The Golden Unicorn

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  Then, as an afterthought, I considered that I might have thrown out some of my own notes, and I fished the wad out of the basket to flick through the pages. Handwriting across the sheets arrested my attention, and I felt a shock of recognition that was half dread, half triumph.

  So this was where Stacia had hidden the pages torn from Alice’s notebook—here in my own baggage, where no one else was likely to find them. My cousin Stacia had left me a legacy, after all. When I’d packed the last time, before the trip to Montauk, I had packed more neatly and hadn’t touched the side pocket.

  I forgot that the afternoon was getting on, and that I had a long drive in stormy weather into New York. When I’d flipped on the lamp beside the armchair, I dropped into it and began to smooth the rumpled pages out upon my knees. Now I would be given the answers. Now I would know.

  For just an instant, the realization frightened me and I wondered if I wanted that much to know. Only moments before I had been sure that I wanted to know nothing, but only to get away. Yet now that I held these Pandora’s pages in my hands, I knew I would have to read them.

  Alice’s last story had never been finished—that little allegory about the Princess Anabel. Instead, swiftly scrawled sentences changed into diary form—or at least the form of a statement. My mother had poured out her thoughts and fears and triumphs in this last writing.

  They’re all here now—John, Judith, Herndon. Lawrence has sent his troops to bring me home. But this time I have the power to bargain—now that I can give him the heir he craves. Now I can make him pay for what he wants and for all the earlier humiliation he has made us suffer.

  I’ve told John there will be no divorce. He’s read in my eyes what I feel toward him, and he knows I won’t give in. He’s a fool, of course. Judith has had her fling, and she has already gone back to Herndon. John hasn’t faced that yet. He doesn’t know what I know—that Judith is already carrying Herndon’s child. For safety, mine has been born out of the country. Judith’s a little afraid of me now, but she’s too late—because I have my baby first. The first Rhodes heir. A darling, beautiful little girl named Anabel. Anabel, to spite them all. I want her to be a Kemble, not a Rhodes, and she will grow up having everything Lawrence wouldn’t give John and me.

  Other measures have been taken. I’ve told Herndon about John and Judith. He will forgive her, but I wanted to make sure he knew the truth. John, he will never forgive. And of course none of them will forgive me. They all hate me now. But I’m the strong one—I’m the one who will win. Money, power, and eventually a heritage of wealth for my Anabel.

  As a further precaution, all this is being set down. If anything happens to me, perhaps Anabel will read it one day.

  I paused in following the words, feeling as sick as when I had seen that painting of Judith’s upstairs. Alice had been no better than the rest of them. Even Herndon could sacrifice integrity, loyalty, decency, when it came to protecting Judith.

  There was still more and I forced myself to read on. She had scrawled dates in the margins of her entries, and this one was two days after the first.

  I’m glad Olive Asher is here with me. She is the palace guard now, since she has never liked the Rhodes or approved of William’s loyalty to old Lawrence, our resident tyrant. So she stays with me and tends the baby and watches.

  In the morning, when it’s warm enough, I like to go for a swim, and Olive stays at a window, or sometimes comes down to the beach with me, bringing Anabel. Today the baby has a cold so Olive will remain here to nurse her while I swim. But she will still look out a window from time to time and watch.

  Here I turned to a new sheet and came upon a hole—a tiny oblong that had been deliberately cut in the paper. Before she had hidden these pages in my bag, Stacia must have taken the trouble to delete a name with scissors—the one name that mattered most. Alice’s words went on after the blank.

  —is down on the beach this morning. But I’m not afraid. I’m a better swimmer than any of them—and Olive will look out from her window. So I’ll have my dip as usual. Let any of them threaten me, if they dare!

  Good-bye, my little Anabel—I’ll come back to you soon.

  But she had not come back to me, and no one had noticed the pages in the back of her book of fairy tales until it had fallen into Stacia’s hands. Strong swimmer or no, Alice had died in the water—and Judith had taken care to see that her own child would inherit the fortune Lawrence meant to leave to his firstborn grandchild. A precaution she had come later to regret.

  Revulsion was like a gripped fist just under my ribs and I didn’t know whether it would ever go away. All my life long I would remember this moment of revelation, and wish it had never come to me. Because now, staring at Alice’s words traced across the paper in my hands, I knew the truth—just as Stacia had known and tried in some way to use that truth to satisfy her own cruel twist of mind. I knew who had been down on the beach that morning; when Alice had gone swimming, and who had followed Stacia along the sand when she had carried that box of dolls’ heads down to the water’s edge.

  It was time to act. I knew that I must go to Evan with mv knowledge. But first, surely, I must be absolutely certain I was right. I needed time to think, to decide upon so terrible an action as I must now take. Yes—that was best. Flight first, for my own safety—though there was no particular danger for me unless my knowledge was discovered. I would leave, nevertheless, and go back to New York. I would get Evan to come to me there. How could I tell him the terrible truth here in this house?

  If I was seeking excuses to wait, I didn’t admit this to myself. The storm sounded louder now, howling and rattling windows, but I ignored it. The notebook pages were easily refolded and returned to the side pocket of the flight bag, where I’d found them. I zippered the case shut, managed with some difficulty to pack the rest of my belongings in the suitcase and force the lid down so I could lock it. When I’d pulled on my coat and tied on a rain bonnet, I made a last survey of the room, opening drawers, to make sure I’d left nothing behind.

  Something rattled in one drawer as I pulled it open, and the doll’s head Stacia had left there looked up at me, its eyes clicking open at the movement—a horrid reminder of sights that would always haunt me. In the next drawer lay the scrimshaw tooth Nan had given me, and I stood staring down at it, considering something that hadn’t occurred to me until now. What if the name that belonged in that slot—? Hastily I took the scrimshaw from the drawer and put it on the bureau, put the doll’s head beside it, wanting never to see either of them again. Now I had all the more reason to wait, because now I couldn’t be sure. There was still another possibility.

  I picked up my bags and went into the hall, to find Judith coming down the attic stairs.

  “You’re not leaving in this storm?” she cried.

  I could hardly bear to look at her, and I merely said I was, and went quickly ahead. I could hear someone playing the piano in the living room when I came down, and as the music drifted up to me I recognized the lullaby I’d heard Stacia play when she’d sat at that piano. It was a ghostly, haunting sound, and a heartbreaking sound as well, pouring out notes of pain. Not a lullaby for a child’s peaceful sleep, but music filled with hurt and longing.

  When I reached the foot of the stairs, I went quietly to the living room and looked in. My father sat at the piano and his face was as sad as the music that followed his fingers. I couldn’t bear the way he looked. Perhaps my emotion was partly a sense of abandonment toward him that I didn’t want to feel. He had never invited me to be a daughter, so why should I feel that I ought to do something to help him? He had brought his own isolation upon himself, and I owed him nothing. I turned away to pick up my bags and carry them to the front door.

  Judith had come down a few steps and stood on the stairs watching me. I think she must have known that she couldn’t stop me from going out that door.

  The storm batter
ed the house with a force of wind that shook the walls, and I stood for another moment, bracing myself to face what waited for me outside. Then I reached and pulled open the door.

  18

  The roar and thrust of the storm hurled itself upon me. Tree branches thrashed as the wind howled through them, and rain came slashing in upon me in horizontal sheets, blinding and soaking me as I stood in the open doorway.

  Behind me, Judith cried out, and at the same instant Herndon came running up the steps to push me back into the house and slam the door behind him, so that some of the tumult died away.

  He saw my bags as he stood shaking rain from his slicker, wiping it from his face.

  “Where do you think you’re going, Courtney?” he demanded. “You can’t possibly go out there now.”

  “I’m going back to New York,” I told him. “And I am leaving now.”

  “Don’t be absurd,” he said. “There’s a hurricane out there. The edge of it has already hit New York, and it’s running east. I just heard a broadcast. You’d have to drive straight into it and you’d meet worse than this before you got there.”

  I made a last effort to escape and my voice rose shrilly. “But I must go! I want to leave now. If it gets too bad, I’ll take shelter on the way. I—I don’t want to stay in this house any longer.”

  “It’s already bad. It was all I could do to get home.” Herndon took the bags firmly from my hands and set them down near the wall. John had left the piano to come to the living-room door.

  Herndon continued to talk to me with less patience than usual. “What’s the matter with you, Courtney? Why this sudden urgency to leave? It would be insane to go out there now. We’ve closed the bank and sent everyone home. You can’t go.”

  There was nothing to do but give in. Above me on the stairs, Judith spoke to her husband.

  “While you’re still wet, will you bring Tudor inside? He can’t be left outdoors in this.”

  “I’ll get him,” Herndon said. “In the meantime, where is Asher? Hasn’t anyone been listening to the broadcasts? We’ve got to shutter the house as quickly as possible— get ready for the storm.”

  They forgot me then. Herndon went outside, and Evan came out of the library to help. I left my bags in the hall, feeling useless in this emergency, while the others went to work knowing what to do. Back in my room, I tried to take stock of where I stood now. I was going to be all right, of course. No one knew what I had discovered, and there was no one to threaten me, now that Stacia was gone. Stacia, who had loved storms, would never see this one.

  I sat in my room while the wind roared and clattered and shook the house. I waited in its emptiness, with only the sinister doll’s head and a scrimshaw tooth for company—both reminders of possible danger. When the afternoon grew dark, I turned on lights. When the lights went out, I sat in darkness. I felt too thoroughly sickened by the things I had learned to be afraid of a mere lack of light. Even when the house trembled and shuddered under the impact of the wind, even when I heard shingles clattering on the roof, I didn’t care. A storm—even a hurricane—was nothing compared with the tumult of horror and anxiety that churned inside me. Ethan Rhodes had built The Shingles to stand against storms, and it was not the assault on the house that frightened me.

  When a lull came in the tumult outside, it was almost a shock. It was as though all the crashing and buffeting had become the normal thing, so that I had grown accustomed to it. Now what was this? Surely not the end of the storm, but perhaps the edge of the eye—that space of time at the center before we met the other side of the circle, and winds started hurtling in the opposite direction.

  At the window I could peer out at a cloud-torn sky. Miraculously, there was a glimpse of moon—a moon still full, though slightly on the wane. It wavered before my eyes, vanished behind clouds, emerged again with a shadow across it. I stared, unbelieving, as the form of a unicorn took shape for an instant, then shredded into blown strips as the bright sphere vanished.

  With my fingers on the pendant at my throat, I stepped back from the window. Not the Rhodes’ unicorn moon! I had no wish to see that and be doomed. I was already frightened enough. Of course it had been only my haunted imagination that had created the illusion.

  All track of time was lost to me, and I didn’t know the hour until Helen Asher came upstairs to fetch me. She held a flashlight and murmured over my sitting there in the dark.

  “There are candles in the bureau, miss,” she said. “But you’d better come downstairs now. Cook’s gone home long ago, but Asher and me have got together a cold meal. It’s late, so come along now, miss.” She was cajoling, as if to a child.

  I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to sit at the table, knowing what I did—knowing that perhaps two of those I sat with knew very well what the third had done. I was afraid too lest by some sign I didn’t intend I should give away my knowledge. I didn’t want to remember that I had ever seen that moon.

  There was no help for me, however. Downstairs there were candles in the dining room, sending long shadows up the walls, smoking as gusts swept through the room—in spite of shuttered windows. The storm was in full voice again. I looked into no face but Evan’s as I sat down at the table, and he regarded me sternly.

  “Herndon says you were trying to leave in this storm, Courtney. What idiocy! Wait until it’s over and I’ll drive you in, now that the police don’t need you here any longer.”

  I hoped it wouldn’t be too late for me by the time the storm was over. But that was foolish, of course. No one knew. I must hold onto that belief. Stacia had hidden Alice’s words well, though someone had searched her room for them. If I had found them, I would be expected to say something—wouldn’t I? Isn’t that what would be believed? My very silence was protection.

  Just as we finished the meal of cold meats, cheese, and fruit, a battery radio informed us reassuringly that most of the storm would pass well out to sea, and that the wind velocity was not as great as with some hurricanes of the past. The words seemed cold comfort in the face of the way we were once more being beaten by the elements.

  Asher came in to report that the phones were out, and Evan rose from the table.

  “If the phones are gone, so we can’t reach her, I’m going down to the gatehouse to stay with Nan. She shouldn’t be alone through all this, if she can’t call for help.”

  I wanted to cry out to Evan not to leave, that I needed him too, but of course I couldn’t. He was right to go to Nan. A feeling that what would be would be, was growing in me. It was as though all my life had been building toward this moment, toward this revelation that had come to me, and I knew now that I couldn’t run away from it. Even to run as far as Nan’s might put me in danger. I would have to stay and sit out the storm that had broken upon us from the skies, and then I would have to face the inner storm. My destiny lay under this roof. I was a Rhodes by blood, and a Kemble too, and there must be no more secrecy. As soon as Evan came back, I would tell him what I knew, show him Alice’s pages. But until that moment I could only mark time.

  When the others rose from the table, I rose with them. They had been talking among themselves, paying little attention to me, for which I was thankful. Even though they all knew my identity now as Alice’s child and John’s, I was still an outsider, and they could overlook my presence easily enough.

  Accustomed by now to the continued roar and buffeting, I went into the hall and picked up my bags to carry them back to my room. I’d borrowed a flashlight from Asher, and I would light some candles and wait for the hurricane hours to pass. In the meantime, I would have my flight bag with its contents in my possession, where I could watch it.

  Herndon and Judith went to their room, and I went to mine. When I looked down the dark hall, I could see them sitting before a fire, and quite cozy together, Judith talking animatedly. I wondered if she was telling her husband about that dreadful portrait of Stacia
she had painted. I went into my room, found candles where Helen had said I would, and set them about in a cheerful number. Except that they cast an eerie glow that did not cheer me. More than once, I winced as wind slammed against the house, and set the shadows quivering. I tried hard to be still, so that the beating of my heart would slow its tumult.

  There was no danger—none. Not yet. My heart didn’t need to thump like this.

  Once I got up to open the zipper bag and feel in the side pocket for Alice’s pages to reassure myself. That was when everything crashed in upon me, and I knew that danger was now. The pages were gone, and now I knew which of my two suspicions was correct. Danger did not lie in the direction of the gatehouse—it was here, under this roof.

  When I had been downstairs, I must have revealed my fright, my urgency to escape, so that one person had been alerted—and had looked into that available flight bag standing in the hallway. Now it was known that I knew—and there was no reason to trust me to be silent. Nor could I trust any of those three—not the one who was guilty, or the two who had kept silent all these years, and were keeping silent still.

  One thing I knew—I must not stay here alone. With any one of them I might be in danger and without protection. No matter how fierce the storm, I must go out in it and try to reach Nan’s shop, where Evan was staying with her. Only there could I find safety. If he had braved the storm, so must I.

  With hands that had a tendency to shake, I managed to pull on my coat again and tie the plastic hood over my head. Then I opened the door cautiously and used my flashlight down the hall. Herndon’s and Judith’s door was closed, and the storm hid any possible sound of voices, or any noises I might make.