The Shadowcutter

by Harriet Smart

  “I think –” Giles began again, but the argument was making him tired, and it was clear that Carswell was unlikely in this mood to listen to reason. He reached for his wine and drank a mouthful, wishing he could give the approval Carswell so desperately craved. His pain and frustration in love, like that of his half-sister earlier that day, played on Giles’ nerves, stirring up his own wretchedness. How impossible human relations were and how cruel life was!

  The image of Laura’s lifeless form, lying in the state bed, rose up in his mind and he reached for his glass again, hoping desperately it might leave him, along with the choking fumes of anger that now clouded his thoughts.

  At last he managed to say, “Marriage is hard enough a path without such difficulties. Yes, you are in love, and the object of your love is a worthy one, but she is right to resist your plans. It is better that you part before you damage each other too much. Spare yourselves the pain of that, please!”

  -0-

  Dinner was awkward beyond measure, and it was a relief that his parents and Major Vernon retired almost as soon as they rose from the table. Glad to be left to his own devices, Felix went out into the garden, where a balmy golden-blue dusk of heartbreaking perfection was enveloping the long walks and rose bushes. He lit a cheroot, his earlier resolutions quite thrust aside, and he made a long circuit, remembering those pleasant evenings after dinner, where by accident at first, and then by design, he had met with Sukey.

  He had no hope of seeing her that night though, and when he turned a corner and saw her sitting on a bench, just where she had been the night before, he thought he was imagining it. She met his gaze with a brief crooked smile, that made his heart ache.

  “So –” she began.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “I am guessing from the way Holt was looking at me that he has said something to Major Vernon.”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “And was he angry? Major Vernon, I mean?”

  “Yes, but quietly so.”

  “Which is worse,” Sukey said. “Oh dear.”

  “He is quite on your side,” said Felix, rather bitterly. “I shouldn’t worry.” He sat down on the far end of the bench and sucked on his cheroot. “He thinks I would be making a wretched prisoner of you if I married you. That I would be punishing our children even before they were born. Quite a fine argument I must say!” He got up again, and threw the cheroot down onto the path, grinding it out with his foot. “He is no saint,” he went on. “He has no right to lecture me!”

  “And now you are at loggerheads!” Sukey said. “And saying things about him that you do not mean. This is what I have been telling you along – that it spoils everything good in our lives if we go on with this! Everything!”

  “And is it not worth it?”he said.

  “I am not sure it is,” she said. “Perhaps it is just a silly dream, this thing between us, a silly summer dream!”

  “But, but, but –” Felix said, throwing himself down beside her. “We love one another. We want one another. There is a sort of magnificence about us. You can’t deny that. You feel it as I feel it.”

  “Yes,” she said, but she was shaking her head. “But –”

  “So?”

  “It isn’t enough just to want and to love. In our position, it isn’t. It isn’t enough to spoil everything for. And as for wanting – well, women love and want like men do. Perhaps you don’t understand that. We women don’t say it because we are not supposed to. But I said it to you because I am a fool and you took down my guard.” She got up and walked a pace or two away from him. “And I know what it is like to love and want a man. And I know as well that all can change. You can love and then you can hate. Summer can turn to winter, just like that!” She snatched a wilting rose head from the bush and tossed the petals in the air. “At least this way I won’t grow to hate you too.”

  Felix got up.

  “I am not James Connolly. I will never treat you as he treated you.”

  “And how do you know that? He was as sweet-tongued and as handsome as you, and as determined. He brought out the devil in me, just as you do. And I brought out the devil in him, sure enough I did, and then we led each other to straight to hell!”

  “I am not like him,” Felix said.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” she said. “But I am the same person. I haven’t changed. I keep telling you that you don’t know me, not really. If we go through with this, I swear that in a year you will be cursing what you have brought on yourself! When all your friends desert you and you are left with a wife you cannot love because she’s not what you thought she was. It isn’t worth the candle, Felix, I’m not worth it! Let me go, for the Lord’s sake. Let it go!”

  With which she ran back towards the house, leaving the Master of Ardenthwaite kicking at the fallen rose petals.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  “You and I, Mr Carswell,” said Major Vernon coming into the library, “Are in need of purposeful activity. Sooner rather than later. May I?” he added, his hand on a chair rail.

  “Of course,” Felix said.

  “I know you have not been much in the mood for company,” Major Vernon said, pulling out the chair and sitting down opposite him at the table. “I have made sure you were not disturbed.

  Felix had been left for the last two days to keep his counsel in the library. Not even Mr Carswell had come in to bother him on the pretext of searching for a book.

  “You must have said something to my father,” Felix said.

  “I saw you had made yourself comfortable in here,” Vernon said, “And that your father was equally comfortable in that little room downstairs, so I had Holt move some books there for him. Mostly the divinity. We did not think you would miss those.”

  “No,” Felix said, in some amazement, noticing now the dozen empty shelves on the far side of the room. In fact he had scarcely taken a book from the shelves. He had established himself a sort of desk on the large table in the middle of the room, and he had attempted to distract himself with some medical work. All the summer he had been toting about two thick French volumes on respiratory and pulmonary conditions. Now they lay on the table reproaching him. He had not opened them. He had spent his time gazing out of the windows and wondering what Sukey was doing, where she might be in the house and what she might feeling at any instant of the day. He had begun dozens of letters to her, and then revolted by the self- pitying tone of them, fearing she would laugh at them, he had burnt them in the grate.

  She had, since he had seen her in the garden, become invisible. Like him, he supposed, she had contrived to hide herself away. Ardenthwaite was a large, rambling house full of places to hide. What might have been sweet refuges for lovers, now became sanctuaries for those attempting valiantly not to be in love.

  “And Holt was also in need of purposeful activity,” Major Vernon added. “Not that moving a few books is enough for a man like him.”

  “You might send him out to shoot rabbits,” Felix said. “Or set traps for the moles. Have you seen the state of the lawn?” He had stared at it a great deal in his misery, and begun to believe that each fresh molehill was proof of the wretched and imperfect nature of the world.

  “You could take a gun out yourself,” said Major Vernon.

  “I am a terrible shot,” Felix said. He did not add he would be too tempted to turn it on himself.

  “I have another idea,” Major Vernon said. “Assuming, of course that my physician says I am well enough.”

  “It would depend on what you had in mind,” Felix said. He had examined the Major that morning after breakfast and been heartened by his progress. “But, as I said this morning, you are definitely on a favourable course.”

  “All I propose is this – that in a day or two, we go back to Stanegate, and try to get back that bracelet. I want to talk to Don Luiz properly. Actually, I want him to admit how he came by it and swear to it, if at all possible, but that may be asking too much. But an admission will help with the weight
of evidence against Lady Warde.”

  “I told Lord Rothborough we should enlist Dona Blanca’s help in that. Ask her to return it quietly for the sake of national prestige. But that would not help you, sir, would it?”

  “It may be she does not have that sort of influence over him,” Vernon said.

  “She is a sort of queen in exile, from what I understand,” Felix said. “And he has to listen to her, because of her popularity with the people.”

  “And Ramirez is what? The king-in-waiting, apparently, and how close are they, in truth? It is quite intriguing. She is a strong woman and I were him, I would be wary of her and her motivations. He may be pretending to be an ally for the sake of it.”

  “Keep your enemies close,” said Felix

  “Quite,” said Major Vernon. “And I think, given the matter of those letters, and her excessive caution and secrecy, that she is not showing her true colours towards him. That it it is a mutual case of keeping enemies close. What was it you said she said about Don Xavier – that he took care not to be found? Interesting, don’t you think?” Major Vernon was tracing circles with his forefinger on the table top as he spoke. He went on, “Lord Rothborough’s secretary, Mr Woodward speaks excellent Spanish, I think we should commission a translation of those letters she gave you, post haste.”

  “We would have to go over to Holbroke then,” Felix said, thinking of the family chapel adjoining the Parish Church where he had attended Mrs Vernon’s internment only a week ago. “Do you think –?” he ventured.

  “I am ready for it,” Major Vernon said. “I want to see where she is laid – sooner rather than later.”

  Felix nodded and got up from the table.

  “We could go today,” he said. “You are right sir. I have had quite enough of my own company.”

  The carriage was ordered for after lunch. Felix had the dispatch case tucked inside his coat, and he could not deny that the prospect of learning what the letters contained was a useful distraction.

  When they were just about to climb into the carriage, his mother came out of the house, carrying a small but carefully arranged posy of flowers which she handed to Major Vernon.

  “I have found all the things for which you asked,” she said. “And one or two others, which I hope you do not object to. Myrtle and rosemary, chiefly. And our prayers are with you.”

  Major Vernon took it, and slightly to Felix’s astonishment, thanked her with an easy kiss on the forehead, whereupon she wrapped her arms about him for a moment, and returned the kiss. Turning away he caught sight of Sukey coming out the shadowy hallway into the sunlight. She was also carrying flowers, this time a vast armful of colourful blossoms, shining against her dark dress and white apron.

  She darted out and thrust the flowers at Major Vernon.

  “For Mrs Vernon,” she said. She was flushed, he saw, and he longed to press his hand to her cheek and feel the sweet looking heat of it, as well as to soothe it.

  Major Vernon took the flowers with a gracious nod, and she went running back into the house without another word.

  “What a dear girl,” said Mrs Carswell.

  Felix was on the verge of running back into the house but Major Vernon was already climbing into the carriage.

  So they drove to Holbroke with the seat opposite covered in flowers. Felix wanted to gather Sukey’s bouquet into his arms and weep into it. There was to be no happiness, no promise, no future. Nothing. Only death remained, the supreme conqueror of all. Major Vernon did not break the silence, but sat fingering a sprig of rosemary from Mrs Carswell’s posy.

  A previous Marquess of Rothborough, Felix could not recall which, had rebuilt the Parish Church at Holbroke, at the end of the seventeenth century in a chaste baroque style, reminiscent of Wren’s City Churches. It was calmly elegant, and peaceful, with nothing to reprimand or alarm among its white Corinthian columns, and handsome altar fittings. A sweet-faced, and Felix had to admit, extremely beautiful Raphael Madonna with and equally beautiful Christ-child in her arms, hung above the communion table, against a background of rosy damask.

  Major Vernon stood looking at it for some minutes.

  “Laura would have liked that,” he said.

  “Lord Rothborough had that put there, recently, I think.”

  Major Vernon nodded.

  “And she is...?”

  “Through here, in the family chapel.”

  Lord Rothborough had been insistent that as a guest of the family, Mrs Vernon should be treated as one of them in death, and after the service, she had been taken down to the family vault.

  They went through to the chapel, which guarded by an elaborate gilded gate and past the many opulent tombs, with their elaborate statues and inscriptions. Various lords and ladies, with ruffs and stocks, and cushions and little pet dogs surrounded them, and Felix felt he was a drawing room full of dead ancestors. These were his people whether he liked it or not.

  The door to the vault was closed but in front of it was another huge heap of fresh flowers, to which Major added his own posy and those from Sukey, and then went back into the main church and sat down, his eyes again fixed on the Madonna and child.

  “I’ll leave you alone now, sir,” Felix said, and went out back into the sunlight.

  -0-

  “This is providential!” said Lord Rothborough, when they had stated their business and handed over the dispatch case to Mr Woodward. “Only today I have had another interesting letter from my contact in Paris. Santa Magdalena is a nest of snakes he says, and this only confirms it. How long do you will think it will take you, Woodward?”

  “I cannot say at once, my Lord. Give me a quarter of an hour and I will come back to you with an estimate. Excuse me please, gentleman.”

  Woodward left, and Lord Rothborough said to Giles,

  “It is entirely typical of you, Major Vernon, to discover a talent in one of my men of which I was, lamentably, unaware. How?”

  “I don’t know. We were just making conversation.” Giles said.

  “It is your particular genius to find out all our secrets,” Rothborough said. “I think you are wasted in the police business, Major. When we are back in government, you must expect to be asked to act on a broader stage.”

  Giles shrugged, having no wish to discuss his future at that moment

  “Your correspondent in Paris,” he said. “What else does he say?”

  “It is really quite sensational, if it is true,” said Rothborough. “Now you may know that the island is principally known for coffee and sugar production. A few little seams of gold and silver here and there, but nothing for anyone to get excited about. Until recently. According to my correspondent, Don Luiz has been talking up the mineral rights to his potential political backers in Paris. There is a new geological survey of the island from some Prussian fellow called Valk. Valk has all the right credentials and swears blind that there is a mountain of gold in Santa Magdalena just waiting for the taking.”

  “And Don Luiz, as the future president will of course control the mineral rights and will look kindly on any political supporters who would like to exploit them in future?” Giles said.

  “Naturally,” said Lord Rothborough.”

  “But the existing government, which is falling apart, knows nothing of this?”

  “No. I am not convinced this Herr Valk has even been to the island. That was my immediate thought. A few clever maps and talk of limitless gold can make men crazy with thoughts of ‘what might be’. It has happened before and it will happen again.”

  “It ought to be easy enough to find if Valk is genuine,” said Carswell.

  “It is already in hand,” Rothborough said. “However, there is a chance that my cynicism will be unjustified, and there is a mound of gold on the island, in which case the matter becomes a great deal more serious. It becomes a matter of our national interest – we would need our own chance at that gold, and to be certain that the government is one that we can do business with. As it stands I
cannot think that Don Luiz will be sympathetic or useful to our interest if he becomes President. He is clearly a rogue, but of a lesser or larger sort, we do not yet know!”

  At this point a servant came in with a tray of refreshments and a message from Woodward that he was hard at work at the letters and it would be two days work.

  Rothborough poured the wine, and said, handing a glass to Giles, “I understand you went to the church?”

  “Yes, and thank you again for all that you have done for us, for her. It is...” He could not quite find the words to go on.

  “I wanted to show you this,” Lord Rothborough said. “Maria took her profile. It is rather nicely done. She left it here for you – but her suggestion was that it should be sent away and done in marble – bas-relief? Or bronze perhaps?”

  Giles took the paper from Lord Rothborough and went to the window to look at it properly. Lady Maria was no great artist, but she had got, in her clumsy way, Laura’s character, and oddly enough, a flavour of how she had been when he had first known and fallen in love with her.

  The sight of it was too much for him. He could not contain his grief any longer. His stoicism gave way, and he was obliged to excuse himself.

  He made his way through the great rooms, now all shut up, the rugs covered, the furniture shrouded. He found what he hoped was a inconspicuous corner of an ante-room and gave way to his grief in a way he had not yet done.

  He did not know for how long he was there, but at length the spasms subsided and he looked up, with damp and stinging eyes, to see Lady Charlotte standing on the threshold.

  “Forgive me,” she said. “I could not help but...”

  “I thought you had gone to Sussex,” he said getting up.

  “No, I am going to Scotland. I begged my father for that indulgence. Besides there is someone he wishes me to meet. Lord Dunbar. Perhaps you have heard of him?”

  “Yes, I think I have read a pamphlet of his on factory legislation.”

  “Maria has met him. Apparently he is twenty-seven, tall, quite ugly but very clever and energetic. He is mad for reform. My father thinks highly of him, of course.” She spoke brightly but not quite brightly enough to conceal the crack in her voice.