"Would you care for brandy?" he asked over his shoulder, pouring a snifter, then pouring a second without waiting for her reply.
"No, thank you," she said.
He looked up, surprised. Did she only imbibe at night? "Are you certain?"
"I'm certain."
He shrugged, lifted the snifter and welcomed the strong liquid. It had a clearing effect on his head. He took the brandy back to the bureau, sat in the chair, and assuming that she had at last digested the contents of the letter, asked a direct question. "Your opinion?"
"I was . . . hoping," she began, "for more."
"As were we all," he conceded. "But I doubt if there's more to be learned—anywhere."
She bent her head to one side, rubbing her forehead as though to contain or soothe a pain. "Mr. Johnson mentions the Lakes . . ."
"A wild-goose chase, if you ask me."
"We don't know for certain."
"Yet what's to be gained?"
She sat up on the edge of the window seat, a look of surprise on her face. "His identity, of course," she snapped, that same air of pa-
tronization in her manner which she frequently adopted when talking with him.
He loathed it, had endured it for ten years and found in that moment a peculiar inability to endure more. "We know his identity," he said harshly, leaning across the desk. "We may not care for it, but I do believe we know it."
She gave him a look of such intensity that with relish he moved to enlighten her. "Oh, he's Edward's son," he said lightly. "I've never doubted that from the first moment I laid eyes on him. And his mother is the whore, the sickly-looking creature who dragged him out here and who deposited him on our doorstep." He leaned back in the chair now, pleased with her stunned expression. "It's my opinion that the two are in alliance together. He is to milk us for all he can, then share the cream with her."
Pleased with himself, he concluded with a smile. "But it won't work. Two weeks ago I gave Rexroat instructions to put him in the odd-boy cellar, and to work the skin off him." Again he smiled. "Of course, I haven't checked within the last few days, but the boy may very well be gone as of this moment, our problem solved."
Suddenly she was on her feet, confronting him. "You had no right-"
"No right?" He smiled, pleased by her anger.
"What if Johnson finds proof, legitimate proof—"
"He won't."
"There are clues to go on . . ."
"Nothing that amounts to anything."
"They are . . . unexplored," she cried, her contempt for him visible in every angle of her face. Then, as though unable to abide his presence, she started angrily toward the door, turning her back on him as though he were a mere servant.
"Wait!" he shouted as she reached the door.
For a moment he wasn't certain whether she'd obey him or not, the door opening, her gray silk skirts billowing with the speed of her departure.
Then she stopped, her back still to him, the brief flare of anger over. In a sense he was sorry to see it go, though now with morbid fascination he dwelt on her heaving shoulders, a discernible lowering of her head, as though at the last minute she had remembered her role, and remembered equally how easy it was to defeat him with her passivity.
"Close the door," he commanded. Slowly she obeyed him and
turned at last to face him with what appeared to be supreme contempt
For a moment he stared at her with matching contempt. He saw her arms relaxed at her side, a pose of pure strength which he found literally unendurable. To destroy it in any manner that was necessary was now his goal. The young boy and the letter long since forgotten, he started slowly out from behind the bureau, warning himself in advance not to strike her. In the past, how richly she had received his blows, smiling at him even as her eyes had filled with tears.
No, it must be more this time, and suddenly he felt the winds of inspiration blowing. The fastidious atmosphere of the small library faded as he drew near to her, blood racing at the close view of her contemptuous indifference. Decency was only a word then, as without speaking he grasped her by the shoulders and violently pushed her to a position near the wall beside the door. He felt her stiffen at his touch, her eyes closed, the only visible sign of her fear.
"James," she whispered, "this is a . . . public room."
"I know the nature of the room," he said with a calmness he did not feel. Now he stood before her, his own anger in control. He'd at least learned that lesson from her in ten miserable years of marriage, that the victor of any match was always the one in control. Absorbed by his projection of her weak and weeping, he calmly ordered, "Get to your knees, madam."
"James, I-"
"To your knees," he repeated, stepping forward, placing his hands on her shoulders and forcing her down.
After her initial protest she did as she was told, as though at last it had dawned on her that they were fighting the same battle.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him. Incredibly, when she spoke, her voice was as firm and filled with purpose as though they were sitting opposite each other at tea. "The steward said you wanted to see me. I assumed it was to discuss the letter, the future of the boy. . ."
Stepping closer, he smiled. "We can discuss the boy if you wish, and the letter." One hand moved down to the front of his trousers. "You've expressed yourself quite openly," he went on, monitoring her face closely. "Clearly you harbor the opinion that I possess neither the skill nor the intelligence to deal with such a complex problem."
"No . . *
Though only whispered, the single word brought him incredible
delight as for the first time he saw her eyes open wide in clear terror.
"No, what?" He smiled, the buttons on his trousers undone at last. Now he hunched his shoulders and plunged his hand deep into the opening. "Do you mean, no, I don't understand the problem, or no, I'm not equipped to deal with it? Which?"
"No, please . . ." she gasped, and her lips, dried, apparently refused to form any more words. For a moment her eyes locked rigidly on his hand.
With what enthusiasm he watched her, the iron facade beginning to crumble as clearly she perceived his intention. In a last moment of consideration, he thought that all she had to do was weep and perhaps beg. All she had to do to spare herself the humiliation was to apologize for providing him with ten long years of unrelieved misery, to look up at him and concede that he was master, not with mere words, for she'd mouthed those false phrases before. No, now he wanted to see it in her face. Not once in his entire life had anyone ever looked upon him with that degree of fear which bespoke true power. Wasn't he entitled to it once?
Of course he was, though what he saw in her face was not fear. Intimidated and angered, he moved forward, with a sense of no turning back.
Then suddenly she pushed him away, struggling to her feet, her arms moving upward as though for protection. Taken by surprise, James at first dared to hope that perhaps she was on the verge of weeping, begging. But instead he saw her move quickly to the door, as though nothing at all had happened, as though she were quite accustomed to imposing her will upon his, without explanation.
Enraged, he started after her, and was just in the process of turning her about when she looked directly at him, her face revealing her fear, but her voice as contained as ever.
"You seem to be suffering a point of confusion, James. I am your wife, not one of your—"
He tightened his grip on her arm. "You will do as I say."
"I think not."
Again he tried to push her to her knees, but she stepped to one side, grasping the doorknob, the incongruity of a smile on her face. "You know as well as I that all I must do is lift my voice in a single cry of alarm and every watchman within earshot will come to my aid."
"They are my watchmen," he shouted, his anger and frustration blending.
"Are they?"
"They take their commands from me."
"Shall we test them?"
He
considered challenging her, then changed his mind. With trembling hands he restored himself and sank down into the chair behind the bureau, his sense of defeat still growing.
He watched as methodically she straightened herself. Then she gathered up the pages of the fallen letter and stood erect before him where he sat crumpled behind the bureau. Without looking at him, still concentrating on folding the letter, she spoke. "As you have suggested, James, I will attend to this. I fear that you are not yourself today and would recommend a long ride across the moors." At last she looked down on him, an expression filled with hate. "Tend to your hounds and horses. Leave everything else to me."
He had thought to answer, some obscene remark. But at the door she stopped. "I will take my leave now. I will respond to Morley Johnson myself. It is my wish that he make his journey, both to the Lakes as well as to Hadley Park."
Halfway out of the door, she stopped again. "Tend to yourself." She smiled. "You look quite undone."
And with that she was gone, closing the door behind her.
He sat for a moment, unmoving behind the bureau. The trembling started someplace deep inside him, a tidal wave of unspent rage cresting until at last it erupted, and leaning angrily forward, he grasped the near inkwell and hurled it against the closed door, hurled the quill after it, then the hourglass after that, then the blotter, each small and insignificant item striking with hollow reverberations against the closed door until at last the surface of the bureau was stripped, his childish rage spent and, exhausted, he crumpled upon the bureau, weeping.
Once outside the door, she saw the Great Hall in dim outline only, saw as through a mist two house stewards hurrying toward her, clearly summoned by the crashing of objects against the closed door behind her.
As the two approached, she drew herself up and knew that the tirade would not last long. It was a mere child inside the library, displaying a child's rage.
"My lady," murmured one of the stewards, gaping at the bombardment going on within the library. Then, as she had predicted, a silence fell.
"It's nothing," she soothed the two men, and without a word signaled to them both that no further inquiry was to be made.
Both good servants, they clearly understood and commenced a subtle retreat. Still she detained them, anxious to present a calm front. "A request, if you will," she began kindly. "Would one of you be so good as to go to the kitchen court and inform Mrs. Swan that I will be down in a quarter of an hour. If she'll have the books ready, I would appreciate it. And inform the servants that I will be in the house warden's office for three hours for the purpose of greeting them personally."
The stewards bobbed their heads, clearly appreciative of her ladyship's attention. The earlier disturbance coming from behind the library door forgotten, they bowed and started off in tandem across the Great Hall.
Then she was alone with an agony that could not be postponed much longer. She knew she possessed neither the strength nor the will to climb to the privacy of her third-floor chambers. Yet she also knew that she needed privacy as desperately as she'd ever needed it in her life. Thus she moved hurriedly along the outer corridor which skirted the Great Hall, heading toward the small cloakroom to the right of the central arch, a never-used chamber except on those occasions of large entertainments.
As she walked, the sickness continued to rise in her throat. She lifted her head and tried to draw a long breath. And just in time she reached out for the cloakroom door, jerked it violently open, slipped into its safe darkness and leaned over, vomiting.
It lasted for several moments, until there was nothing more to bring up, and still it continued in racking convulsions which left her eyes moist, her sides aching.
Shuddering, she leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. The one aspect of the incident that frightened her most was that she couldn't predict for certain what she would do if he made such a demand of her again.
Now she felt for the letter crumpled in her pocket and grasped it eagerly, as though seeing a lifeline. The young man. Edward's son. How she longed for a glimpse of that face.
She vowed then that before she slept that night, she would write to Morley Johnson. She still felt a strong compulsion to know the boy's true identity, though she hoped that the search would never end. Let Johnson search forever and find everything or find nothing. It mattered little. It was her firm intention to bring the boy up out
of the grim odd-boy cellar, to cleanse him, to dress him as handsomely as possible, to assign him to her son as friend and companion, and to assign him to herself as well.
In the excitement of the moment, she remembered fragments of Johnson's letter, ". . . the prostitute, Elizabeth . . . came pom the Lakes . . . a distinguishing mark on his chest in the form of d sear, in shape resembling the letter B . . ." In an instant of perception, she saw a clear image of Edward's face before her.
Astonishing, how strong she felt now. She felt surrounded by the very atmosphere of youth, so deeply familiar, and yet so legendary.
A quarter of an hour, she'd said. It had been that easily. Quickly she folded the letter from Morley Johnson and tucked it in her pocket.
Now with an excitement that she couldn't readily grasp, she hurried across the deserted Great Hall with a genuine sense of mission, smiling gently at the thought of how angry James would be tonight to see a young Edward seated at his table.
With immense relief John felt the rusted jagged metal cut through the bottom of his bare foot. For effect, he gave one sharp yell and grabbed the injured member, hopping about, doubly pleased to see his own blood oozing between his fingers.
At the end of the stables, he saw Samuel, the overseer, look up, pitchfork in hand. "What in the hell. . ." the old man shouted.
Now John feigned a collapse into the manure he'd heaped to one side. He twisted in the brown slime and groaned effectively, all the while keeping his eye on the thundering approach of the squat, square-built Samuel. As the man drew nearer, John closed his eyes as though suffering unbearable pain, although in truth he was praying silently, "Oh, God, let it work."
Since his arrival at Eden Castle, John had labored in a way that he'd not thought possible. Now his days commenced at a quarter past five, with the arrival of Samuel, the overseer, built like a block, with perpetually flaming cheeks and matching hair, when lantern in hand he'd rouse John from his pallet of straw in the odd-boy's cellar and lead him forth into the darkness of dawn.
Again he looked up, curious to see what was delaying Samuel, and saw the man still a distance away. Apparently the dictates of his kidneys took priority over his curiosity to see what fate had befallen his last odd-boy. Take your time, John thought. Give the blood a chance to flow.
In the interim, he again leaned back against the soiled straw and thought of that first morning, recalling the two minor shocks from which he had suffered. One, from the deep rumbling snores he'd heard all night coming from the cell across the way, he'd assumed that lying in darkness there was an army of odd-boys with whom he might share his plight. Hence his surprise that first morning when he'd seen a solitary figure stumbling up out of the night, a flat-faced, dull-eyed boy from Mortemouth named Maddon. Not that the boy had told him his name. Old Samuel had grunted introductions. In fact, if Maddon possessed the art of speech at all, he'd never once displayed the talent for John's benefit. Of course he could scream in an impressive manner. They all could attest to that after yesterday. But up until that tragic moment, poor Maddon had simply gone dumbly about his labors, exhibiting a passive acceptance.
Gingerly John examined his foot, the nerve endings beginning to throb most convincingly, the blood still flowing. With his free hand he reached out for a closer examination of the cooperative piece of metal; a piece of rusted banding of some sort, perhaps from an old wagon. No matter. It had accomplished the purpose.
As Samuel's piss continued to splatter into the hay, John closed his eyes and remembered the second shock of that first morning. He'd thought that the only way out f
rom his cell would be back up the narrow twisting staircase and through Aggie's delicious kitchen court And he'd felt certain that that surprise farewell kiss he'd given her would be good for some preferential treatment. And it would have been, if he only had been permitted to exit up the stairs and through the kitchen court.
But he wasn't. That first morning, Samuel had thrust a dark brown smelly smock and work trousers upon him, then had led the way in the opposite direction, lantern aloft, through a low narrow passageway designed for moles, not men, with poor dumb Maddon following behind, until at last they had emerged into the stableyard through an opening in the castle wall. As Samuel had dished up their morning ale, he'd informed John in clear terms that this and this alone was his access route both into and out of the castle.
"Odd-boys smell," Samuel had pronounced with a grin, and at that point John had not understood him. True understanding had come later that day. While he was still trying to keep down the vinegary ale, Samuel had thrust a brown rag filled with something lumpy into his hand and had announced "Luncheon." John had stuffed the brown rag into his smock in time to catch the heavy
wheelbarrow which Samuel had pushed toward him. Similarly armed, Maddon had led the way to a small shed near the comer of the castle wall, where John was informed of his duties.
Starting here at the shed where the emptyings of all the chamber pots in the castle were kept, stretching that long line up the hill, past the stables, past the cow barns, and farther up past the sheep-shearing sheds, John's duty, all day and well into the night, was to fill the wheelbarrow with dung, human and animal, it mattered not, and empty each load on the muck mountain at a distance of about a quarter of a mile away, where fertilizers were made for the fields of oats and barley, a satanic place of smells and flies and cut off from the rest of the estate by a natural rise of land.
That first day, John had lost count of the number of times he and Maddon had made the hideous trip up the hill and down, trying to keep the unwieldy load in balance, for if it spilled, it meant picking it up without benefit of shovel, and John's had spilled several times, and by noon that day, in the hot sun with the putrid odors causing him to gag, he, along with Maddon, had partaken of lunch, and with dung-encrusted fingers he'd opened the brown rag to find two rolls encrusted with green mold which nonetheless he'd bitten into eagerly, then spit out, vomiting, as he'd found the yeasty interior crawling with maggots. With watering eyes and burning throat, he'd watched, amazed, as with infinite patience Maddon had picked his rolls free of maggots, then with a self-satisfied grin had popped them into his mouth.
The Eden passion Page 8
