‘Splendid! Splendid!’ he called out eventually. ‘Read this, Sharrocks.’
He turned to the messenger.
‘You have arrived at the exact moment. Well done indeed my fine fellow. You have brought me the best news you could. Guard, find some food for this man.’ Then, almost to himself he muttered, ‘…if you wait an hour or so you can have some of Lord Dunbeath’s cooked goose.’
He lifted his whip again and the troop moved out with L’Arquen at its head, still chuckling loudly at his orders.
Chapter 32
It was now dawn and as the storm blew itself out, a fine, early summer’s day broke gently over the length of the bay. A pale light shone on the surface of the sea and it began to calm itself from the wild lunacy of the previous night and into a foamy, apologetic saneness.
But there was no calmness in Dunbeath. For the thousandth time, he swung his beautiful telescope across the open waves and then downwards towards the shoreline. He now carefully worked his way along every foot of the great sandy crescent.
Towards the Dunbeaton end of the beach a large boulder lay embedded in the shore, close to the water’s edge. It was the enormous stone that the villagers had used to secure the line from the Schwarzsturmvogel all those months ago. It towered in front of the long line of dunes and as Dunbeath inched the telescope’s image along its base he stopped abruptly as he saw a tiny fragment of cloth flapping from behind it in the breeze. It was black. He focused again for a closer view. The wind swung round and the cloth turned over, flicked by a sudden gust. The other side was white.
With a strangled cry Dunbeath dropped the telescope and hurled out of the door, flinging himself down the great tower’s spiral staircase.
* * *
The troop galloped on. Two miles had passed and L’Arquen urged his horse on, his face set with anger and determination.
* * *
Dunbeath threw open the castle’s front door and ran outside onto the entrance area. He turned frantically to the right to where a flight of stone steps took him down to the lower level and so out onto the beach.
L’Arquen’s two sentries, still huddled under the canvas cover they’d used to escape the worst of the storm, jumped to their feet as they saw him. They now stood in confused indecision as Dunbeath began to sprint towards the beach.
‘That’s him, isn’t it?’ said one urgently. ‘That’s the earl. I’m sure of it. I’ve seen him through the telescope when I’ve been on watch. What’s he doin’ here? How did he get past us? Quick, you’d better ride back to Craigleven and tell them that he’s somehow got into the castle. Tell them he’s gone down to the shore. I’ll see where he’s going, but I’m going to stay here and watch out unless the German’s here as well.’
The other trooper sprinted to his horse and leapt on it, galloping down the land bridge and out onto the Wick turnpike.
He’d ridden about three miles when he saw the troop approaching fast towards him.
‘Colonel L’Arquen, sir!’ he shouted, swinging his horse round to ride alongside his commanding officer, ‘Lord Dunbeath was in the castle all the time! He’s just come out and he’s running along the beach. Trooper Kingsley is watching out for the German in case his lordship’s trying to distract us away from the castle.’
L’Arquen gave no answer. He ignored the man and rode on, staring blankly ahead, spurring his horse forward.
* * *
Dunbeath had reached the boulder. As he rounded it he saw the boat cloak flat on the wet sand, stretched out by the receding tide. Then he saw Zweig’s head as he lay on his front, his face to one side, his eyes open. Dunbeath stared at him, hardly able to make sense of what he was seeing. For long seconds he studied Zweig’s huge frame and then the calm and accepting features on his unlined face. He saw only peace there. Gone was the man’s unquenchable determination, gone the great will to win. Instead, there was only a placid smoothness and he knew in that second that the captain had looked on death with the same certainty that he’d looked on life.
Dunbeath reached a shaking hand down to close the staring eyes. He moved the cloak slightly to wrap it more tightly around Zweig’s body, an absurd wish sweeping over him to keep his friend warm against the chill of the early morning. He pulled at the cloak, and then, from the edge of the cloth, he saw a curl. A dark curl.
Frenzied now, he levered the great body over onto its back. Then he saw Sophie, her arms wrapped around Zweig’s waist and her face on his chest, her wet hair streaming away, dragged there by the furious pull of the surf.
Dunbeath stared again, his eyes moving wildly from one body to another. He looked at Sophie once more and mumbled to her, calling her name, seeing her but seeing her somehow different, fascinated by a look on her face that he’d never seen before. She was smiling but with a beautiful, unaffected radiance, completely at peace. She was in the arms of the man she loved and with whom she had happily died.
Dunbeath bent over them, utterly absorbed in the picture before him, transfixed by the scene rather than grief stricken, scrutinizing it minutely, taking in what he was seeing and trying desperately to understand it.
How strange are the ways of the mind. From nowhere came words he must have seen on a gravestone somewhere, buried until now but flung forward in his shock.
‘Modest as morn, as midday bright,
Gentle as evening, cool as night.’
Gentle as evening, he thought again, staring, brokenheartedly at her beautiful smile.
Suddenly his head dropped forward as if he’d been violently struck from behind. His mouth drew back in his pain and he twisted to see what could have hit him with such a sickening weight.
He straightened and turned. Next to him, quite still and making no attempt to retreat, stood James McLeish. An ancient, fish-gutting knife was in his hand. Dunbeath stared at him, confused.
Who was this man?
He looked with amazement at the knife that dangled from James’s fingers. It was so old and ruined that whole sections of the blade had rusted away.
Even in those terrible moments, Dunbeath’s mind was turning.
He’d been stabbed with that. That had to be his blood on the blade. Was he finished? Could a second’s work with that thing have ended him? Could it really have cancelled out the centuries of gain, the Urquhain wealth, his great learning, the Dunbeath earls? Had this man done for them?
James stood in front of him. Now he was moving from foot to foot. The muscles in his face worked incessantly. His features passed manically from defiant to fearful, apologetic to loathing, his face twisting and contorting as a mass of half completed thoughts flashed through his deranged mind.
Was he trying to say something? Dunbeath wondered, looking at him closely with a strange, detached coolness. But who was he?
Finally James’s agitation came to a climax. He flung the knife sideways into the surf and then stared at Dunbeath’s bent figure. Now he was openly hostile, challenging the earl to respond.
There was something about the gesture that took Dunbeath back to another time and he suddenly remembered a moonlit night, many months ago, in his observatory. Yes, it came back to him now - this was the person that had pulled his brother off the parapet.
Dunbeath was pleased. It all made sense; the boy was completing the circle. He swayed as he peered more closely at his rabid twitching. He remembered him well now. He looked at him with interest, quite calmly and without anger. His vision was blurring, but he knew what he wanted to do.
He smiled and spoke in a tone of the softest resignation.
‘Thank you.’
Then Dunbeath turned and dropped to his knees. With a final, agonising effort he lifted himself to gaze down at Sophie Kant and Alexis Zweig for the last time. Now he could at last do what he had never been able to do in life. Now they could be together. He fell forward, his arms outstretched. And they lay together, entwined, united finally in the love they all, in their different ways, had wished for.
This was how L�
��Arquen found them a minute later. The troop slowed and he gazed down from his horse with distaste at the three bodies. He saw that damned earl; good, he was dead. That had saved him a lot of trouble. And the German captain, too. God knows what was going on there. Then he looked at Sophie. What a waste that was. Had he ever seen a more beautiful woman?
His mouth tightened and he turned his horse’s head. High above, a screech of gulls wheeled, screaming in the morning air. The surf pounded on the shore. L’Arquen was about to ride off when he turned to his major.
‘Sharrocks, bring McLeish in for questioning. I’d be interested in finding out what all this was about.’
He made to go but then turned back with a further thought.
‘And have the men go to the village and find some shovels. Get them busy on this.’
He gave a slight grunt and spurred his horse back up the beach.
Chapter 33
The thin sunlight continued to falter and flicker over the coast all that day but by the late afternoon even this half-hearted effort was losing its struggle with the dark clouds that piled up out to sea, waiting their turn to sweep in with yet more rain. A deep gloom now began to settle over Dunbeaton Bay.
David Hume stood where he’d been for so long at the observatory window. For some minutes he’d been watching the troop of dragoons as it travelled slowly along the turnpike in the distance, but with mounting dismay he’d seen that it now wheeled right and was turning down towards the land bridge and the castle. At its head he could just make out L’Arquen, languid and unhurried, a lazy arrogance showing in every curve and mannerism of the way he rode. Even his horse seemed to be deliberately slowing its pace, dawdling as if it regarded the road as its natural possession.
Before long a loud knock at the front entrance echoed around the great hall and Hume gave a deep sigh and stirred himself at last to descend the tower stairs. Eventually he reached the door and pulled hard on the huge brass handle. The failing light fell into the hall and he saw L’Arquen in profile, framed by the open door, gazing sideways down to the long crescent of the beach, pointedly pretending to be unaware of Hume’s presence.
‘Colonel L’Arquen,’ said Hume, tensely. ‘Yes?’
L’Arquen dropped his head and turned slowly to face Hume.
‘Ah, Mr Hume. There you are. No housekeeper, eh? Answering the door yourself, I see. What have you done with the old biddy?’ He looked balefully at Hume’s waistcoat as it stretched over his stomach and drawled again at him. ‘Eaten her, eh?’
Hume sighed once more and L’Arquen pushed past him uninvited and walked up the staircase towards the salon. Hume lumbered along behind him, wheezing at the effort, and followed the colonel into the room. He was waved towards one of the sofas.
‘Sit yourself there, my good sir,’ L’Arquen ordered brusquely, setting down a leather attaché case on a table. ‘So. We must discuss how matters progress now.’
He looked coldly down at Hume for some seconds without speaking. Then he moved to stand with his back to the dead fire.
‘Not much cheer here, eh, Mr Hume? Not much here and not much in what we found down there on the beach either.’
Hume said nothing, only too aware that the colonel would have an order of business.
‘Well, sir,’ L’Arquen said at last. ‘You will know that Lord Dunbeath is dead. I’ve no doubt that the old bat will have told you that. Yes, we found him dead with two others – and we found a sad little tale behind it all too. But I imagine you are already aware of most of it.’
L’Arquen looked at Hume as if gauging what response he was getting and then continued smoothly on.
‘Lord Dunbeath was a traitor to the crown, Mr Hume. We know that now. Some months ago it seems he made contact with representatives of Prince Charles Edward Stuart and agreed to bring the Clan Urquhain in for this so-called Pretender, the absurd Bonnie Prince Charlie. Some of Dunbeath’s people then travelled to Königsberg in Eastern Prussia where they commissioned a Captain Alexis Zweig to bring gunpowder and arms to supply their needs. It appears this Zweig missed his landfall when he reached Scotland and his ship blew up after it foundered in a severe gale back in early March. I think you know much of the rest. Zweig somehow survived the wrecking and kept low in the village where he was sheltered by a family called McLeish. Zweig used their son – a self-confessed Jacobite sympathiser – to approach Lord Dunbeath about payment for the lost cargo. This man, James McLeish, was sent away by Dunbeath who refused to countenance paying for what he considered to be a failed delivery. You probably know that these Urquhain are famous for their hard bargaining.
‘Zweig became incensed at this and forced the earl to deal with him by sitting out on the dunes, gambling that Dunbeath wouldn’t let him risk attracting our attention. There was a German doxy with the captain when he arrived …’ L’Arquen’s face tightened as a sudden fury took hold but he quickly got on top of himself, ‘…do you remember Lord Dunbeath telling me she was a maid from Inverness, Mr Hume? I seem to recall you said nothing to disabuse me of that twaddle. Anyway, she was here in the castle with you all and she must have mediated when Dunbeath needed to get to London for a meeting he had to attend. Some kind of agreement was arrived at for Zweig to sail him there and, when the two of them returned, this Zweig rowed off yesterday with the girl. But the boat they’d been given was smashed in the storm last night.
‘The girl was dead when Lord Dunbeath discovered them on the shore this morning. She had drowned but Zweig was still very much alive. He accused the earl of sending them to their deaths and a struggle broke out between the men. Zweig was much the stronger man and it didn’t take him long to have Dunbeath by the throat and to throttle him to death.’
David Hume looked incredulously at the languorous figure that stood before him with his eyelids drooping, reeling off such unashamed lies.
‘Good God, L’Arquen! What fantasy is this that you’re weaving?’
L’Arquen stopped him with a waft of his hand.
‘But, I haven’t finished, my dear sir. I beg you, please let me go on. I told you that this fisherman, the McLeish boy, supported Dunbeath’s Jacobite madness and he’d made his way out onto the beach when he saw the men fighting. He witnessed his leader being done to death by the German and he hurled himself on the man and stabbed him through the heart. Zweig died immediately.
Hume jumped to his feet, the force of his anger overcoming his great weight.
‘This is all a falsehood, L’Arquen, and you know it! Dunbeath was no traitor. And he had a great friendship for Zweig and the girl. Who has invented this deranged nonsense?’
There was a long silence while the colonel looked coolly at Hume.
‘You seem to know a lot about it all, Mr Hume, if I may say so. You may be somewhat rash to be admitting too much in my view. But let me set that aside for a minute and tell you how we arrived at all this. You see, my troop was on the beach as this little drama was playing itself out and McLeish was taken back with us to Craigleven to tell us what had occurred. He readily admitted to one of my troopers, a man called Williams, that he had joined the rebels and that Lord Dunbeath was the leader of the Caithness uprising. He then told us about how he had avenged his master’s death.’
Hume took a step forward, his florid features a lurid red, twisted in disbelief.
‘Where is the evidence for this? Let me see the bodies at once. And I wish to speak to this James McLeish. I shall not let this calumny about Lord Dunbeath be accepted, L’Arquen.’
‘Sadly, Mr McLeish took it upon himself to try and run off after his discussions with Trooper Williams. I’m afraid that he was shot by my men while he was attempting to escape. As to the earl and the other bodies, they were buried on my orders. This is as it should be. My authority allows it. You would require an Act of Parliament to have them disinterred now.’
The two men stood staring at each other. A faint smile flickered over L’Arquen’s lips. The truth was beginning to dawn on Hume.
/> ‘What is to become of Lord Dunbeath’s property and fortune, colonel? I believe he was the last of his line.’
‘He was a proven traitor, Mr Hume. I’d be obliged if you would remember that. His lands and houses, along with everything he owned, will all now pass to the crown. As you know, it is the way. The law is quite clear about treachery of this kind and hands down the maximum punishment for it. The possessions of those who betray their country are always immediately forfeited.’
‘I see. And you, colonel? No doubt your snout will also be in the trough?’
L’Arquen gazed at Hume, quite untouched by the insult, his eyes saturated with power.
‘I do believe there is a mechanism for such things, Mr Hume. Possibly a minor pourboire will reach me. Such matters as this would rank as a military prize. But I dare say it won’t amount to more than twenty percent of the whole estate. Perhaps a house or two as well, given by a grateful government of course, for stamping out such a dangerous rebellion.’
An overwhelming urge to vomit swept over David Hume. He felt his face burn.
‘I shall fight you, L’Arquen. I shall fight you every minute of every day. This is nothing but theft. You have no evidence that Lord Dunbeath was a traitor. And I know that he was not. I shall bring a case against you for this fraudulence of yours. I shall drag you through the courts and everyone will see you for the liar that you are.’
‘No evidence, my dear sir?’ murmured L’Arquen. ‘Of course I have evidence.’
He moved to pick up the attaché case and took some pages out from it.
‘Why, here is Mr McLeish’s evidence written out in full. Here is his mark under the statement together with the signatures of two witnesses. He made the confession before his unfortunate attempt to escape.’
For the first time since he had arrived L’Arquen now smiled broadly.
The Prisoner's Dilemma Page 35
