by Joan Aiken
IX
‘Sir! Sir!’ said Lady Catherine.
The bearded man stirred and snored, but offered no other reaction to her prodding and exhortations.
At this moment Lady Catherine almost fell into despair.
An uncountable, unmeasurable amount of time had passed, it seemed, since her first awakening in this rude habitation. Darkness had blanked out the two small windowpanes and then, later, daylight of a sort had come back again.
Meanwhile – a very frightening phenomenon – water had continued to penetrate under the door, pulsing in slowly but steadily in small rippling waves. A pool about the size of a card-table had collected, and more kept coming. This made Lady Catherine profoundly uneasy. Suppose more and more came in, until it had filled the entire cabin? Was such a thing possible? Could enough water to drown her and the stranger flow under that door? More immediate and worrying was the likelihood that the incoming tide would submerge the man who lay on the floor, and put out the fire which Lady Catherine had with such difficulty persuaded to burn.
There was no means of preventing the water’s entry – she considered laying her sable cloak against the crack, but immediately dismissed this expedient. The only remedy she could fix on was bailing. There was a shovel by the hearth, and a pail. With desperate energy, but no great skill, Lady Catherine scooped up water with the shovel and tossed it into the pail. When this was full, she emptied it down the drain hole. By such means, working at frantic speed, she managed to keep abreast of the water’s inflow. The pool inside the door grew no larger. But it was punishing work for somebody wholly unaccustomed to physical labour. After two or three hours, however, she began to feel that the threat was diminishing; the ripples came more slowly, then they ceased. The pool inside the door gradually sank into the earth floor and left no more than a mud patch.
All this time the comatose stranger had not woken.
Lady Catherine leaned her aching back against the wall and contemplated him. At this moment he shifted slightly and let out a grunt, or moan.
‘Sir!’ said Lady Catherine.
He made no reply.
With considerable reluctance, for she was as tired as she had ever been in her entire life, Lady Catherine knelt by him and introduced some spoonfuls of water, and then a dribble or two of apple pulp, between his yellow and battered teeth. She was mortally afraid of choking him, for he now began to struggle and groan, and received the nourishment without any sign of goodwill or gratitude, or without displaying any sign that it had benefited him.
Still he did not emerge into consciousness and now, exhausted and devoid of hope, Lady Catherine began to wonder if he ever would.
And then, suddenly, he opened his eyes.
They were large, grey and bloodshot, the whites dark yellow and threaded with red veins. He stared about him vacantly for several minutes. He was still lying on the mattress on the dirty floor, for there had been no means of hoisting him up into the hammock, and in any case Lady Catherine wanted the hammock for herself. But she had covered him with her sable cloak and managed to insert the solid and bulky sable muff under his heavy head so as to reduce the danger of choking while she fed him.
His eyes roamed the interior vacantly for a moment or so, then came to rest, with utter amazement it seemed, on Lady Catherine, who had seated herself beside him on the three-legged stool.
‘Who are you?’ she demanded. ‘Where are we? Who are you?’
He took a long time to consider this question.
His answer, when it came, terrified her.
‘I am Azrael, the Angel of Death. That’s who I am!’
Lord have mercy on me, thought Lady Catherine. I am locked up with a lunatic.
Only one thing about his answer reassured her in the least. He spoke with a rough, West Country accent, which, in the last few days of travel, she had become accustomed to hearing. This gave her, if nothing else, a feeling of location.
‘Where are we? Where is this place? Who has shut us in?’
Accustomed to being furnished instantaneously with all the information she required, she spoke with all her accustomed sharpness of manner. But his answer came in a slow, pondering tone, and after a considerable pause.
‘Where? Ay, that’s a naggy one. In limbo, mayhap.’
Then he added, after a long, perplexed survey of Lady Catherine, in her draggled, drenched, crushed travel costume of silks and velvets:
‘If I am Azrael, who must you be? One o’ the Furies? One o’ the Friendly Ones?’
‘Speak sensibly!’ said Lady Catherine. ‘I am not accustomed to being answered with this kind of idle talk. Don’t give me such flummery, but tell me who you are and where this place is. First – what is your name?’
He gave a deep sigh, a long, long exhalation, as if he were saying goodbye to some precious bubble of air, cherished inside his lungs, or some beloved dream which he had hoped to hold inside him for ever.
‘Trelawny. Benjamin Trelawny.’
‘How did we come to be here?’ Lady Catherine asked, cheered by this sign of sense.
‘Ah. I was on a ship. The Sweet William. From Santa Ana. She stove on a rock. All lost. All lost.’
He kept repeating ‘All lost’, as if to convince his hearer of the large number of people who had lost their lives. ‘All crew. All lost. All passengers. All lost.’
‘You had friends? Family?’ she could not help asking.
‘Wife. Little son Ben. Two daughters. Papers. Furnishings. Poems. All lost.’
He looked around the empty room as if still expecting to see the family, the furnishings, the children.
Something stirred in Lady Catherine’s mind. I have never known a loss like that.
‘When did this occur, sir?’
He shut his eyes and covered them with his hands.
‘Time gone. They picked me up. Fishers. Picked up in sea.’
Plainly he would have liked to sink back into sleep, perhaps for ever, but Lady Catherine was determined to get more information out of him, no matter how ruthless she had to be in procuring it.
‘Where is this place? Why are we here?’
‘Brought in – harbour. Left with doctor. That’s all. That’s enough.’
‘No, sir, it is not enough! I wish to know why I am here. Why we are imprisoned in this dismal, comfortless cell; why we are not released. Who is responsible for this incarceration?’
‘Who is res – Oh, send me patience!’
He lay back on the mattress as if exhausted. From having been flushed, he had now turned deathly pale, and beads of sweat rolled off his brow. Alarmed, Lady Catherine administered the only remedy she had to hand – a spoonful of apple pulp.
His face twisted in disgust. His eyes, which had been resolutely shut, flew open again.
‘What the deuce is this – gnat’s piss?’
‘Sir!’
Lady Catherine was outraged.
‘You should be thankful for what you have. There was nothing else in the place.’
‘Eggs out yonder. Outside.’
‘But the door is locked.’
‘Oh. Ay. True. Quite true.’
Slowly, and, it appeared, with excruciating stiffness and pain, he hoisted himself to a sitting, then to a standing position. Lady Catherine could now see that he was unusually tall, well over six feet, and so haggard and emaciated that she wondered if he had been in prison or had suffered some debilitating illness.
The reason for his standing was now made evident: it was so that he could delve into his breeches’ pockets. He did so, first in one, then the other, and finally brought forth a key.
‘Locked door – keep out thieves – meddlers—’
He lurched uncertainly to the door, thrust the key into the lock and turned it.
Lady Catherine was beside herself with wrath.
‘Do you mean to tell me that all this time – all this time – if I had known, I could have been free, have left this miserable den?’
‘Cou
ldn’t have gone far, though,’ said the man. He leaned weakly against the wall and made a vague, fumbling gesture towards the vista beyond the doorway.
The noise of rushing water had grown considerably louder.
Lady Catherine stepped to the doorway and looked out.
Her spirits, which had risen a moment ago, sank sickeningly. She saw that the building which housed them stood on a point of rock between two overflowing watercourses. These met together beyond the point and poured into the ocean – white, tumultuous waves hurling themselves ferociously on to a rocky coast.
‘Can’t get out till flood goes down. This is an island, now, see? Or as good as.’
The man, Ben Trelawny, turned indoors again and sat down on the mattress.
* * *
‘Terrible floods they’ve been having in the West Country,’ said Mrs Jenkinson. ‘My sister writes from Bristol that rivers have been bursting their banks and tides have been extra high; my sister’s letter has taken more than ten days to reach me. Do you think, Lord Luke, that it may be on account of these circumstances that we have heard no more relating to poor dear Lady Catherine? It is dreadfully worrying, indeed! One does not know what to think.’
‘Yes, there may be something in that,’ agreed Lord Luke quite cheerfully. ‘I have been reading in The Times newspaper, which Mr Delaval was so kind as to bring me from Ashford, that the port of Brinmouth has been half washed away by the flooding of the Brin River bursting its banks and rushing down unexpectedly from the high moorland country farther inland, with great loss of life and many houses, and the harbour wall swept straight into the sea. Was not Brinmouth the port from which my sister proposed to take ship for Great Morran?’
‘Yes, indeed it was! Oh, gracious me! Poor Lady Catherine may be waiting to embark all this time at some wretched hostelry.’
‘You think, then, Mrs Jenkinson, that the ransom note may be nothing but a hoax?’
‘Oh, I do not know what to think!’ exclaimed Mrs Jenkinson, bursting into tears. She clapped her hands to her brow, crying, ‘My head! Oh, my poor head! This will be the death of me!’ and tottered away to her own room.
‘She has suffered from many more migraines since my mother left Rosings,’ Anne remarked calmly. ‘You would think it would be otherwise, considering the hard life she leads when Mamma is at home.’
‘Perhaps she is one of those people who thrive best under a tyrannical rule,’ suggested Miss Delaval.
‘She is worried about what will happen if my mother never comes back,’ said Anne.
‘The boy Joss is here wishful to speak to you, my lord,’ announced Frinton.
‘Oh, bless me! I wonder if he has made any find of importance?’ Lord Luke hoisted himself eagerly from his chair. ‘I will see him in the library, Frinton,’ and he hurried from the room.
‘Wait, Uncle! I have something for Joss. I will come with you,’ Anne said, following Lord Luke. She paused in the doorway and turned to cast a somewhat satirical glance at Miss Delaval and Colonel FitzWilliam before she went out, leaving them together.
* * *
Maria Lucas, after practising on the church organ for an hour, felt herself reluctant to quit the sequestered, tranquil little building. Dearly though she loved her small niece and nephew, she sometimes found their addiction to non-stop games highly fatiguing. Furthermore, now that their father was returned from Hertfordshire, no place in the parsonage was safe either from the children’s wish to play, or their father’s loquacity.
The organ in Hunsford church was located in a gallery over the main entrance, looking down on to the nave. When she had played her fill, Maria transferred to the bench that ran along by the gallery rail, tucked her feet on a hassock and rested her elbows on the rail, her chin on her arms, and brooded.
I ought to go home, she thought. This Kentish visit has lasted too long already. Meeting Colonel FitzWilliam again has unsettled me. I thought I would know, after being in his company again, whether I loved him or not; but I still am not sure. Seeing him troubles me deeply – but is that love? It causes me acute pain to see him in the company of Priscilla Delaval – but is that love, or mere despicable jealousy? I do not feel the same pain, or not to that degree, when he talks to Anne de Bourgh. Perhaps because their manner to each other is so cold and distant; or, because I know he marries her only out of compliance to family ordinance. But does he marry her? Is it merely a flirtation that he conducts with Miss Delaval, or has he indeed transferred his affections to her? Oh, how I long to be at home, soothed and fortified by familiar companions and duties … But Mrs Jennings writes that she is not in good health just now, and hopes that I can defer my return visit to Berkeley Street for a few weeks, since she wishes to see me again on my way home but has not, at the present time, sufficient strength to enjoy the shopping and the sociability that my visit would entail … Dear, dear Mrs Jennings, I hope there is nothing greatly amiss with her; she is such a kind, good friend … I am sure I do not wish for shopping and sociability, but merely to see her, and enjoy a comfortable talk with her, and listen to her advice. Charlotte gives me advice, and it is well meant, but it does not chime with my own sentiments. I think life with Mr Collins is changing Charlotte. I would not go so far as to say that it is making her hard-hearted, but she is not so accessible as she was to other people’s feelings. She has to protect herself, I suppose.
Charlotte wishes me to remain at Hunsford until Lady Catherine’s return, but when will that be? There is something decidedly odd regarding that whole business of Lady Catherine’s visit to her sister-in-law. Can the woman be dead? Or gone away? It is not like Lady Catherine to be at the centre of a mystery…
Maria’s head drooped more heavily on her crossed arms. The silence, the smell of damp stone, beeswax and aged woodwork calmed and lulled her, and she sank into a light repose.
She was awakened by the sound of voices – men’s voices. They were not loud, but seemed quite close at hand. After a moment or two Maria realized that the two men in question must be standing just down below her, in the nave of the church.
‘You have not heard from your uncle?’
‘No, not since the original arrangement was made.’
‘It is very disturbing…’
‘There was to have been a second note?’
‘Certainly. My uncle gave the first note to the maid, Hoskins, to be despatched from Launceston or Truro. Then the second note should have been despatched from Brinmouth.’
‘By which time the transfer to my uncle should have taken place and the – and the domicile established.’
‘Just so. Is it not strange that you have heard nothing from your uncle?’
‘Well – even at his best he is not communicative. I see no reason, simply from his silence, to conclude that the scheme has gone awry.’
‘It is disturbing, though. My uncle is far from easy in his mind. He fears that something – something untoward, some mischance, may have taken place.’
‘The whole affair – I collect such were to have been your uncle’s intentions – was to have been merely a trick, a laughable artifice, nothing serious, a mere piece of foolery?’
‘Of course!’
‘Your uncle’s aims in the matter being – not ransom?’
‘Dear me, no. His aim in the matter was – don’t ask me why – some time for him to spend alone at Rosings, or at least without his sister’s overbearing presence in the house, to search for something. Such a search as you have seen him daily concerned with. What his object is, he will by no means divulge – but to have my Aunt Catherine out of the way was to him a matter of prime importance. Connecting back, possibly, to some episode buried in the long-distant past when they were children together.’
‘There was no financial incentive? I know that my uncle was paid a certain sum—’
‘No such incentive was mentioned to me.’
While this exchange had been taking place, Maria was on tenterhooks.
Both voices were familia
r to her. But by the time she had taken in the extraordinary, the outrageous nature of what was under discussion, it was too late to make her presence known. And in fact, she was too engrossed in listening, in trying to make sense of what they said, to wish to interrupt them.
‘So what can be done?’
‘Somebody should perhaps travel to the West Country to ascertain the state of affairs there.’
‘Indeed yes, I agree, but who?’
‘You are without doubt the properest person.’
‘But I undertook to remain here.’
‘Circumstances have altered, however.’
There was a longish pause. Then:
‘They have indeed! The death of poor Finglow, for instance.’
Another pause. Then, coldly:
‘What has that to say to anything?’
Maria decided that this had been going on long enough. She had brought a hymnal with her. She dropped this over the gallery rail and it fell into the nave with a loud thump.
There followed an appalled silence. Then a voice – that of FitzWilliam – called: ‘Is anybody up there?’
Maria said, ‘Yes.’
One set of hurried, running footsteps left the church. They sounded panic-stricken. After a moment slower, more measured steps could be heard mounting the stairs to the gallery.
Maria picked up her music and met Colonel FitzWilliam at the top of the stairway.
X
Letters found in the attics of Rosings House
My dearest, dearest L.,
It is Christmas night. The snow is ticking against the window panes. I lie in my chilly bed, with B. beside me, and listen to the sobbing of the wind. I do not sob myself, but my heart is heavy – very heavy, at the knowledge that never, nevermore in this life shall I lie beside you, shall I be able to reach out my hand to touch yours, that although hardly a mile of parkland divides us, we are as severed as if the whole globe lay between us, as if you were in the Antipodes or the Indies. Your hand! I can feel it between mine as if it lay there in fondness and comfort, as it has so many, many times.
It is queer to recall that all our times of joy together were in spring and summer, with the song of birds and the scent of cowslips and may blossom around us – very different from tonight’s hoary gloom and the ceaseless, relentless wind. We hardly knew how happy we were during that tender time. Oh, yes, we did; oh, yes, indeed, indeed we did.
