by John Burke
I held the ring out to him in the hope that he would take it back. He shook his head peremptorily.
‘You will speak to Carolina,’ he said, ‘and to Carolina alone. Nobody else. You promise?’
‘I promise.’
‘You tell her everything, you give her the ring. And you tell her’ – he lowered his voice, as if even the birds in the trees might be traitors – ‘to present it first to the blacksmith of Svetlik. That is a place she will not have forgotten.’
‘And if something has happened to the man by then? If something goes wrong, surely you’re putting her in grave danger?’
‘You do not know how we have learned to operate. Our man will be told to expect a woman, and will then pass a message on. But he will not be told the woman’s identity, nor the function of the next link. If he is taken by the police, he will be able to tell them nothing.’
‘It sounds frightening.’
‘It can be so. But our heads are cool. And yours, I think.’ When I stood up he took my hand, bowed, and kissed it. ‘You will speak to no one but Carolina. That you swear?’
‘I’ll not breathe a word to another soul.’
We walked back to the clearing where we had met. He bowed over my hand again.
‘Goodbye, Miss Talbot. A safe journey. I am relying on you.’
‘What will you do while you wait for news?’
‘There are many things. First we must find a way to Pavel. To release him. It will not be easy.’ His chin went up, his beard jutted aggressively. ‘But there must be a way.’
How inappropriate the symbol of the Florian signet was! ‘The moment I’ve gone, you’ll be hard at work again, fanning the flames rather than stamping them out.’
‘We existed before Austria,’ he said. ‘We shall remain after Austria.’
He watched me cross the clearing. As I reached the far side he gave me a farewell salute and was swallowed up between the trees.
I made my way back to the town.
*
Throughout the rest of that day and the next, as we packed and prepared for departure, I longed to confide in my father. But I had promised. And if I was tempted to make just one exception to that promise I knew what the result would be. Father, too, would swear secrecy and then make just one exception – ‘Only your mother, my dear’ – and she would babble to anyone who, came within range, and from home would write letters to all her Bohemian friends dotted with hints and references. The quickest way to deliver Count Anton Florian to his enemies was to let my father and therefore my mother learn of his existence.
I wrapped the signet ring in a lace handkerchief and carried it out of the country undetected. There were in fact few formalities at the border or anywhere else. The Austrians welcomed foreign visitors and courteously lamented their departure. I wondered uneasily whether Countess Lomnica’s view of rebels and troublemakers was the correct one, and Count Florian’s tale of oppression a fantasy.
When we started on our homeward journey I was impatient to reach home so that I could get to grips with the situation. Hour after hour in the train gave me time to plan what I would say to Caroline. But the more I planned, the less sure I was of what ought to be said, and the less happy at the idea of confronting her. For however delighted Caroline might be to discover that her first husband was still alive, Dominic was going to hate me for bringing such news. His marriage would have to be unpicked, and he was scarcely likely to turn to me for solace.
I was almost persuaded to remain silent, to pretend the scene in the forest had never happened: I had dreamed it all. But the signet was solid evidence. Only Caroline could assess its true importance.
The first view of Ely after all these weeks was chilling. Mist rising from the river and dykes shrouded the town, leaving the cathedral to ride like a phantom frigate on its milky swell. As the train swung along the embankment, the prow of the vessel was lost in wispy spray, then seemed to thrust onward, set to run down its foes without mercy.
I would soon be incarcerated in that vast hulk again, working on manuscripts until time turned me as dry and dusty as the parchment itself.
Aunt Aurelia was waiting for us, as darting and eager and fluttery in her movements as a blue butterfly which looped, shimmered, and then settled on a stony outcrop of the garden wall.
‘Oh, how lovely to see you again. And you’re looking so well. Edgar, how well you look.’
She led the way indoors as if inviting us into her own house. Mother and father exchanged glances. His sister-in-law’s new self-confidence was all too blatantly obvious.
‘And what a to-do while you’ve been away! Such a surprise, who’d have credited it? And such a shame you couldn’t be here. All so exciting, and so lovely, you’d have been so moved. She was a picture, my Caroline, bless her. A picture.’
The faded, rather untidy clothes she had worn when she and Caroline arrived had been replaced by a new, high-necked tartan dress and fine silk shawl. She wore pendant ear-rings which had, she confided, been given to her by dear Dominic. And over the next few days we were treated to quite a range of new splendours.
Aunt Aurelia made it clear, with assumed diffidence but inner certainty, that she would stay on with us until the honeymooners returned. My mother was frosty at first, but thawed within twenty-four hours. ‘It’s not poor Aurelia’s fault,’ I heard her say to my father. He nodded abstractedly. He was not a man to impute fault to anyone if it could be avoided, and had always been indulgent towards Aunt Aurelia because he knew her life with his brother had been far from easy. Mother was soon immersed in gossip with her. Sometimes they spoke simultaneously, my mother about the cosmopolitan delights of our trip, my aunt about Caroline’s beauty and Dominic’s good fortune. Mother built up a far more grandiose picture of Countess Lomnica and her status than she had done for me in Bohemia. Aunt Aurelia, not to be outdone, produced graphic descriptions of the guests at the wedding, making some of them sound so grand that we had difficulty recognizing old friends and acquaintances. She had been so worried, she confided, by the fear that she might miss out someone who ought to have been invited – people close to us, who would feel hurt. In truth there were many embarrassed friends who were glad not to have been invited, and others who made excuses to be away on business or about to set out on holidays which could not be rearranged at such short notice.
Some of these, well-meaning but cruel, stopped me in the street to commiserate. I put on a surprised manner and said how happy I was for Dominic and Caroline.
And I waited for them to return from honeymoon, still trying to envisage Caroline’s reaction when I broke the news to her. Delight or dismay?
One afternoon I came home from the library to find Mr John Warrington taking tea with my father and mother. He sprang to his feet as I entered the room, a big burly man with wide shoulders and a massive head, crowned with grey but still thick and wavy hair. His eyebrows, with no fleck of grey, were startling black gashes across the breadth of that dominating face. He seemed to glare at me as I approached.
‘Nora.’ He stooped and, almost violently, kissed my cheek. ‘I’m sorry about all this. Confoundedly sorry.’
‘Sorry?’ I said in the pert tone which I had practised so assiduously these recent days.
‘Damn it, the way Dominic has behaved. When we all expected things to be so different.’
‘We all hope he’ll be very happy.’
‘Do you, indeed?’ He was really glaring now. ‘You’re taking it pretty coolly, girl.’
‘You’d prefer me to weep all over the carpet?’
‘Leonora, please.’ Mother waved me to a chair, pushed a plate of biscuits towards me, and nearly knocked the cake-stand over as she grabbed for the teapot under its embroidered cosy.
Mr Warrington sat down again. ‘You see?’ He was addressing my father but still glowering at me. ‘The only possible one for Dominic. Character. Guts. Begging your pardon, Milada.’
Father said: ‘Leonora, you know our old friend he
re is going up in the world?’
‘We’re not talking about that,’ grunted Mr Warrington.
‘But Leonora will want to be one of the first to know. John is to become Sheriff of London.’
It was the only piece of unalloyed good tidings I had heard for a long time. I was so pleased for him. The honour was one which needed such a man to carry it. I got up and went to him and put my arms round him and kissed him.
‘You’ll be the best they’ve ever had.’
‘Hm.’ He was sweetly grumpy when it came to accepting compliments or affection.
‘It’ll keep you busy,’ said my mother.
‘Too busy. I’ll have to leave most of the London business in Mark’s hands. And the Wisbech end entirely to Dominic.’
‘Who’ll handle it very well,’ I said.
‘Who’d have done very well indeed with you at his side.’
‘The question doesn’t arise, does it?’
‘It deucedly well ought to have done. I always took it for granted you’d be there with him. Capable girl like you: just what he needs.’
My mother waved the cake knife over a large seed cake and looked at me, startled. The idea of my being considered capable by someone as knowledgeable as Mr Warrington was one she had not contemplated before. I thought, too, of Count Florian’s judgement. Some men appeared to find qualities in me which I did not know I possessed!
‘Steer him on the right course,’ added Mr Warrington. ‘That’s what you’d have done.’
He made me sound like a loyal ship’s officer. First mate, I thought. And then I thought that I could never be that now, in any sense of the word, and the phrase was so ridiculous and I was so close to tears that I laughed more loudly than I meant to.
‘Please, John.’ It was my father, gentle and anxious to change the subject, recognizing my distress and wanting an end to the talk there had been ever since we go home. ‘It’s done. We must wish them well, and forget other notions.’
‘I wish I could be sure.’
‘Wish them well,’ my father repeated.
‘But what does she wish me?’ When Mr Warrington got his teeth into something he would not easily let go. ‘At the wedding she looked at me as if – dammit, as if I was a great joke, and a bad one at that, and somehow she was scoring off me. I don’t like it.’
Mother shook a plate of biscuits at him like a church collection plate.
I said carefully: ‘Caroline must be finding it just as necessary as you are to adjust her ideas on some things.’
‘What ideas? What things?’
I could never have dared repeat that terrible line she had once spoken to me. ‘Her father’s business trouble,’ I said, ‘must have hurt her terribly. She’ll have been confused by it – unhappy – for a long time.’
‘What’s that got to do with me, or with Dominic? She doesn’t suppose any of us were responsible for that?’
‘I’m sure she doesn’t,’ I lied.
He turned to my father. ‘You never told Nora exactly what happened?’
‘It was a trifle complicated for a girl.’ My father buried his nose in his cup. ‘Not a thing to trouble her with.’
‘Hm.’ Without even a perfunctory apology Mr Warrington got up and went to stare out of the window. ‘And did anyone tell Caroline the full truth? Or did her father give his own garbled version?’
‘She was the only thing Henry really cared for,’ said my father. ‘No doubt he tried to soften the blow and present a picture less discreditable to himself.’
‘Told her a pack of lies, you mean.’
‘We’re all guilty of little evasions with our loved ones.’
‘Are we, dear?’ said my mother roguishly.
Mr Warrington growled: ‘Henry Talbot was guilty of some very big evasions. With everybody.’
‘It’s all over now.’
I said: ‘And now that Caroline’s one of the family –’
‘Your Uncle Henry’s business collapse,’ Mr Warrington interrupted, ‘followed some extremely misguided speculations, supposedly in partnership with me. Damn-fool notion of raising capital to revive the Wisbech Canal. Bound to fail. But he got it into his head that he’d make a fortune, and he traded on Warrington credit and the Warrington name. We hushed the matter up because business in general suffers when one disreputable individual goes astray.’
‘You hushed it up,’ said my father quietly, ‘because Henry was my brother and you were too good a friend to bring disgrace on the Talbots.’
‘Hm. And before doing away with himself –’
‘John! If there had been any evidence to that effect he wouldn’t have been buried in consecrated ground.’
‘No clear evidence, no. But I have my own opinions. I concealed his malpractices, Edgar, but you must allow me my conviction that he committed suicide. And what slanders did he feed that daughter of his before doing so? I tell you, there was something frightening about her that day.’
Even though I knew in every fibre of my being that it was untrue, I said: ‘I don’t suppose Caroline knew a thing about the details. She was just a confused girl, sad at the loss of her father, confused . . . and her breath taken away by a sudden change of fortune. With Dominic, she’ll already have forgotten the past. You’ll find –’
‘What will I find?’ said Mr Warrington. ‘That’s what worries me.’
*
The day after Mr and Mrs Dominic Warrington came back from honeymoon we received a note from Caroline. It said that we and her mother must be the first, the very first, to come and dine with them now that they were home. She and Dominic so wanted to see us – her nearest and dearest, and his very dearest friends.
‘Well,’ sighed my mother when Aunt Aurelia was out of the room, ‘it has to be faced sooner or later.’
When we set out for Wisbech, the Florian signet was tucked into the waistband pocket of my skirt.
Chapter Five
The horses kept up a good pace for the first few miles, then slackened on to one of those lumpy fenland roads which never hold still on such unstable foundations. We swayed from side to side, first east and then west. Purple blotches of knapweed stirred in the wind along the dykes, and a field of mustard caught and magnified the afternoon sunshine. A heron stood like a gatepost or shard of shattered fencing. When we drew closer its head twitched and it soared, levelling out and flapping in a lazy arc to a glint of water half a mile away.
Caroline’s invitation had urged that we stay the night rather than attempt the long journey home after dark. Mother objected at first: Caroline could not yet have put her new home in order for visitors, it was asking too much of her, we really must go by an early train and return by the last one of the day. But Aunt Aurelia declared that of course her Caroline would be able to cope with these fresh responsibilities and would enjoy it and would not have asked us if she were not sure of herself.
Aunt Aurelia was to stay with the young married couple until something was settled about, the Sunderland house. It was certainly simpler to load her luggage on to the carriage and drive the whole distance rather than take it to the railway station, unload, transfer to a train, and unload at the other end for a further journey to the Warrington house. So we surrendered and set out by road.
‘I had forgotten how flat everything was.’ Mother stared moodily out, contrasting the levels with her Bohemian hills.
The Wisbech streets and river bore little resemblance to those I remembered in Carlsbad. Here, as there, were cobbles and stretches of waterside promenade; but carts rumbling to and from the quays had smeared them with mud and grease. The river slopped darkly against green-slimed landing stages. There were no golden carp; and no young men strolling in sable-trimmed cloaks, tight breeches and yellow boots.
As we crossed the bridge over the Nene a small craft slid down a slipway, followed by shouts and the shriek of a steam whistle. On both banks were terraces of cottages, the homes of Warrington employees.
The Warrington famil
y home was in a terrace of a different kind. Up from the Nene Quay and across the market-place, the fine high crescent of Ely Place looked out over the old castle grounds. No bustle of quays and yards and steam pumps reached this secluded corner, and only the most discreet traffic ventured into the dignified, cobbled thoroughfare.
The door was opened by Mrs Pettingill, who bobbed a curtsy to my mother and Aunt Aurelia but spared me no more than a fleeting nod. Widowed young, she had been with the Warringtons since I was a child and had made a favourite of me. I wanted her pity now as little as I wanted anyone else’s.
Before she could lead us any further into the hall, a door by the foot of the stairs opened.
There stood Caroline.
She wore a smart, most fashionable pannier dress with a scalloped hem and trimmings of ruched silver-grey ribbon, rustling and whispering with large side puffs. When she advanced to greet us she brought her arms up with measured elegance to embrace my mother. Without haste she kissed her own mother. She was mistress of the house and the situation, no hair astray, no flurry or uncertainty.
Her eyes turned towards me, as insolent as ever but now with a deeper assurance – the assurance of possessing a home and a husband.
‘Oh, thank you for your wonderful letters. Thank you, all of you. I was so desolated you couldn’t be with us, but your letters meant so much to me.’
‘You look lovely,’ said Aunt Aurelia. ‘Doesn’t she look lovely, Milada?’
I spoke first. ‘You do, Caroline. Lovelier than ever.’
She moved more quickly, impetuously throwing her arms round me, kissing me, holding me at arms’ length. ‘Oh, Nora.’ There was the catch of a little sob in her voice. ‘That means more to me than you can possibly know. It’s adorable of you. So adorable.’
Without a pause she began giving Mrs Pettingill instructions about our cases and her mother’s, and about our rooms. I was sure such matters had been settled long before we arrived, but it pleased her to go through them again in front of us.
