maybe he had. Coping with her infidelities had required pushing his emotions down, substituting work for reflection and declaring certain thoughts unthinkable. Banished far beneath the sunlight and green grass of his conscious mind, his resentments had multiplied like grubs in wet earth.
“You’re right.” A weight lifted as he confessed. “Is that why I feel you watching me? Why I smell your perfume?”
Penny cupped his cheek. The stiff black lace of her gloves reminded him of the scratchy ones his grandmother had worn on Sundays. A stern woman, Grandmother Bones had always answered his questions truthfully. Even when he was very young, or when the truth was the last thing he wanted.
Penny asked, “How would you advise a patient who came to you with your symptoms?”
“I’d tell him it was guilt. Part of his bereavement. Something that would fade with time,” Ben said. “And maybe guilt does explain why I feel you’re judging me. Raging at me. For—for—”
“Living?” She kissed him lightly on the lips. “I forgive you.”
Another weight fell away. Then he remembered. “What about the Sous le Vent I smelled in Fitchley Park? That was no figment of my imagination. It was real, I’m sure of it.”
“If you’re sure it was real, then it was. But you already knew that. Goodbye, Ben.” Penny disappeared, taking the congregation with her. Beneath All Saints’ vaulted ceiling, Ben was left standing alone, with the distinct suspicion he’d been alone all along.
* * *
Ben awoke. The dream fled the moment he remembered he was in Belsham Manor, and that unpleasant odor was the featherbed. Had he been dreaming of his old life in London?
Perhaps. For once the memory of those days wasn’t tainted by recriminations. Maybe the cliché he’d spouted to Ethan—“Past is past”—applied to him, too. It was a comforting thought. After dwelling on it briefly, he rolled over, dropping into the bottomless black.
The hill was slick with frost. The ground was already inhospitable, dotted with holes, root tangles, and granite eruptions. He slipped every third step or so, head down, climbing through force of will alone.
At the top of the hill stood a tree which had grown in defiance of prevailing winds. Bent unnaturally, it reminded him of a woman in mid-dance, her head, shoulders, and arms swaying to a savage beat. Far beneath it, a forgotten chieftainess slept, her dreams bloody, her bones encircled by offerings both profound and mundane.
Topping the hill, he saw a woman standing beneath the windswept tree. Though no relic of pre-Roman Britain, her soul was trapped like the chieftainess’s, bound to this world by a convergence of nature and human folly that few in the modern world now understood, or remembered how to undo.
“It’s me,” Ben said when Lucy seemed to look through him. “I’ve come to help you.”
She didn’t answer. Even as a gust of wind rattled the tree branches, her white cotton nightdress hung motionless, hair loose but still.
“Lucy!” He tried to shake her, but his hands passed through her. As they did, a horror swept over him, a fear from the deep place that man shares with beast. What had been a lovely young woman became a corpse, her face cherry red, he
r eyes turned white by hours of sightless staring. She stank of operating theater floors, of pus-soaked bandages, of overflowing bedpans. Ben recoiled.
“No!”
She was gone. Where she’d been there was nothing but a cloud of his own breath, hanging between him and the tree like a ghost’s ghost. The absurdity of that idea made the scene turn on its head, like a kaleidoscope clicking to a new image. Night became day, replacing his terror with serenity.
The hill was spring green, the tree leafy, the sky painted in baby boy blue. Down at the heart of the hill, the chieftainess dreamt of golden wheat and a harvest that would never end. And down where the hill became a field, Lucy was alive and well, on a picnic with a young man.
Simply dressed in an everyday frock and cardigan, her wild curls contained by a chiffon scarf, she was far lovelier than her photo. Lovelier and angrier, judging by the fire in her dark eyes. Snatching up her handbag from the blanket, she issued a curt goodbye to the man lounging beside the wicker hamper. But before she could walk ten steps, he was on his feet, catching her arm and spinning her around.
Hang on. Is that me? Ben wondered.
It wasn’t. He and the man did share a similar build and coloring: brown hair highlighted with ginger, fair skin, blue eyes. But the man’s face was rounder, forehead more prominent, lips pursed like a toddler denied his latest desire.
