The Angel and the Sword

by Sally Wragg

  ‘Soldiers crawling all over the furniture. Men in suits in awkward places and all with prodigious appetites?’

  ‘Something like that!’ She laughed.

  ‘If there’s anything I can do to help? You do look tired; understandably so when you consider all the extra work you’ve had of late, amongst which I include my own presence here, I’m afraid!’

  ‘You mustn’t say that. . . .’ she murmured before, perhaps unforgivably, her attention drifted again, recaptured by Hettie, who was looking so very much as if she was up to something, her mother was bound to sense trouble. Hettie’s slightly strident tones drifted plainly across the sitting room.

  ‘Reverend Payne? Did you know that after the battle of Naseby, it was the gypsies who helped the wounded Alexander Hyssop return to Loxley?’

  Everyone knew of Hettie’s odd fancies, even the vicar. Vaguely amused, the kindly old man gave her unusual question his considered attention. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t heard that, Hettie! It is true, however, that Alexander Hyssop was wounded at Naseby. . . .’

  Before he could warm to his theme, however, the door opened and Soames appeared, hurrying towards Bronwyn with an unusual alacrity. That he was discomposed was clear.

  ‘Your Grace, we have visitors,’ he murmured, quietly.

  At once, a voice rang out, mocking and familiar. ‘Spit it out, man. Even given the house is overrun by soldiers, you know me well enough by now – or at least you ought!’ That voice – that face! Two men had followed the butler into the room, the first of whom caused Bronwyn’s heart to constrict.

  She’d been expecting him. Indeed, had made up her mind: if he hadn’t turned up, then she would have gone to find him. It was so very long since she’d seen him and yet, he hadn’t changed at all. She put down her cup and stood up, in the circumstances holding out a hand that was remarkably steady.

  ‘Reuben. How wonderful to see you,’ she said, quietly.

  Afterwards, she was unsure how matters were arranged so satisfactorily other than that Roland must have picked up on what could have been an awkward situation. Shortly, Hettie was dispensed with Reuben’s companion, Lewis, ostensibly to show him round the grounds, whilst Roland and Lawrence Payne were headed tactfully into the library, intent on seeking out manuscripts concerning the seventh Duke which Bronwyn had earlier invited Roland to browse through at his leisure. She was left alone with Reuben, who seated himself across from her unasked, his fierce, inscrutable gaze fixed on hers.

  ‘It’s good to see you,’ she murmured, gathering her wits.

  ‘It’s good to see you too, Bron,’ he responded but with such warmth, she was both surprised and touched. The years between melted as if they’d never been. Reuben, with whom she’d always felt an affinity. Kindred spirits, they’d both had their troubles living here on the estate, their lives, down in some measure to Katherine, made more difficult than they ought to have been.

  ‘Katherine not in?’

  ‘She’s at a meeting.’

  ‘She’ll be sorry to have missed me.’

  His tone was mocking but Bronwyn ignored it. She had too much to tell him. ‘I wanted so much to let you know about Harry,’ she began. ‘He was your brother, after all, Reuben. You had a right to know. I’d no idea how to get in touch with you. . . .’

  ‘His death made the papers, even in Germany. I am sorry, Bronwyn, about Harry. . . .’

  ‘You shouldn’t have had to find out like that!’ she insisted, sadly, aware even now how unfair Reuben’s growing-up years had been, leaving him a part of this family and yet, perversely, nothing to it at all. ‘Why did you run away, Reuben? And then to stay away and never send word! You might have known we had a need of you.’

  He shifted uneasily. ‘I came back for the funeral. But do you imagine Katherine would have wanted to see me?’

  They both knew the answer to this. Better to do what he’d done, which was to disappear quietly after it rather than, at such a time, being left to tangle with Katherine, raking over old sores thereby. With an ease which took her by surprise, he moved the conversation to safer ground. ‘Your daughter’s a fine lass. . . .’ he said.

  ‘Your niece, Reuben,’ she urged him.

  ‘Aye, she has a look of Harry about her.’ His flashing smile, a rare happening she remembered now, too quickly faded. ‘And have you told her about me?’ he asked, seeing at once by her expression that was the last thing she’d done. His face clouded angrily. ‘But wasn’t it always thus!’ he muttered. ‘Family but not family, as if I’m a bad secret to be swept out of sight!’

  She couldn’t have summed it up better but the conversation had taken a wrong turn and in a way she’d never intended. Something else that tended to happen around Reuben, she remembered now. He’d always been a man who believed in stating fact as fact. ‘I can’t speak for Katherine of course but I do mean to tell her, Reuben, when the time’s right. You surely must understand why?’ she responded, quietly. ‘Don’t let’s fall out over it and certainly not when you’ve only just got here! Tell me everything that’s happened to you. . . . Hettie tells me you’re a successful artist. But that’s absolutely wonderful!’ She was talking too quickly, trying to smooth the situation over and yet genuinely interested in how he’d managed to turn his life around. Thankfully, he’d relaxed, stretching his long legs out before him and regarding her thoughtfully.

  ‘How do these things happen?’ he mused. ‘I was in the right place at the right time, I expect. After I left here, all those years after the war, I travelled. Greece, Italy, Prague, landing in Berlin when the money ran out and surviving on my wits doing odd jobs for a local artist I chanced to meet. He gave me a roof over my head and, better still as far as I was concerned, he taught me how to paint. My life . . . took off.’

  He made it sound so easy and yet, how could it have been?

  ‘And the boy with you today? He has a look of you about him, Reuben.’

  Reuben shook his head. ‘If so, it’s accidental. He’s my aunt’s stepson. I stayed on in England after Harry’s funeral and took the trouble to look her up, my one surviving relative from my mother’s side. She’d recently lost her husband and was having trouble with the lad. I took him back to Berlin to help her out more than anything.’

  Bronwyn smiled faintly. She’d never thought of Reuben as a mentor. The day continued full of surprises. ‘That was good of you, Reuben,’ she ventured.

  ‘Aye, it was,’ he agreed, complacent and, anger apparently forgotten, relaxed back in his chair. Some things never changed, she mused and Reuben’s mercurial mood swings was one of them. A troublesome man and yet she was more pleased to see him than she would have believed. A connection with Harry even he couldn’t deny. Suddenly it didn’t matter what Katherine would say when she got back and found him here.

  ‘You will stay, a while at least?’ she burst out impulsively. She hardly knew what she expected in reply but she was surprised at his flashing laugh of delight.

  ‘Aye, Bronwyn Loxley! If you want me to stay, I will and gladly. . . .’

  ‘Did you know your uncle was once gamekeeper on this estate, Lewis?’ Hettie demanded as she led the way across the bridge under which swirled the deep and omnipresent Lox. Behind them lay the New Hall, before, the crumbling ruins of the old, reaching brokenly into the slate-grey sky. The rain, which had been threatening all day, continued to hold off. She glanced up anxiously.

  ‘I knew he’d been a gamekeeper here once,’ Lewis answered carefully, remaining annoyingly unimpressed with all she’d shown him so far.

  ‘But it’s a coincidence, don’t you agree?’ she persisted. ‘I can see now where the portrait of my mother came in but it’s odd we met as we did in Venice and never realized the connection.’

  ‘I dunno, is it?’ His words were offhand but said with such a glint in his eyes, she wondered if he was teasing her. She frowned. Even knowing what she now did concerning the circumstances of Alex Windrow’s portrait of her mother, there was still somethi
ng about it which disturbed her.

  Leaping nimbly amongst the fallen masonry, she headed them under the crumbling archway and into what once had been Loxley Old Hall’s cavernous entrance; now a mass of broken and lichen-covered stone, strewn haphazardly around empty, gaping windows and doorways. An oppressive, unearthly place which should have given her the shivers and yet oddly never did. ‘They used to say this place was haunted by Nell, the first Duchess of Loxley,’ she said, meaning to shock him and disappointed when it elicited so little response.

  ‘I don’t believe in ghosts,’ he answered, annoyingly.

  Unsure why she felt the need, Hettie searched for something else with which to impress him. He unsettled her and though their acquaintance might be slight, he had from the first moment she’d ever seen him. ‘You can reach the New Hall from here through a secret passageway,’ she blurted out, the first thing that came into her head. ‘I’ll take you through it someday, if you’d like? It emerges in the fireplace in the hall, there’s a concealed door here somewhere. Amazing, isn’t it, to think no one knew of its existence for years and years. . . .’

  For the first time since he’d arrived, Lewis appeared interested. Acknowledging it with a small stab of satisfaction, Hettie began to feel her way around the crumbling masonry surrounding the area once obviously the fireplace. ‘It’s here, somewhere!’ she exclaimed, turning back suddenly and, Lewis meanwhile having moved closer, discovering him too near for comfort. He was invading her space, gazing down at her with his mocking gaze so she wondered what he was thinking. And then she had the most distracting thought that he was about to kiss her and wondered, vaguely, what she’d do if he did. From its vantage point in one of the gaping windows, a crow cawed mockingly.

  ‘What are you up to?’ The voice, so full of accusation and arriving so unexpectedly, exploded into Hettie’s consciousness, jolting her thoughts and bringing her crashing back to reality. She blushed, stepping back quickly, as she should have done in the first place, she realized belatedly, and looked round to see Bill, framed in the doorway. He was scowling. But after the way he’d treated her of late, making it plain he preferred his new friends at college to spending time with her, he had no right to look at her the way he was looking at her right now. Her indignation grew.

  ‘I’m not up to anything!’ she responded hotly.

  ‘Aren’t you going to introduce us?’ he demanded, his gaze shifting angrily to Lewis.

  There was little alternative, unless she meant to be rude. Wistfully, Hettie wished things were back to normal and she and Bill were the good friends they’d always been. She smiled doggedly.

  ‘Oh . . . um . . . Lewis, this is my old friend, Bill; Bill, this is Lewis who works for the man who used to be the gamekeeper here, until he moved abroad and became an artist. He’s painted a portrait of Mother. Oh, you ought to see it, Bill, it’s simply spiffing!’ She stood back, aware that, in her nervousness, she’d said more than she’d intended, relieved when, albeit ungraciously, the two boys shook hands. By common consent, the secret passageway apparently forgotten, the little party began to make its way back through the ruins towards the road and the bridge. A silence had fallen no one seemed to know how to break.

  ‘I saw you from the road,’ Bill proffered, begrudgingly, at last.

  ‘You were coming to see me?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ he returned, colouring up, so Hettie guessed he wanted to say more and couldn’t because of Lewis. Vainly, she searched for a topic that might shift the conversation onto more palatable ground.

  ‘What do you reckon to the gypsies camping on Freddie Hamilton’s land?’

  ‘What about them? They’re only gypsies after all!’

  ‘But don’t you think gypsies are fascinating and rather romantic?’

  ‘Hardly, Het. . . .’ he answered, regarding her pityingly.

  ‘I saw their caravans when we arrived. . . . Have you been to see them yet?’ Lewis asked, flashing Hettie such a warm smile, she couldn’t help but smile back.

  ‘I have, actually. . . .’ she agreed happily. Lewis, it appeared, understood exactly why she should find the presence of gypsies, in such close proximity to Loxley land, so exciting. They were exotic and unpredictable and out of the ordinary to everything else that went off around the estate.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind having my fortune told!’ Lewis chuckled. ‘Why don’t we visit their camp? Now, if you’d like?’

  Someone after her own heart it appeared, unlike Bill, who stood glaring at Lewis as if he’d suggested they should fly to the moon and back. Hettie would have gone too, like a shot if only a little nagging conscience hadn’t reminded her that, unfortunately, duty called. She sighed. Duty always stopped her from doing what she wanted.

  ‘I have to go home to change for dinner or Grandmother will be after me, I’m afraid. . . .’

  ‘After dinner, then,’ he persisted.

  ‘But it’ll be dark!’ she responded, indignantly.

  ‘So?’ A slow smile crossed his face and again she caught a flash of mocking humour. The most irritating boy she’d ever met and yet. . . . Hettie had never visited the gypsy camp at night and she was recalling now the oddly seductive strains of music she’d heard the night before when she’d gone to shut her bedroom window. Hearing it, so unexpectedly, throbbing into the darkness, somehow it had moved her, so she’d found her body swaying with the beat. She’d stayed listening, left wanting to hear even more.

  ‘Alright, let’s do exactly that!’ she responded recklessly, ignoring Bill’s snort of disbelief.

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Het,’ he said, at once.

  Hettie glared. Since when had Bill appointed himself her conscience? His attitude only goaded her and he should have known better. ‘It isn’t stupid! What’s wrong with the idea?’

  ‘Why don’t you come too?’ Lewis taunted, looking directly at Bill. ‘You daren’t, dare you! Hah! I bet you’re scared!’

  ‘Say that again, if you dare!’

  Suddenly, dislike had turned to aggression. Before Hettie could stop them, the two boys were squaring up to each other so she hardly knew what would have happened if, at that moment, a car hadn’t appeared from the direction of the hall and pulled up on the bridge in front of them.

  Reuben Fairfax climbed out of his car, frowning at the scene confronting him, the two boys looking as if they’d like to knock seven bells out of each other and this girl here, Bronwyn’s daughter, his brother’s child, with obviously no idea what she ought to do to stop them.

  It had been some day. The visit to the hall, his childhood haunt, worse, seeing Bronwyn again and instantly, every single emotion from which he’d run away returning with the force of a blow. He loved her; he’d always love her and what a crazy fool he’d been to imagine he’d long since put those feelings behind him. You couldn’t run away from love and, as if his subconscious had been aware of it all along, he supposed that was what had eventually brought him back here, the one place in the world he should have avoided like the plague.

  ‘What’s going off?’ he barked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Lewis returned, stepping back from Bill and kicking out moodily at a loose stone in the road.

  ‘Get back in the car. . . .’ Reuben’s words were directed at Lewis but his gaze was still centred on Hettie, softening at the sight of her. Despite everything Bronwyn had said, he found himself longing to tell her the true nature of their relationship, that she need never worry about anything again because he’d always look out for her and keep her safe. He owed Harry that much at least! The fact she looked perfectly capable of looking after herself only somehow amused him. ‘You’d best get off home,’ he murmured, gently for him so, as if aware of it, she shot him a curious glance.

  ‘I’ll see you, later,’ Lewis called to her, before trailing reluctantly round to the passenger side and getting into the car. Reuben climbed into the driving seat and started the car, circumnavigating the pair left on the bridge and driving quickly away. ‘What was that
about?’ he demanded curtly.

  ‘Something and nothing,’ Lewis returned, his shoulders lifting into an indifferent shrug.

  ‘You behave yourself, my lad or else. . . .’ Reuben’s voice trailed away. Why hadn’t he realized he couldn’t face Bron and not feel for her exactly what he’d felt before? What a blithering idiot not to realize exactly what had brought him back here!

  He drove only a short distance before impulsively pulling up onto the verge which ran alongside what had once been a path leading down into the wood and was now long since overgrown.

  ‘Wait here,’ he muttered to Lewis before climbing out. His heart was hammering against its ribcage, his head full of what had happened in his past life here. Instinct led him on, beating a way through the tangle of undergrowth where once had been the path, guiding his way against the darkness of trees and tangled undergrowth, ploughing on regardless until he was out of breath. All at once, oddly shocking him, as if he’d hoped it only an obscure memory, he came upon a glade and a cottage, sadly fallen into a state of disrepair. The sight made him gasp out loud. His hand rose, massaging his chest as if against a pain. Part of the roof was fallen in, the windows were gone, dark, gaping holes mocking him, from which the swallows swooped and dived. He stopped, unsure whether to venture further forward and wondering now why he’d come here, tormenting himself. Odd to think he’d once been happy here; content to let his life drift in perfect anonymity. What had driven him to leave, worse, to spend the rest of his life running away from an emotion he couldn’t outdistance, no matter how hard he tried?

  He should never have come back and yet he knew he could never have kept away. The knowledge tore from him so he swung smartly round, blundering the distance back up through the trees to the car, his frown of discontent changing in its chameleon like way into one of perplexity to discover that Lewis, confound the lad, had taken advantage of his absence and disappeared.

  Hettie returned to the hall in a rush. She was thrilled about the evening before her and yet she was unsure now whether Bill, who’d gone off in such an odd mood, would participate in the adventure or not. So far apart had they grown of late, she’d believe him only when he turned up; it wouldn’t even surprise her if he meant to tell her mother and spoil all their plans.