Island of Bones caw-3

by Imogen Robertson

  Holding her breath, she inched closer to the hinge of the door, and put an eye to it. Sir William seemed to be looking directly at her, but she managed to fight the desire to flee. No, he was examining the jewels in the candlelight. His face looked set and heavy as he turned a diamond that looked to Lottie the size of a plover’s egg in his fingers. Sharply, he set it down again and drew a little leather purse from a drawer of the desk. Then, one at a time, he placed the jewels within it. Lottie lifted herself on her toes; she could see the Luck itself, naked and golden, its surface full of ridges and hollows. Where the chisel had caught, it was scarred with short lines of brighter metal. Sir William put the purse back into his pocket, and picked up the cross. For a moment he looked around him, then with sudden decision took up his candle and stepped towards the door.

  Lottie swung back into the shadows, flattening her spine into the wall and closing her eyes. Sir William did not look round but went straight to the front door, and from his candle lit the lamp that always hung ready in the hall. He pulled the bolts free and stepped out quickly into the night. Lottie gathered up her skirts and followed him. He had not pulled the door to behind him. She closed her eyes for a moment, and said her prayers, then followed.

  The light of the lantern bobbed down the path to the edge of the lake. She kept to the shadows, stooped over and moving as quietly as she could. It was a dark night. Hardly a thread of moon, and that part obscured by cloud, and everything painted in dark greys. The path was silent under her and seemed to carry her forward.

  Sir William stopped at the lakeshore, then she watched his light bob along the shingle, moving away from the path as she did so, but keeping him in sight. Lottie felt a touch on her shoulder and turned. Ruben was crouched beside her.

  ‘He has it? I could not tell.’ An owl cried out from the Island of Bones.

  ‘He does,’ she said as quietly as she could.

  Sir William seemed to hesitate a moment. Then he reached into his pocket. A low winding wind shook the trees above them, and the clouds stepped away to let the thin moonlight fall on the man at the edge of the water. He took his hand from his pocket, drew back his arm, and threw. The light caught the Luck like a shooting star. It fell, and the waters swallowed it with a ripple. Lottie felt Ruben’s fingers squeeze on her shoulder, he was as rigid as a pointer. Sir William waited until the disturbance on the surface had died away into the steady blackness of the water, then turned and made his way up towards the house. He passed so close to them Lottie could have reached out and touched him.

  ‘What are we. .?’

  ‘Shh!’ Ruben said, his eyes still fixed on the surface of the lake. They heard the door to the house close in the distance, and the scrape of the bolts in the locks slipped down the slope of the path towards them.

  Ruben stood up and walked across the shingle to the place where Sir William had stood. Lottie looked around, then hurried along after him. As soon as he reached the spot he began to undress, dropping his clothes on the grey stones, his eyes still fixed on the surface of the water like a man called to the rocks by the Sirens. Lottie turned away, and heard the gentle splash and gurgle of the water as he stepped in. When she turned back he was up to his waist, his white shift making him look like the ghost of a drowned man. As the water reached his shoulders he lifted his arms up into the air, then descended into the darkness. Lottie shivered and watched the spot where he had disappeared. The owl called again, and the surface of the lake settled as if Ruben had never been.

  Lottie took a few steps forward, her hand held out. The cold waters met around her ankles icy and gripping. She could feel tears coming into her eyes.

  ‘Ruben?’ she called, her voice a whisper, rising. Her teeth began to chatter. ‘Ruben?’

  The surface broke. He half-swam, half-waded towards her, finally falling on his knees in the shallows. She splashed towards him, put her hands under his arms and began to haul him in. He panted and crawled with her up among the reeds, then collapsed onto his back. Lottie turned to look for his coat. His skin looked blue in the moonlight. She felt his hand grip her ankle; she turned back to him. He laughed softly at her, then lifted his right arm. The Luck. Scarred and dripping, it was held gleaming in his hand.

  She reached for his coat and he sat up to let her sling it round his shoulders, then she crouched down beside him.

  ‘He hurt himself, Sir William I mean, prying out the stones,’ she said, after a little while.

  ‘That I saw,’ Ruben said, staring down at the Luck cradled in his broad dark hands. ‘First bite the Luck has taken from him, and I doubt it’ll be the last.’ He traced the marks where the stones had sat.

  ‘What wilt thou do with it, Ruben?’

  ‘When I can get away she and I will walk the old ways together, Lottie, and rest together between the Druid’s stones. Then I shall hide her, till we need her in dark times, and protect her as we may. This air is hers, this water and these hills and here the Luck will abide.’

  EPILOGUE

  As soon as Casper thought it safe, Crowther was returned to Silverside. The Vizegrafin had insisted, in spite of her brother’s advice, that Felix would be treated by a qualified surgeon. The latter rode over to Silverside from Cockermouth every day at great expense, but did not slow Felix’s recovery too greatly. Swithun survived three days in the old housekeeper’s room at Silverside Hall, but the wound began to stink. Casper brought his mother to him, and tried to ease him as far as his arts were able, but there was nothing much that could be done. He did live to see and know Agnes, however, who was brought to him at his request. He asked her forgiveness, received it, and it was thought that gave him some comfort. The night before the ravings took him at last, he caught at Casper’s wrist.

  ‘You warned me. I know that.’

  It was all he could manage. Casper left for his bed, leaving him to his mother’s care and grief. When the morning came Casper thought he could feel the haze beginning to lift; the air was fresher somehow. It did not surprise him then to find Swithun dead and laid out with his jaw tied, pennies on his eyes and salt on his chest. His mother was gone and they had no word of her again.

  By the time Crowther was becoming impatient of his confinement, Harriet wanted nothing more than to retreat to her own room and never venture out again. She had found herself repeating the events of the past few days in front of the coroner and in public for some hours. Then there were a number of burials, ancient and modern, to attend. She could feel the hostility of the gentry who flocked to see her, and there was talk that a woman who had shot and killed the local magistrate should face judge and jury. Not among the people though.

  The quiet and dignified testimony of Miss Hurst, as she was still referred to, Ham, and Agnes Kerrick did much to quiet this talk. Mr Sturgess’s false identity was exposed, and when Harriet entered the coroner’s court with no less a personage than Viscount Moreland at her side, who explained very frankly about the murder of his natural son in Europe, the gentry busied itself remembering they had never liked Mr Sturgess at all. Mr Palmer’s letter arrived just when it was needed, covered in enough seals to frighten the local authorities and put weight behind Mrs Westerman’s apparently wild assertions. The letter was subscribed with the signature and flowing titles of the First Lord of the Admiralty; Mr Palmer’s name did not appear on it. Miss Scales and Mrs Briggs remained by Harriet’s side whenever she went into public, and if the distrust of Harriet or the threats to her did not entirely disappear for some weeks, they were at least reduced to whispers. Even the vicar took the opportunity to support her from the pulpit, and although she suspected that his daughter wrote that portion of the sermon, Harriet was grateful to him.

  Strangely, there never seemed to be any question of trying Mr Quince over the death of Isaac Fowler. Each such story requires a hero, and as Harriet was still regarded as rather dubious, and Crowther was too tainted by the crimes of his parent, Mr Quince became their chosen one. He found himself in front of the coroner too, and felt
he was being egregiously thanked for shooting a man in the back. He resisted the charge of heroism as much as he could, and was made rather miserable by it. Where Harriet was heard with cold suspicion, he was warmly embraced. Harriet was too grateful to him, and too tired to resent it in any way. She laughed at him for looking guiltily at her, and doing so made her feel better in herself. After some controversy, Mr Sturgess’s remains were placed in the Greta family tomb, and Kit Huntsman’s bones found a place near the family he had served. Stephen attended both burials at his mother’s side.

  Miss Hurst returned to the vicarage. The Vizegrafin remained largely in her own rooms and Stephen continued to wander the hills with Casper and Joe, or with Mr Quince as his health continued to improve. Harriet wrote her letters and wondered if her sister would come to her, or refuse to ever meet her again.

  The worst of these convulsions were over by the time, some three weeks later, that Crowther was recovered enough to leave his chamber. Harriet and Crowther were enjoying the clearer weather on the lawn of Silverside, seated side by side and watching the pleasure boats moving between the islands. The Vizegrafin had been taking the air and passed by them with a cold nod.

  ‘You have been having a number of conversations with your family, Crowther,’ Harriet said when the woman was out of earshot. ‘May I ask what conclusions have been reached?’

  ‘I have reached the conclusion I was very wise to avoid my family as long as I have,’ he said, ‘and only wish I had managed to stay out of their way for longer.’ She smiled. ‘But I think you are asking about the future of my nephew’s wife?’

  ‘You are correct, sir.’

  He sighed and shifted his shoulder; the wound was closing well, but he doubted he would ever be free of the ache or have the movement in the joint he once had. ‘Miss Hurst has no wish to live with Felix, and given his behaviour, I cannot blame her.’

  ‘The marriage was quite legal?’

  ‘Oh, indeed. They are bound by law, I am afraid, just as they are by the child she carries. She came to see me determined to take another name and style herself a widow in some provincial town. There was a notion of her teaching languages.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘I used my considerable powers of persuasion to convince her to use the name she has a right to, and take up residence in Bath. I understand the irony, Mrs Westerman, there is no need to grin up at me like that. I shall make her an allowance that will keep her in suitable style. It will be given out that Felix is making an extended tour of the family’s business interests in the north. He will be allowed to visit her and the child frequently enough to keep up appearances, but make no further demands on her. He will be given a separate allowance, one I mean to monitor very strictly.’

  Harriet turned away from him and looked down towards the Lake and St Herbert’s Island. ‘What does Felix say to that?’

  ‘Felix, I think, has come to realise that his wife is a woman of sense and feeling. He may be in danger of falling in love with her eventually. I am glad of it. He knows he will have to become a different man to earn her respect. It might be the making of him. He will remain in England, therefore, for the time being.’

  ‘And the Vizegrafin?’

  ‘My dear sister. We have had a number of unpleasant interviews. She will return to Vienna and take up the pattern of her life there. She feels I have robbed her of a son now, as well as a brother. I fear if she were not my enemy before, she is now.’ Harriet did not turn away from the lake, but let her hand rest for a moment on his sleeve. When she removed it, he continued, ‘I am sure she knew something of the death of that Jacobite, Mrs Westerman. She would have been about six years of age at the time. It is clear she pressed to have the tomb opened, and I can think of no other reason why she might have done so, or perhaps my father said something to her after my mother’s death. Possibly when my father sent her away to school. I do not think she was shocked at any point when I told her of what our father had done, and that makes me suspect she was in some way prepared.’

  ‘Do you wish the scheme to move the tomb had never been proposed, Crowther?’

  He considered a long time before replying. ‘If you will forgive the romance of this answer, Mrs Westerman, I feel as if the haze has cleared from my own history just as it has lifted from the land. I hear reports that the harvest is looking promising.’

  ‘There are poems to that effect in the latest number of The Gentleman’s Magazine. What of your brother?’

  ‘The vicar suggests a plaque in the chapel stating him innocent and commending his soul to God. That must suffice, I fear. Kit Huntsman’s memorial stone will state he was murdered, but it will maintain a tactful silence as to who murdered him.’

  ‘We could never, in truth, prove-’

  ‘No, Mrs Westerman, but we do know. The rumours picked up by Mr Palmer’s friends and the ghost stories of a deceased pig farmer are enough to convince me. Lord Greta murdered my father. However, it would have been satisfying to hear from Sturgess’s own lips that his father murdered mine before you shot him.’

  ‘My apologies, Crowther,’ she said dryly. He smiled at her and she was glad of it.

  ‘I notice that in all your dealings with the authorities,’ he continued, ‘that neither you, nor your son, nor Miss Hurst have mentioned the Luck. That is strange.’

  ‘It seemed unnecessary. The gentry consider that Sturgess was turned mad by a fairytale. Let them think so. Casper has it once more.’

  ‘And what has he done with it?’

  She looked back towards St Herbert’s Island. ‘Mrs Briggs has abandoned her plan for a summerhouse again. Though the Gretas’ bones will still have a home in Crosthwaite, their tomb will now remain on Saint Herbert’s. The ruins are to be shored up and left as they are for the amusement of the Lakers. I have no doubt that Casper will make his way over to the island some quiet night and bury it there again.’

  Crowther sighed. ‘I asked Lottie how Kit Huntsman knew that my father had taken the Luck.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Kit was the servant who rowed Greta out to the Island the morning he left to join the Rebellion. If my father saw them, Lottie guesses that they saw my father. She heard Sir William telling Kit in forty-five that he had only moved the Luck into the tomb for safekeeping, that day Kit came to confront him after burning Gutherscale. She knew it was long gone by then, of course, and fearing for my father, ran to fetch Ruben. He must then have discovered my father’s crime, and the Black Pig was the price of his silence.’

  Crowther thought of his father and the Jacobite opening the lid of the tomb, the Jacobite leaning in for the prize and finding instead a blade through his back, his body spinning away with the blow and the thin end of the blade snapping against the stone; then Ruben’s arrival and the bundling away of the body among the ancient bones. His shoulder stung him.

  High in the bright air above them a buzzard climbed the currents and called to the crags, Harriet watched it for a moment, wondering what it saw. ‘So do the people believe that the cross in still covered in jewels, Crowther? Would they still have faith in its power, do you think, if they realised the precious stones were gone long ago?’

  ‘Lottie told me that she supposes most still believe it is as it was, but they all know it is only fairy-wealth and so no good would ever come from trying to buy your way into the world with it. Apparently only gentry would be foolish enough to think otherwise.’

  Harriet laughed quietly. ‘And its magic? She still believes in it?’

  ‘She said the Luck lost only its jewels, not its power, and asked me if we cut the lace from your cuffs and dressed you in plain stuff, would you, Mrs Westerman, not remain a remarkable and lovely woman?’ Harriet felt herself flush. Crowther continued quietly, ‘She told me it was not my father’s fault. That the Luck wished to remain here, and called to him to avoid being removed by Greta or his followers, then paid him in evil coin.’

  Harriet considered this in silence until movement on the
path from Portinscale caught her eye, and she stood up swiftly. A woman in a brightly coloured skirt was moving up the hill towards them, a boy something over Stephen’s age with her, and a terrier chasing around her as she walked.

  Crowther could not turn so easily with his shoulder stiff. ‘Who is it, Mrs Westerman?’

  ‘Oh Crowther, it is Jocasta Bligh!’ Harriet said, getting to her feet and waving. ‘Casper’s sister has come to him!’ A stab of sadness struck her and she dropped her hand. She loved her sister too, not well always, perhaps. But sincerely.

  ‘Harry!’

  She looked up again: just rounding the corner she saw a man and woman arm-in-arm. Her heart soared. It was Rachel — she had come, and with her fiance Daniel Clode at her side. They led a sturdy-limbed toddler by the hand.

  ‘Oh, Anne!’ Harriet cried, and Crowther watched her as she ran down the slope towards her daughter. He saw her swing her child into the air then kiss her sister.

  Whatever their disagreements, it seemed they were forgotten for the moment. Clode’s warm voice carried up the path towards him. ‘We are all come,’ the young man was saying. ‘We thought a show of force from Thornleigh Hall might be of use to you all. Graves, Jonathan and Susan, Mrs Service — the whole circus, all waving the family crest around like a good luck charm! The others are arranging our accommodation at the Oak, and Susan has already agreed to play at the re-opening of the museum. We had to come at once though and embrace you, Harry! Where is Mr Crowther? Is he up and about yet? Oh, I see him! Good-day sir. Is that Mrs Briggs at the door? Mrs Briggs! Delighted to make your acquaintance! No, we could not possibly dine with you here, our numbers are even more than you see. .’

  Crowther sighed. He used his father’s cane to push himself to his feet, and turned to meet them.

  Casper was sitting with the white lady on the slope above the Hall, sucking on his pipe and waiting for Agnes. The Luck was still in his waistband, but he could see it also between the white lady’s hands. Only when she held it, it was lit with jewels again. The black witch was still in his mind, still hissing, but she was quiet for now.