Island of Bones caw-3

by Imogen Robertson

  ‘Swithun?’ She heard his feet shifting outside, and the sounds of him sitting down. It seemed as if he was leaning against the barricade.

  ‘It weren’t my idea, Agnes. I never meant you harm, though you’ve never been nice to me.’

  She sighed and sat down on the earth floor, leaning against the wooden planks herself. There was light and home and air on the other side, where he was looking and sounding all pitying of himself In front of her only damp and dark. ‘Why should I be? I know you are like your da. Nothing but nasty from you every day I’ve known you. Folks are looking for me, Swithun. They’ll find me, too — then if you think people hated you and yours before. .’

  He was quiet a while. ‘They are looking in the wrong place. You normally do your wanderings down into Borrowdale, along that shore — everyone knows that.’ It was true. The thought of her father and friends walking her roads, fearing for her, made her eyes hot. She was working so hard on not crying at the thought that she hardly heard him say, ‘Good that they are. You’d be dead, otherwise.’

  ‘What’s your meaning, Swithun?’ She heard a rattle; he was picking up pebbles and throwing them at the wall.

  ‘Me and my da have a thing to do, and when we’re done we are going to be rich. Soon as we have the money we’ll be out of this stinking hole and away. When we’re clear we’ll send word where you are. That was my idea. He just wanted me and Da to kill you dead, and he said if anyone came sniffing round here before it’s done, I’m to hit you over the head with a rock.’

  She scrambled up onto her knees and tried to look through the chink between the boards behind her. ‘Who said, Swithun? What you playing at?’

  ‘Never you mind.’

  ‘Was it your da you were with? Beating on Casper?’ Silence. ‘Did you kill him?’

  The answer came quick. ‘No, no. He’s powerful angry though. But Sturgess is chasing him for killing that German fella, so he’s gone away.’

  ‘What German?’

  Silence. Then, ‘Laker’s been killed. His girl’s at the vicarage. She’s pretty, not as pretty as you though, Agnes.’

  ‘Was that your work?’

  He sounded shocked when he replied. ‘No! I’d never! No business of ours. Maybe Casper did for him. I saw him out walking with the daughter. Maybe he’s going to marry her and go off and be a gentleman.’ He sniggered. ‘Your da said he’s going to that witch woman in Rosthwaite for a finding spell, as Casper’s gone. Though everyone knows she’s half daft. Casper didn’t go before he scared my ma to death though.’

  ‘That’s no hardship,’ she said bitterly. ‘Your ma’s a bully and coward just like you are, and your dad.’ She heard the noise of him scrambling to his feet again.

  ‘Don’t be like that, Agnes! Didn’t mean you any harm! What you have to come charging in for anyway? I told you he said to us to stove your head in. It was only because we told him you were Casper’s ’prentice he let you live. Then he said to put you in here and seal it up. Said he might have a use for you. Said we’d be able to send word when we were paid, and I will, Agnes. I promise. I like you.’ His voice had become wheedling and soft.

  ‘Who?’ Agnes felt a little sick; she’d sensed his eyes follow her enough times, and just the touch of them was enough to make her skin crawl. ‘Who you talking about, Swithun? And why did you say I’m Casper’s apprentice when I’m no such thing.’

  ‘Not saying, Agnes. Won’t say. He’d do for me.’ She felt his thin weaselly body lean on the wood. ‘Casper’s been standing over your shoulder since you were born. He knows you are a witch at heart. Everyone knows it too ’cept you. You magic men towards you, and curse them if they turn away.’ She heard him shuffle round, and when he spoke again his voice was so close she knew it was only the thickness of the wood between them. ‘When he comes, Agnes, tell him something useful. Tell him where it is. We couldn’t find it at the Black Pig. He’s worried Casper’s given it to someone to keep. Thinks maybe as you’re his apprentice, you’ll know. Tell him something, Agnes. Or he’ll kill you. He needs it. He wants it, then he’ll pay us and be gone again.’ Agnes felt the blood dancing in her brain. ‘I know you haven’t got it.’ His voice became soft. ‘Da let me make sure of that myself, while you were sleeping.’

  Agnes tasted her empty stomach in her mouth, gritted her teeth, then turned again and put her back to the gate. ‘I’m hungry, Swithun. Real hungry and my water’s almost gone.’

  ‘I’m not supposed to give you owt. So that when he comes you’ll be wanting to talk. My da would kill me himself if he knew I was here.’

  She swallowed and tried to speak slowly. ‘Maybe you are brave then, Swithun. Just some water and a crumb — I won’t tell. Honest. You’ve brought me something, haven’t you? I know it.’ She waited in the dark, trying to hear him breathe over the sound of her own heart.

  ‘All right then, where’s your bottle?’

  She pulled it to her. ‘Here, you’ll just have to open the barricade a little. I shan’t run.’

  He laughed. ‘I’m not that stupid. There’s a little bit comes away here. I’ll open that and you pass it out.’

  She heard him scramble up and the sound of a nail being pulled, then a little bit of wood a foot or so long and halfway up the barrier came free and light tumbled in. Still faint though, so the barricade must be set back a fair way from the entrance. There must have been a gap in the old barn door they’d used to block the tunnel, and another plank had been tacked on as a patch. ‘Come on then.’

  Half-stupid, she passed up the bottle. His hand grabbed it away from her. There was a moment of silence, then something was tossed through the gap and landed at her side. She didn’t move, then heard the sound of liquid being poured from one vessel to another.

  ‘Fill it right up, Swithun. And stopper it tight, won’t you? My hands are tied and if I drop it and it spills, I shall go mad with it.’

  ‘Wisht, will you? I have.’ She heard the top go in. ‘You ready?’

  She was. The moment his hand appeared, she grabbed hold of his wrist with both her hands and pulled with all her strength. He yelled and she felt his body slam into the barricade.

  ‘Let me go, you bitch!’

  ‘I wasn’t sleeping! Knocking me senseless is the only way you’d touch me, dog.’

  It must be hurting him. He was whining and struggling. She carried on pulling down as hard as she could. She aimed the flint she had palmed in one hand and ran it hard as she could down the length of his arm. He screamed like a rabbit in a snare. He gave a vicious wrench back and she stumbled; the arm writhed between her hands and her shoulder slammed against the barricade. She heard the cloth of his shirt rip and her grip fumbled. His other hand scrambled through the gap, she felt him grab a fistful of her hair and he pulled on it hard. Her head was yanked back, making her scream, and she lost her hold. The arm was out of the hole quicker than a snake heads under a rock. She fell to her knees, panting.

  ‘You bitch! You hurt me! What did you want to do that for?’ She closed her eyes in the darkness. ‘I don’t care if you rot. No one’s going to find you. I’ll never send word now. You’re dead, you little witch.’

  Her voice came from somewhere low within her. ‘I’d rather rot than have any cause to thank you, Swithun Fowler, but before I die I’m going to curse you and your da with the worst words I know. You’re as dead as I am. You just don’t know it yet.’

  She heard him get to his feet and his sudden gasp. She had scared him. ‘Witch! Agnes Kerrick, all very fine and your daddy with his little farm. All very neat and nice, aren’t you? But you’re just a dirty stinking witch.’ His voice sounded as if he was crying a bit as he finished. Good — let him cry! Then she heard his feet running back out towards the light.

  She stayed where she was for a moment, then with a groan began to feel around the floor beside her. Her fingers touched the bread first. She tucked it under an arm, then crawled round again, her fingers shaking and sore, till she found the bottle. Stoppe
red. Full. She turned her back to the barricade again and tried to calm herself a little before taking her first bite of the bread, but still when she tore off the first mouthful and brought it to her lips her hand was shaking so hard she could hardly place it in her mouth. She had plenty enough to think on now.

  IV.5

  When Crowther saw Harriet enter the private parlour above the coaching inn in Cockermouth where the horses and their riders were to be refreshed for the ride home, he was nothing but angry. His visit to the bankers in Cockermouth had been a farce. There were no ancient clerks conveniently available to recall his father’s depositing money there over sixty years previously. The banker who had remarked on the greasy notes to Mr Leathes was long dead, and had taken his speculations with him. Crowther had been embarrassed by the banker’s combination of deference and confusion. The money could have come from anywhere, and he had wasted the better part of the day pursuing it. For this, he blamed Harriet. He would have written and then at least have been spared those curious looks and reasonable, but unanswerable questions, but Mrs Westerman had the bit between her teeth. He did not understand how he allowed her to sweep him away in these cases, against all judgement and his own self-interest.

  The only advantage that this absence from Keswick offered was the opportunity it gave his nephew to flee. What matter his arrows were clean? No stranger or common footpad would have been able to come close enough to Mr Hurst to strike the blow. Could it have been fired from a distance? Possibly, but Mr Hurst would have had to contort himself considerably for an arrow to pierce him at such an angle if fired from a bow. Crowther shook his head. He had almost allowed himself to believe Felix’s protestations of innocence. He suspected he had had some romantic notion that by saving this boy he might make amends for failing Adair. He had always been suspicious of such ideas, and once more felt he was right to be so. For the most part he had observed that men killed their friends and their families first. Mr Hurst had only one old acquaintance in town — Felix — ergo Felix had most likely killed him.

  Crowther paused for a moment and examined the air above him, considering Miss Hurst. The daughter obviously had reasons to hate her father. Suppose the wound had been caused by a crochet hook or something like it? His brow furrowed again. It would have been narrower, and even if she had had the good fortune and strength to kill him, there was no possible way she could drag his body into a mine entrance and cover it with a rockpile.

  Instead of ameliorating his guilt, he had simply added to it. He had allowed an innocent man to hang thirty years ago, and now he was encouraging a guilty man to go free. He was adding further gothic horrors to his own history, and had found that his only memento of his father was a murder weapon; he had failed to identify the corpse in the tomb, and to complete matters had made himself ridiculous in front of his bankers. Now here came Mrs Westerman. She had made no apparent effort to tidy her appearance, and despite announcing her visit to the solicitors to have been entirely wasted, had the sheer effrontery to look as if she had just produced a winning lottery ticket from her cuff.

  As if she could hear the thoughts running in his head, she reached into her pocket and brought something out from it, her fist closed.

  ‘I wonder if you can guess what I have here?’ Either she had failed to sense his mood entirely, or, more likely, it was simply unimportant to her. He looked up at her from his seat by the window.

  ‘I fear you mistake me for one of your children, Mrs Westerman.’ She gave a small sigh and opened her hand. He looked. ‘A pocket-watch.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, sweeping out her skirts as she settled into the other arch of the windowseat. ‘I saw it in a shop window as I returned from that appalling little solicitor, and it has lightened my mood considerably.’

  Crowther turned away to glower at the cobbles outside. A small boy looked up at him from the yard, and seeing his expression retreated further into his mother’s skirts.

  ‘I am delighted that this town has provided you with an opportunity to spend your pin money. The day has not been wasted, then.’

  There was a long pause, and it was with a creeping sense of uneasiness that Crowther turned to face Mrs Westerman again.

  ‘This, my lord, is your nephew’s watch.’

  ‘I don’t understand you,’ Crowther replied, but his tone was rather more careful.

  ‘Perhaps not, Crowther, but if you can resist frightening any more of the children of the town for a moment, I will explain to you.’ He waited, and after a pause she continued in slightly less clipped tones. ‘As I say, I noticed it, recognised it and asked to speak to the owner of the shop. I then told him, a little tearfully, that it was my late father’s and my brother had sold it to cover a gaming debt and begged him to let me purchase it again.’

  ‘He actually believed you to be Felix’s sister?’ Crowther then came as near to biting his tongue at this point as he had in the last thirty years.

  ‘Yes. He was most sympathetic,’ she replied neatly. ‘He suggested a price, I was shocked and said my brother had told me he had got only thirty shillings for it. He was sorry to see me so deceived by this wicked youth, and fetched his account book to show me that the price Felix received for the watch was three pounds and ten shillings. I paid three pounds twelve shillings with a trembling hand, hoping my husband would not blame me for the expense, and we parted with mutual expressions of regard.’

  ‘Mr Leathes already told us that Felix wanted to sell his watch,’ Crowther said a little sulkily, then the significance of the amount came to him and he continued, ‘My apologies, Mrs Westerman. Three pounds and ten shillings. Mr Hurst had three pounds and fifteen shillings on his person.’

  She smiled. ‘Indeed, the sums are too alike. And why would Felix give every penny he had over to Mr Hurst and then kill him? Even if he were driven to it, he would not leave his last coins on the corpse. If there was time to conceal the body, there would have been plenty to search it. Also consider this, Crowther. Mr Hurst obviously had no time to spend the money and, given his landlord was pressing him to settle his account, we must assume that he was murdered shortly after he received it. Though I cannot like him greatly, I do not think your nephew a murderer. You may escape assassination yet.’ She paused and swung the watch from side to side. ‘At least, I think it less likely you will be killed for your money. Your manners will always leave you in some danger.’ Then, before he could speak: ‘I do suspect Felix may have been the last person other than his killer to see Mr Hurst alive though. We shall talk to him this evening. At least we know he has not the blunt to eat anywhere other than at Silverside Hall.’

  Harriet had been enjoying herself watching the glint of the silver watchcase and was now ready to receive Crowther’s congratulations. He was silent and she looked up. To her surprise he was bent forward with his head low, supporting his forehead with his hand. She reached across the space between them and placed her hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Crowther?’

  He reached up his own hand, keeping his head hanging forward and she felt his fingers brush brief and dry on her own.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Westerman.’ He sighed and straightened his back, then passed his hand over his eyes. ‘I am most impressed by your ability to recognise the watch. I did not observe it.’

  Harriet felt a blush warm her cheeks. ‘I was considering a watch as a present to Daniel Clode to mark his engagement to Rachel, and I noticed Felix’s the day we arrived, as I thought it might be just the thing Clode would like.’

  The dinner-hour was long passed when they returned to Silverside. Harriet could only comfort herself she had sent word before leaving for Cockermouth that they would not join the rest of the party that evening. Felix was not in the house. The Vizegrafin informed them that her son had decided to experience the delights of the waterfalls at Lodore at dusk. Crowther retired to the old brewery and disappointed, Harriet made for the comfort of her private sitting room.

  On her way upstairs she entered her so
n’s rooms and found him and Mr Quince going over his Greek translation. Mr Quince still looked unwell but he was, Harriet thought, showing signs of recovery. The fact that he felt himself equal to instructing her son must demonstrate it. Mr Quince smiled, and told her that Stephen had been a delightful companion to him all afternoon, and Harriet closed the door on them wishing them a good night. She was not certain if she was pleased her son had chosen to stay close to home, as she was sure she should be, or slightly disappointed that he had not spent the whole day ranging over the hills with Casper, searching for the missing Agnes. She pushed open the door to her room wondering if it showed a lack of spirit on Stephen’s part, and condemned herself for the thought.

  She took a seat at her desk to start a letter to her sister and, having made her pen and twisted her mourning ring, began by asking Rachel for news of her daughter. She wondered if little Anne were sleeping peacefully in the nursery at Thornleigh Hall. To think of her youngest child was like pressing on some fresh bruise in her side. She thought of the look of fierce concentration her daughter so often had as she dreamed, the way her small hands became fists. What sort of mother might she make? What sort of wife, what manner of sister to the gentle boy bent over his Greek a little way along the corridor?

  Harriet bit her lip. She could not unmake herself, and she could not regret that she had lived a life out of the normal pattern, but she feared what Anne and she might make of each other as the child grew. Harriet was afraid her daughter would become a stranger to her if she lived a conventional existence as a respectable wife and mother, but if she followed Harriet’s path she would risk the censure of society and make herself as vulnerable to harm as an adult as she was now as an infant. Harriet would be forced to watch that happen, and blame herself.

  Some hour or so later, Mrs Briggs came to join her in her rooms. Harriet had been trying to write to her sister words that were honest, but that would not alarm or enrage Rachel unduly. She found herself concentrating on giving an account of their speculations as to the history of Crowther’s father, but the whole was still so confused she more than once dropped her pen mid-sentence and folded her arms. The interruption was welcome therefore, but seeing Mrs Briggs’s face at her door made Harriet realise she had once again deserted the poor woman to the Vizegrafin. Her mind was already full of guilty whisperings about her behaviour and fitness as a mother as she wrote to Rachel, so Harriet felt herself in a holly-patch of discomforting emotions. She was very glad then, to see no sign of reproach on the face of her hostess.