The Opal Dragonfly

by Julian Leatherdale

  ‘I know, Mr Davidson,’ said Isobel, though to be honest, she knew no such thing. ‘But I fear that if this report goes against Father it will destroy him. Not just financially, which I think he could possibly survive, but in his spirit, which I doubt he could.’

  Mr Davidson was suitably distressed by this remark. Alarmed at her own frank confession, Isobel shook her head and even laughed, perhaps to assuage his mortification. ‘Of course, I am under no delusions that Papa is a saint, Mr Davidson. I know he can be difficult, ill tempered and stubborn at times. But I believe he means well. He has made mistakes, I am sure, but never out of malice. At least, I hope not. He does not deserve such public humiliation.’ Isobel blushed more deeply. ‘I am sorry, sir, I did not mean to make a speech.’

  She marvelled at her own courage and eloquence. It had nothing to do with the wine (she had barely drunk any) but more to do with her own frustration with her father and her apprehension about the future. Mr Simon Davidson coloured a little then and his voice grew husky with emotion. ‘Miss Isobel, I cannot apologise enough for the pain this situation has caused you and your family. If there is ever anything I can do to help you, I insist you write me a letter, and I will do everything within my power to oblige. That is my solemn promise.’

  The gentleman passed Isobel her glass, now refreshed with punch, and withdrew.

  It was a strange and memorable moment, Isobel reflected much later, to receive such sympathetic regard from the man whom Father had challenged to a duel. And for her own part, to feel trust in a man who some considered her family’s enemy, who had permanently wounded her father with his pistol shot but—much worse—fatally injured his reputation, beginning a process that could well end his career.

  How could she regard Mr Davidson with anything less than loathing?

  And yet, she trusted him.

  Chapter 27

  LETTERS FROM ABROAD

  SEPTEMBER 1852

  Isobel’s dream that night began in Rosemount’s forest, where she sat on her favourite rustic seat among a sea of orchids, painting. Sometimes, as she lifted her brush to the canvas, she was momentarily blinded by the star-like dazzle of light off the harbour. Out of the corner of her eye she saw an indistinct shape, drifting—walking?—between the trees. Was it a man, looking in her direction? The weight of his gaze lay on her with a quality of intemperate longing and feverish scrutiny. It frightened her a little and she stood up and shouted, ‘Hello?’

  It was then she heard a girl’s high-pitched laughter. Out of the shadows stepped Ballandella, her face and limbs daubed with ochre and white ash. The scene had changed imperceptibly from sunny daylight to dusk so that Ballandella could only be partially glimpsed by the light of a fire that burned fitfully in the middle of the grove.

  ‘Secret blackfella business. I gotta go!’ she shouted and ran off into the dark forest.

  ‘Hey, Ballandella! Come back!’ yelled Isobel, feeling younger and more vulnerable than a seventeen-year-old should. Or was she little Izzie now, only five years old, heartbroken on the morning she found Agnes taking pillows and sheets off Ballandella’s bed?

  In the dream, little Izzie ran along an obscure track in the woods—or was it just a pattern of dead leaves that passing animals had trodden black?—shouting after her playmate. The path came out into a clearing of ruined timber: huge, shattered and termite-riddled trunks, like sunken ships barnacled with bright fungi, plated and fleshy and obscenely orange. The trees were gigantic now and towered overhead, their top branches interlocking like a barrel-vaulted ceiling, shutting out the evening sky except for pinpricks of starlight. The wind was chill and bleak, driving dead leaves before it in flurries.

  To her shock Isobel suddenly realised, as she noticed half-fallen walls and piles of broken masonry around her, that she was standing in the ruins of Rosemount, her home. Through the trees she saw what must once have been the garden, now a vegetative riot, its ponds a stinking swamp, its glasshouses turned into skeletons limned with jagged glass. All about, she saw fetid tea-coloured pools, which appeared flat and shallow until she tiptoed to the edge of one and looked in. She uttered a shriek of horror. A body, puffed up like a sodden chaff bag, was submerged just beneath the surface: the supine figure of a man, arms outstretched, face ghastly white, lips blue, hair tarnished green and floating around his skull like duckweed. It was impossible to say who he was.

  Isobel backed away and began to run through the ruined remains of her family home. Every door and window lay shattered and gaping to the elements. Creepers and moss carpeted the walls and inundated each room like a green tide. Overhead, the twilight sky crackled with lightning, veins of flame beneath the muscled torso of its clouds. Isobel entered the saloon, its spiral stairs choked with a frozen torrent of mud and debris, and its marbled floor under a slick of seawater. Seawater? Here? And there was something else. Staring eyeless up at Rosemount’s dome, now cracked open to the heavens, lay an effigy atop a granite tomb. Isobel stepped closer. The graven figure, gauntleted arms crossed in solemn repose, was a medieval knight in full heraldic armour. She looked upon the face of the fallen warrior, flanked by his sword and shield. It was, of course, her father.

  It was not an auspicious start to Isobel’s day to wake with images from her nightmare snagged like wisps of mist on the corners of her mind. She already knew that today’s art lesson with Charles had been cancelled and so she descended to the breakfast room with trepidation, or at best a skulking sense of pessimism, regarding the day’s prospects. The overcast morning sky with banks of storm clouds to the east mirrored her mood.

  When she entered the breakfast room, Anna was serving herself kedgeree and bacon. ‘Good morning, dear sister,’ she chirped. The unfortunate history of their relations meant that Anna’s cheerfulness on such a morning immediately suggested that she was up to no good. Isobel even wondered at times if Anna, residing only two rooms away, could overhear Isobel’s cries in the middle of the night during her tormented dreams. Had she ever uttered her lover’s name aloud? It had been six months since the Major left and Isobel had risked everything on a lie to keep her courtship secret and alive. Her fearful vigilance threatened to overwhelm her.

  ‘I am sorry you were unable to attend devotionals this morning, Isobel,’ huffed Aunt Louisa as she came bustling into the room. Was this the source of Anna’s good mood, that her aunt was cross with Isobel but pleased with Anna? It was entirely possible. ‘I have something I must share with you both.’

  Isobel felt her pulse surge again. How she craved some peace of mind and surety about her future so that she would not be panicked at every new turn of events!

  ‘What is it, Aunt dear?’ Anna asked sweetly.

  ‘Grace has forwarded me a letter she received in the last mail. It is from your father.’

  The two sisters took their seats at the breakfast table and became sharply attentive as their aunt unfolded a letter in the Major’s elegant, familiar hand. She proceeded to read aloud.

  My dearest family,

  I hope this letter finds you all in good Spirits and Health. My voyage out was favour’d with fine weather and strong tailwinds for a mercifully smooth and swift passage. Since my arrival in London, I can report that my representations to my patron, Lord Sherbourne, have receiv’d a sympathetic hearing. I embark soon on my boomerang-screw lecture tour and have also met with my printer. All goes well there. But the main Import of my letter concerns my efforts to find Alice. And thereby hangs an unusual and, at this point, inconclusive tale.

  Aunt Louisa looked up from her reading. Isobel and Anna wore frowns of intense puzzlement. Inconclusive? What on earth did that mean? wondered Isobel.

  My brother Fergus and I were inform’d by the keeper of the Debtors’ Prison in Newgate that the young Baron is severely unwell with consumption and delirious with a high fever in the Hospital wing. He has had no visitors in many weeks. With no known address for his family in London and no communications from them or their solicitors, my brother
and I grasp’d the nettle and travelled by coach to pay a visit to their country seat in Hertfordshire. From our inn at St Albans we arriv’d, unannounced, at Gothamberly House. The eighteenth-century manor is a grand neo-Palladian palace of some 190 rooms boasting Piranesi fireplaces, stained-glass windows & a library of more than two thousand books.

  The sight that greeted us on arrival beggar’d belief. From our coach, we could see the estate (six hundred acres of rolling downs, forest, streams and a lake) overgrown with bramble, gorse, and heather, its weed-chok’d waterways and wood walks blanket’d in snow. A large herd of wild deer appeared quite at home in this wilderness. Our coachman left us to walk the last mile or so as the drive was impassable from fallen timber and thick foliage.

  Thus we approach’d the mansion on foot and were confronted with the most sombre and pitiful sight imaginable. A grand house in ruins, its portico enshrouded in ivy and bracken, its every window a glassless casement, its crumbling pediments and cornices iced with snow. The front door stood open so we entered the gloomy entrance hall as silent as a Mausoleum. The spiral staircase, wide enough to take a carriage and four, was all fallen in on itself. The sepulchral ambience of the place felt all the more lachrymose for the heavy hand of decay at every turn. We went from room to room, each spoil’d in their own grotesque fashion: frescos of breathtaking beauty eaten to dust, high domed ceilings split open to the sky, mould and fungi in luxuriant profusion feasting on the carrion of draperies, furniture, tapestries, and paintings. Nature’s conquest of this once stately hall was absolute. The Baron’s famous family seat is an abandon’d ruin, a lair for rats and crows.

  As we walked through the hoary graveyard of the gardens, an old man approached from a cottage close by. ‘I am the caretaker. Why are you trespassing here?’ he challenged. We explained that we sought the whereabouts of my daughter, the Lady Crawley, and that this was her last known address. ‘The family comes here only once a year to leave flowers on the grave of the 13th Baron’s poor mother, Lady Olivia, A tragic business.’ The lady in question was young Andrew Twyckenham’s grandmother. Encouraged by my pressing of a guinea into his palm, the old fellow finally let fall the name of a relative in Cambridge, Lady Agatha Horsham of Abercrombie Manor, who may be able to assist us. I assure you that Fergus and I shall pursue this information with the greatest urgency. Though this strange excursion has provided incontrovertible proof of the Twyckenhams’ duplicity and destitution, I refuse to admit Despair. Alice is a strong, sensible and mature young woman and, no doubt, a loving mother. I promise we will find her and her son and bring them home, safe and sound.

  With affection etc., etc.,

  Major A. H. Macleod, Esq.

  Isobel’s face blanched at this bizarre tale. Had Alice been taken hostage against her will by these penurious aristocrats? Or was she still under the spell of the Baron’s professed love? Isobel knew how smart her older sister was. But she also knew from the poets and playwrights that love famously made fools of us all.

  Is it making a fool of me as well? Isobel wondered for one anguished moment. Am I as reckless and lovesick and unable to see the plain truth as my poor sister? No, no, not at all. My situation is completely different, she told herself. Charles has never pretended to be anything other than the man of integrity and talent that he so clearly is.

  ‘do not fret, my dears,’ counselled Aunt Louisa, seeing Isobel and Anna’s pale faces. ‘Angus will not rest until this matter is settled, I assure you.’

  Isobel had no doubts about her father’s determination to rescue Alice. But what stopped her breath in her mouth, what chilled her blood in her veins, was the vision that her father had painted of the ruined house.

  It was the same vision of ruin and decay that her dream last night had shown Isobel of Rosemount. And at the centre of that dream lay the tomb of her father.

  The following week, her beloved Charles returned from his affairs out of town and came to Faulconstone for their Monday art lesson. Aunt Louisa wished to hear all about his meeting with a rich squatter at Bathurst who had broad acres and deep pockets but craved the mystique of respectability that Charles could provide with a formal portrait of the gent and his wife. Isobel understood how much Charles despised these bunyip aristocrats and resented that his livelihood depended upon their callow ambition and ill-gotten wealth. But he seemed in good spirits, his face and arms lightly tanned.

  ‘Are you unwell, my dearest? You look so pale and tired, if you do not mind my saying so,’ Charles observed when they had retreated at last to the morning room. Aunt Louisa had explicitly instructed Emmet that they not be disturbed by the staff until he was sent to summon them for lunch. Even so, Isobel was in the habit of checking the door and twitching the curtains, terrified that her sister Anna lurked nearby.

  ‘I have not been sleeping well,’ Isobel told him, still determined to keep her vivid dreams a secret from her lover. ‘I have missed you.’

  ‘I know, my sweet,’ he smiled. ‘Soon, soon we will be able to announce our happiness to the world. Tell me, have you heard anything from your father?’

  Charles had agreed to the Major’s supposed request to hide his courtship from public view to keep the family peace, but as it now seemed the two sisters, Grace and Anna, had embraced him (the first far more warmly than the second) he could see no obstacles. He knew that Aunt Louisa was an admirer. These last three months he had made regular visits to Villa Dordogne for sittings with Grace and Augustus; as always with portraiture, a comfortable intimacy had grown up between artist and subject to help him capture a sense of their personalities on canvas. It had also laid the foundations for his secure future within this family.

  For these reasons, Charles privately hoped that Major Macleod might decide enough time had passed to allow him and Isobel to announce their intentions. But he was to be disappointed. The Major had much more urgent matters on his mind as Charles was to discover when Isobel related the unsettling tale of her father’s visit to Gothamberly House. ‘dear me, it is a story worthy of Miss Radcliffe,’ said Charles. ‘Not to make light of your sister’s terrible situation, of course! I hope we receive some better news soon.’

  Poor Isobel. Was God, from Whom nothing could be hidden, watching this little drama through His peephole? Was she to be punished for her subterfuge? She felt as if her whole life had become a house of cards, built on deception and able to be brought down by one careless word. She had lied to Charles, to her aunt, to her father and her sisters. But was it her fault really? Circumstances had forced her to such desperate measures. And she knew in her heart it was unjust for Charles to be judged so harshly while Augustus was not punished for his family’s shame. Surely God must forgive her that. Maybe others would too.

  ‘Tell me that you still love me,’ she implored Charles. ‘I have grown so fearful of late. Every day brings me the terror of hearing bad news.’

  Charles studied her face with a look of profound compassion. ‘Why, my poor Madame Libellule, you must not torment yourself this way,’ he said in his most soothing tone. ‘I love you and shall always love you. There is nothing that can ever change that.’

  And then, just as Isobel had feared, the storm came, arriving without warning on the fourteenth of September. Isobel would later learn this was the same fateful date that Field Marshall Arthur Wellesley, 1st duke of Wellington, died of a stroke. His body would lie in state for two months before being borne through London’s streets for the most spectacular state funeral in English history. In November, Grace would receive a letter from the Major telling her of his decision to delay his return to Australia as he planned to stay for the funeral to farewell his commander, the hero of his youth.

  But the late morning of the fourteenth would prove momentous for the Macleods for a more immediate and devastating reason than the death of the Iron duke. The news that day would later seem to mark a fork in the road in Isobel’s fate from which she would either walk a path that led to happiness and good fortune or a road to misery and
damnation. Of course, it was never that simple, but for a long time that was how Isobel looked back on that fateful day.

  That morning a carriage pulled up unannounced at Faulconstone’s front gate. Isobel startled at her writing table in the morning room at the sound of its wheels rolling to a halt. She went to the window to see the front gate open and a figure in a hooded cape enter the garden. There was no mistaking its identity: Grace, hurrying along the path beneath the frangipani tree. Just before she mounted the steps to the portico, Grace paused and looked up. Had she felt Isobel’s presence at the upper-storey window? In that instant, Isobel saw the white blank of her sister’s face, bereft of all colour and life, and she felt the world stagger from its secure axis. Something was terribly wrong.

  The bell rang.

  Isobel threw on a shawl and hastened to the top of the main stairs. Here she froze for a moment, hearing the voices in the hall below of Grace and Emmet, the butler, who was busily taking her cape. ‘I will tell them that you are here, ma’am.’

  She tried to stop her mind fixing on any one person as the probable cause of this visit. Was it Alice? The Baron? Or Papa? Or Augustus? What calamitous event would bring her sister such a long way and in such a state? Isobel reluctantly descended the stairs.

  Aunt Louisa and Anna were already in the drawing room. The shock on their faces reflected the gravity in Grace’s. To be honest, Grace’s expression went beyond gravity; it was more akin to horror. Red-rimmed eyes and ashen cheeks, translucent skin stretched tight over the bones of her face, a fixed stare of utter bewilderment, her mouth held grimly shut so as not to trigger another flood of tears as soon as it opened to speak.