The Lost Heiress of Hawkscliffe

by Joyce C. Ware

  “If what, Miss Mackenzie?” She smiled again, then continued without waiting for my answer. “If Louise’s son had no more claim than mine?”

  I stared at her uncomprehendingly.

  “My son, Ralph, Kate—you don’t mind if I call you Kate, do you?” She stepped closer. “This is a secret I’m telling you,” she confided in a stage whisper, “a secret no one else knows. Formality has no place in secrets, does it?”

  My mind worked furiously. Ralph...Philo’s Ralph? The boy whose hand she held in the photograph? “But I thought Ralph was your nephew. Didn’t you tell me his parents were lost in a fire?”

  “And so they were. You see, they could have no children of their own. My sister told me ‘It will all work out for the best.’ my sister told me.

  Years of frustration and heartache and rage spewed forth in that agonized cry. “

  “How I cried when Johnny went off to war; how I mourned his death until my sister learned he had sneaked back and married a prosperous dairy farmer’s daughter somewhere upstate. Hah!” she snorted, “Can you see my Johnny milking a cow?” I began edging away, but her hand shot out and clutched my sleeve. “Well, can you?”

  I recalled the soldier boy grinning cockily from the faded daguerreotype in her bedroom. “No, Miss Banks.”

  “Cora,” she corrected, shaking my arm like a terrier. “We have no secrets, Kate!”

  “No, Cora,” I agreed placatingly. “Not Johnny.”

  “Of course not! And after he milked the farmer and his daughter dry he’d have gone on his merry way, leaving them just as he left my Ralph and me. I couldn’t raise my child alone, not without letting the whole world know he was a bastard! First my sister took him, then after her death he was fostered out. I’ve waited a long time to have him at home with me, in a home I’ve earned. But no one cares about that; no one ever did. Not Charles Quintus, or Louise or Thornton or—”

  “Philo cares!” I exclaimed. “That was what I was trying to say. If—”

  But Cora was too involved in her own nightmare. “ ‘If, if, if,’“ she mocked me. “Don’t you understand yet, Kate? All the its and might-have-beens are blocked by Louise’s bastard son and that Turkish whore’s sister!”

  I should have been prepared, but I wasn’t. Cora’s other hand shot out, and she pushed with every ounce of her wiry strength. Even then I might have saved myself, but my toes were by then too numb to grip and help sustain my uncertain balance on the slippery path.

  I felt myself falling, plummeting backward through the dense, shrubby growth that masked the edge of the pit I had been insufficiently aware of. Before darkness cloaked my consciousness, I remember thinking of emeralds: Thorn’s eyes, and the modest stones set in gold Cora could not have known about unless she had searched through the bag where I had placed Uncle Vartan’s journals for safekeeping.

  I could not have been unconscious for long. The pile of brush that broke my fall bore evidence of disturbance hardly blurred by the steady fall of snow. I scooted cautiously off my twiggy cushion and slowly rose to my feet. My head ached, but except for a twinge in one shoulder and a tear in my coat, I was remarkably undamaged.

  I recalled Thorn speaking of Cora’s periodic attacks on the Hawkscliffe shrubbery. The brush piled thickly about me would account for fifteen years of diligence. If, however, I had fallen a foot or two more to the left or right, their uneven distribution among the tumble of stone would have resulted in much more serious injury, or worse.

  The thought sent bitter bile into my throat. Yet considering the desperate plight in which I found myself, I bleakly wondered if the latter fate might not, in the end, have served me better.

  Panic dizzied me. “Thorn!” I shouted, “help me!” My voice, shrill and thin with fear, was unlikely to carry far, but I persisted. “Harry! Please! Someone!” I even called for Cora. Then, realizing she would be more likely to hurl a rock upon my head than render assistance, sanity at last prevailed. I saved my waning energy to take stock of my situation.

  The excavation containing me was not large. No more than thirty or so feet on a side, I reckoned. Nor was it particularly deep. Perhaps ten feet except at the rear, where the slope rose steeply above it. But it might as well have been a hundred, for the walls were stone, as was the floor, and sliced as cleanly as if by a giant’s chisel. What saved it from being a drowning pool was a narrow cleft at the downslope end, a natural outlet in the living rock which afforded rainwater and snowmelt an exit.

  This must be the quarry that supplied the stone blocks for the mansion’s foundation and for the wall I had clambered up my first day at Hawkscliffe. If I had managed it then, I reasoned, why not now? Granted, this wall was higher—much higher—but surely saving my life provided more of a spur than a snarling dog!

  Time was of the essence. The light,could not last much longer—an hour at most. Feet numbed by cold, I wobbled toward the lowest section of the wall. Then I remembered the woolen stockings I had thrust into my pocket when I changed my shoes. I reached in and drew forth a crumpled mass of warm, dry wool, more gladsome to my eyes than a sultan’s treasury.

  Using a block of stone for a stool, I unbuttoned my boots, stripped the damp hose from my chilled legs, and rubbed my waxy toes with the flannel lining of my coat. As soon as I felt the prickle and pain of blood prodded grudgingly into circulation, I pulled on the warm stockings, tugged on my boots, and confronted the challenge.

  Close inspection revealed the sheer gray granite face as less seamless than I had at first thought. I spied here an offset ridge, there a crack, and near the top a stunted evergreen twisting up toward the sky, its gnarled limbs splotched with scanty whorls of densely set needles. Its blind struggle to survive inspired me: those ridges might be wide enough for toes, those cracks deep enough for fingers. I would inch my way up, pushing and hauling from ledge to crevice to the rugged hemlock dwarf whose stout main stem, curling back across the broken edge of my granite cage, would provide me the final, crucial handhold to escape.

  I set my little fur-trimmed bonnet firmly on my head and retied its broad grosgrain ribbon, the better to protect earlobes already aching from the cold. I eyed my new kid gloves regretfully. They would be ruined, of course, but I dared not attempt the climb bare-handed. I took a deep breath. Wedging my toes upon a narrow offset about fifteen inches above the brush-littered stone floor, I blindly explored with my right hand for a chink, which when finally found stretched my reach to its limit. I pulled myself up, ignoring the sibilant stutter of tearing silk. My pretty new dress could be added to the price of escape.

  My dangling foot searched for the next stone rung, found it, and together with a higher handhold, propelled me up another hard-won stretch. And so it went, wider ledges alternating with blade-thin uneven ones, and generous hidey-hole crevices with cracks hardly wide enough to admit the tips of my fingers, until the nearness of the stunted hemlock told me I had gained a height I feared looking down to assess.

  My breathing labored and shallow, I flailed wildly for the twisted trunk spiraling out of the cleft above me. The rash effort caused my foot to slip, and my cry of alarm was followed by a spill of snow dislodged from above. Could it be Thorn? Dear heaven, let it be! I knew now that his villainy was a wicked creation of Cora’s.

  “Help!” I cried hoarsely. “Please, oh, please help me!”

  I looked up to meet two pairs of yellow eyes. The dogs! My heart pounded tearfully as one of the black-snouted muzzles rippled back in a snarl. I felt hot breath on my outstretched hand, and as I strained to grasp for my salvation, the dog lunged forward, huge paws braced on the broken edge of granite, and snapped viciously at my fingers.

  I reached up desperately, heedless of the slashing teeth, but my hand closed around a trailing branch instead of the stout limb I had blindly sought. The crackle of splitting fibers told me it had given way.

  Down I plunged once more. When I recovered consciousness for the second time, I felt a trickle of warmth slid down my cheek. M
y elegant gloves reduced to tatters, I pressed my exposed fingers to my temple, wincing from the pain caused by the light pressure of their tips. They came away wet with blood.

  I lay back, my strength drained by defeat. The falling snow melting and mingling with my blood and tears brought the taste of rust and salt to my trembling, parched lips. The light had begun to fade. Once darkness fell, the cold would slip under my blanket of snow to strum a seductive lullaby upon my languid limbs. My fate would be sealed.

  And so would Lance’s.

  Cora was a woman possessed. With no one to warn him of his danger, she would soon find a way to solve the problem he posed, as she had done—I was sure now—for his mother before him.

  Poor sweet, sulky Lance. I could not bear the thought of his bright promise imprisoned in a stone tomb.

  Well, then, my conscience entreated me, if you don’t make the effort to free yourself, what of the boy?

  Indeed yes, what of the boy!

  I lifted my head, groaning as pain stabbed at my temple. The bleeding had stopped, though; and so had my tears. Slowly, I rose to my feet. Except for the gash on my head and the sorry state of my fingers, my situation seemed much the same as before, until I took a tentative step, crying out as my knee all but collapsed beneath me.

  I stared up at the little tree; its gnarled stem both beckoned and mocked me. The height I had earlier estimated at ten feet loomed above me, seeming as distant now as the peak of Mount Ararat. I limped toward the wall. If only there were some way to start higher up….

  I stumbled against a block of stone half-covered in snow. Of course! Here, scattered all around me, were a giant’s building blocks. But it would take, I realized after laboriously hauling the smallest fragments into place, a giant’s strength to move them.

  Despite this bitter disappointment, my spirits began to rise. I was determined to attack the problem as fiercely as Cora had the shrubbery whose severed branches covered the quarry floor, in some places as high as haystacks.

  That was the answer! Not stone but brush. Manageable armfuls of brush stacked carefully like cordwood, one bundle atop and across another, until. . . .

  I set to work, praying the light would hold, and as stack followed stack, my staircase, a bizarre openwork structure, began to take shape. How could I think it capable of taking me up within reach of that decades-anchored tree? Undaunted, I labored on. What choice had I?

  I came upon a heap of stouter branches with curiously rounded ends, too short for my purpose. I reached down to throw them aside and became entangled in a length of dark stuff, like the goat hair Baluch weavers use to bind the edges of their rugs. Thin, long black goat hair ...

  I gagged and frantically scraped the hair from my fingers. Not goat hair, human. And the mottled, oddly shaped bits of wood were human bones.

  I crouched to examine my dreadful find. I flicked some leaves from around a grinning skull and found some shreds of cloth. A silver purse frame lay near a bony hand, the rotted remnants of its pouch still harboring a design created from glass beads in bright colors: white, blue, green, red and a large luminous patch of yellow.

  I prodded the tattered bits to one side. There it was. Yellow, shiny, but not glassy. Almost like gold.

  I stumbled back, both hands pressed across my mouth. Yes, it was gold. A flat gold disk on a finger, no longer plump nor white, that I had last seen curved upon the painted breast of Charles Quintus Ramsay’s last mistress.

  First Roxelana, then Louise, now me, and next….

  The need to warn Lance became more urgent than ever.

  The light, I prayed, let the sky hold the light a little longer!

  I hastily scattered branches over Roxelana’s brushy grave. Then, ignoring my throbbing knee, with a lightly balanced step I would not have thought myself capable of, I scrambled up my insubstantial staircase as if those hellish hounds were snapping at my heels.

  I stretched up on tiptoe from the final stony ledge. This time, first one hand than the other closed firmly around the ancient trunk. As I slowly, painfully levered myself over the edge to land on my back in a shower of snow upon the path, I became aware of a pair of eyes glowing hotly above me out of the gloom. This time the growl was too low to distinguish above the thudding of my heart. I had tried; I had really tried, I thought, as a profound weariness overcame me. I closed my eyes.

  I felt dampness on my face. A curious, warm sort of dampness. It was a tongue…a warm, wet, wonderful tongue.

  “Zulu!” I cried. “Oh, Zulu.”

  A spot of cold nudged at my neck, poked at my crushed bonnet. At the sound of my voice, the big dog gave me a final nudge with her nose and plodded off.

  “No, Zulu, wait!”

  She stopped, turned, and eyed me reproachfully over her massive shoulder. Come along, then, she seemed to be saying. I know it’s my job to herd you home, but do come along!

  And so I stumbled back, trudging through snowdrifts that clutched at my coat like the blind beggers of Stamboul, weighing me down, slowing my progress. The spruce grove proved easier going, but the darkness destroyed my sense of direction, and only the gently swaying bulk of Zulu’s posterior kept me from straying off on the paths that glimmered whitely among the hulking trees.

  At last we gained the slope below the terrace. Narrow rays of light piercing through chinks in the sitting room’s curtained French windows traced shining patterns upon the unbroken surface of the snow. I wondered nonsensically if the backgammon game abandoned on the table there would ever be played out. Not by me, my strength was almost gone. No, not by me.

  Suddenly one of the long curtains was swept aside. A man stood there, tall and still, staring out at the falling snow. It could have been Philo, but somehow I sensed it was Thorn. The strong beam of light released from the room by his motion was like a lighthouse beacon. With Zulu as my sturdy tow, I followed waveringly in her wake toward safe harbor.

  Zulu barked once, twice, deep-throated, like the roar of a distant cannon. I heard the clickety-clack of lock and handles being opened and twisted. The long, windowed door opened shudderingly, the glass rattling in its panes.

  “Why, it’s Zulu!” I heard Thorn exclaim, his deep voice warm with pleased surprise. My savior ambled through the door in a swirl of snow. “Look here, Harry, the old girl’s not lost after all.”

  “Where you been, Zu?” Harry asked roughly, but I sensed his relief. “Pasha et your dinner. Serves you right,” he added gruffly.

  “You know I don’t like those dogs in the house!”

  The window, forgotten, had creaked slowly closed, but not enough to mute the high, thin, grating voice. Cora’s voice. I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck.

  I moved forward to the accompaniment of a muffled chorus of male protest.

  “Just this once, Cora ...”

  “The poor creature’s paws are clogged with snow ...”

  “Not a smidge of harm in’er, Cora ...”

  Then, commandingly: “She stays, Cora!” That was Thorn.

  I paused just outside the door, which was still ajar. They were all there, assembled as if for a curtain call, a company ignorant of its audience of one. As I watched, Cora nodded stiffly in reluctant acquiescence and moved through the room proffering sherry from a gleaming silver tray. Her rusty brown dress—the hem of the gray-blue must be wet through from the snow—contrasted starkly with the room’s warm, mellow colors. The high polish of the brass fireplace fixtures was a credit to Mary Rose; the firelight coaxed reflections from the softly patinated surface of the Kirman carpet. I hadn’t remembered the room being so inviting.

  As Cora offered an aperitif to each man in turn, it seemed to me she revolved the tray, ever so slightly, so as to ensure his choice. One glass, set somewhat apart from the others, remained until last. She smiled as she presented it to Lance, a smile so sweet, so tender, so gratified, I felt a prickle of unease.

  Had she smiled thus as she led Lance’s mother up the rarely used cliffside path to the
sketching platform she had earlier undermined? Had Cora, banking on Louise’s expressed curiosity about it, sought her out in the fog and offered to take her there, knowing that the haughty, self-centered woman would have considered such an offer her due? I could almost hear her panting as she scrambled, red-faced from the effort, commanding Cora to slow her pace. Yes, Cora would have smiled then just as she was smiling now, knowing Louise would soon be breathless unto eternity.

  Cora does not tolerate rats under her roof, I suddenly recalled Thorn saying to Louise.

  On a country estate, the only way the absence of rats could be assured was through the frequent use of poison. There would be quantities of it, easily at hand.

  I flung the door wide. “Lance, I beg of you!” I cried, gripping the window frame with my gashed fingers, oblivious to the pain. “Do not take that glass!”

  Every head whipped toward me, faces contorted by surprise, figures rigid with shock. It was a scene I will take with me to my grave.

  Lance’s fingers, caught in a plucking motion by my cry, sprang apart, sending the glass tumbling through the air in a shower of honey-colored spirits. Simultaneously the tray slipped out of Cora’s hands, bounced off the carpet, and landed off-center on the tile floor, where it oscillated seemingly endlessly, its reverberating clangs shattering our eardrums.

  She stood unmoving, a wooden carving with rooted feet, like something out of a dreadful, mythic past. Only her small eyes, fixed on mine, seemed alive. I saw there a hot flicker of emotions: hate, envy, hopelessness, but most of all, madness.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “Kate! My God. What has happened to you?”

  Thorn rushed to my side, swept me up into his arms, and carried me to the wing chair in front of the fire.

  “Philo, your sherry!” he commanded tersely as he untied the ribbons of my ruined bonnet, easing it from the clotted blood on my temple with a touch as soft as feathers. “The sherry, coz.”

  Philo, who had been looking dazedly at the glass in his hand as if wondering how it had arrived there, blinked and rushed to do his cousin’s bidding. He placed the rim against my lips.