by Alys Clare
‘So the fragile little flower didn’t produce a son?’ he ventures after a moment.
‘Well, the first-born was a girl, and they named her Adeline. There were sons but they did not survive.’ Angus adopts a suitably mournful expression, shaking his head sadly. He shoots Felix a shrewd glance. ‘There’s my granny in her little cottage by the quay, producing a baby regular as the turn of the year and all twelve of them survive, while Madam lives up here with the likes of my aunt to wait on her every need and she manages but the two, Miss Adeline and the last-born. She’s still alive,’ he adds laconically.
Felix judges by his expression that he expects some sort of reaction to this. Impatient and barely listening, he murmurs, ‘Really?’ He is cross with himself, deeply regretting having come here, for it’s the MacKillivers he needs to know about, not these Stirlings. But then the two families were close, and there is this odd fact that the Band of Angels’s London club is called Stirling’s … Hoping this is relevant, Felix makes himself pay attention.
And over the next quarter of an hour he learns rather a lot about the last surviving Stirling.
Her name was Hortensia, she was headstrong, decidedly odd and, according to Angus’s great-aunt, she sensed her parents’ longing for a son. ‘But it was too late for that,’ Angus says, ‘for Madam was worn out and announced she wanted her own bedroom with a lock on the door.’
Felix notices how Angus Leckie’s eyes sparkle with salacious malice as he relates that juicy detail.
‘So young Hortensia, she gives them the next best thing and becomes a tomboy,’ Angus continues, ‘climbing trees, making catapults, tormenting cats and stealing food from the kitchens, and nobody can stop her playing with the boys, and she was far more courageous and adventurous than the lad who was her best friend.’ Angus smiles, his expression softening. ‘My aunt was her ally. She admired the little rascal’s spirit and many’s the time she saved the child from a beating.’ He gives a reminiscent sigh. ‘When she was eighteen she ran away,’ he goes on, ‘to London then to Paris, and she lived on a remittance provided by her father.’
‘I dare say he was glad to see the back of her,’ Felix suggests.
‘I dare say you’d be right,’ Angus responds.
‘What about the older sister?’ Felix still can’t see how this could be relevant, but nevertheless he asks. ‘Was she a rebel tomboy too?’
‘Miss Adeline? No, she was a prim little miss, mealy-mouthed and self-righteous, according to Auntie, and prinked herself up prettily when suitors began to call. She married a wealthy local landowner named William Featherwood and …’
Angus Leckie’s voice drones on – something about this Adeline having a son named Leonard, but Felix’s attention is wandering. Fatigue is combining with whisky on a virtually empty stomach, the battered old range is pumping out a surprising amount of heat, his eyelids are drooping and he is wondering what on earth he is doing here, listening to this tedious old man rambling on and on about people Felix has never heard of and in whom he has no interest. I came to find out about the MacKilliver twins, he thinks, and it seems I’ve failed.
He has had a wasted journey.
He wonders how soon he can leave.
Angus is still in full flow, droning on about how this Leonard Featherwood became a diplomat and settled in the French capital, how he married and had a daughter …
Felix dozes.
He is woken by Angus pouring more whisky into his mug. The old man seems to have forgotten about his guest. For the past quarter of an hour has been talking to himself.
‘The family name is Stirling,’ Felix says in the momentary lull, ‘and I understand that the MacKilliver twins belong to a London club of the same name, so I’m wondering if—’
But Angus hasn’t heard.
‘Like I said, they called the child Mary,’ he says. ‘Beautiful little angel she was, and everybody loved her, and when she was only a year old she was brought here to the Abbey to spend the summer with her grandmother. Miss Adeline had been widowed and was lonely and sad, and it wasn’t wise for a child of a year old to endure the heat of a Paris summer.’
Something has entered Angus’s tone; something that, despite himself, makes Felix compelled to sit up and pay attention.
‘What happened?’ he asks.
‘Cholera happened,’ Angus says succinctly. ‘Oh, not here – no need for that fearful face! It was in the filth and the furious summer heat of Paris.’ Angus spits out the name of the City of Light as if that beautiful, sophisticated city was the worst London slum. ‘The epidemic took the rich and the poor alike, and rumour had it that it crept into Leonard Featherwood’s household via some maid who’d picked up the deadly sickness visiting her kin. Wiped her out, and Leonard and his wife too.’
Drawn into the tale, Felix says, ‘What happened to Mary?’
‘Mary was saved.’ Angus rolls pious eyes up to the ceiling, as if thanking heaven for God’s mercy. If he can see heaven in that filthy mess of dust-laden cobwebs, Felix reflects, suppressing a whisky-heated belch, he deserves a round of applause. ‘Poor little child was not old enough to understand what she had lost. Miss Adeline didn’t have much truck with infants but she did her duty, none can deny it.’ He looks as if he’d quite like to.
‘The child was luckier than many,’ Felix says.
Angus nods in agreement. ‘Aye, that she was. She was happy here with her grandmother Adeline, and the mistress grew fond of the lass.’ He sits back in his chair, rubbing his hands over his face as if giving it a vigorous wash. Then, looking at Felix once more, he says, ‘She was never the same, the old mistress, when young Mary married and was swept off to India – Lucknow, or some such outlandish place full of foreigners.’ He waves a dismissive hand, wiping out the entire subcontinent at a stroke.
‘Did she not approve of Mary’s choice?’
‘No,’ Angus replies. ‘Then Mary had her little girl out there, so the mistress couldn’t chuck it under the chin and bestow a silver mug.’ He smiles, but there is little humour in it. ‘Then of course she did meet the child, because she was brought here to the Abbey by that beanpole of a nursemaid with the peculiar name, and it was for the mistress to sort out the problem, and she wrote to Miss Hortensia and she came up with an answer. Then she – the mistress – took ill and died, and I reckon she was missing the child – she was Mary’s daughter when all said and done, even if she lacked her mother’s beauty and grace – and she … and she …’ Angus’s eyes turn to Felix and he is clearly confused. ‘What was I saying?’ His words are slurring badly now, and the effects of a large intake of whisky appear to be catching up with him.
Felix edges forward on his uncomfortable chair, preparing to stand up and quietly slip away. Angus is staring round at the dirty, dilapidated room, a frown on his face. ‘It’s all going to ruin since the old mistress died,’ he says mournfully. ‘Nobody cares, nobody comes here any more, there’s only Miss Hortensia and she’s far, far away in the south on that little island and she won’t come back.’
Little island.
Felix’s heartbeat races as something he hadn’t thought of before suddenly strikes him.
‘She said as much when mistress wrote to consult her about a school for the child, she said she’d not set foot up here in the Abbey and there was no shaking her, even though the mistress told her she was ailing and …’
But Felix has stopped listening.
FOURTEEN
Lily goes to church on Sunday. She wears her SWNS uniform, leaving off the apron and exchanging her nurse’s veil for the black bonnet. She is so firmly in the role of assistant matron that it does not occur to her to wear anything else.
She walks to church in the obedient two-by-two crocodile of Shardlowes pupils and staff, and her companion is Miss Blytheway. While the chatty games mistress comprehensively explains the rules of Wave-me-Free, Lily notices a figure lurking beside the churchyard wall and identifies the tall, rangy woman in navy gabardine she spotted
when she first arrived at Shardlowes. The woman is intent on Marigold Dunbar-Lea.
The service is not too long, the hymn singing is excellent and led by an enthusiastic choir under a choirmaster who extracts the best from his group of villagers, and Lily is quite sorry when it is over.
Back at the school there is a telegram waiting for her but on ripping it open she discovers that it is not, as she expects, from Felix. It is very brief – a time, a place, two initials – and, Lily hopes, would reveal very little to anybody but her.
She can barely eat her lunch for the combination of excitement and fear. Why is he here? What has happened? And if it’s so important, why can’t Felix come in person?
She sets out from the school just after two o’clock. Too early for the rendezvous, but she dare not risk someone coming to seek her out and demanding her attention; preventing her from getting away from the school.
She walks, follows a circuitous route, past a couple of pubs, the bars empty now and their doors firmly closed. She walks into the churchyard half an hour early, but he is there.
He is under the bare branches of an oak tree, leaning against the trunk. He is almost precisely as she holds him in her memory, the top hat he always wears pulled low over his eyes. In deference to the bitter weather, however, he wears a heavy, high-collared black overcoat over his shirt, breeches and waistcoat.
There is no river or canal close by, nor any waterway that could carry any craft larger than a rowing boat, and it is the first time she has seen him not in the vicinity of The Dawning of the Day. For a second or two this makes him seem strange, unknown, but then her perception changes and she sees him in a different light. And she understands that he is not really out of his element at all, so at home is he here in this Cambridgeshire churchyard, and she remembers that his ancestors right back up the paternal line were all Fensmen.
He steps towards her, dark blue eyes intent on her face. ‘You are safe, cushla? Not harmed?’ he asks softly.
‘Yes.’
He looks relieved. ‘I am glad that the telegram reached you. It was not intercepted?’
‘No, I do not believe so.’
He nods. ‘I stopped to send it on the way up to Bishop’s Stortford.’
‘Is that where you left your boat?’
‘Yes. It is where the navigation ends. I came on by train.’ He looks at her, eyebrows raised, and she realizes he hasn’t seen her in her SWNS uniform before. He smiles, but makes no comment.
‘Why are you here?’ she breathes, the words barely audible, for she still can hardly believe it.
‘Shall we walk?’ He holds out his arm and she takes it. They leave the churchyard by a small gate at the rear, emerging on to a quiet lane. There is nobody about; nobody to see them.
‘I had a message from your associate,’ he says as they pass a field gate and the lane narrows. ‘It was imperative that he contact you, but he could not spare the time to come himself.’
‘So … so he looked for you and asked you to come instead?’ It is all but incredible. Does Felix know about the boat basin and the master of The Dawning of the Day? He must do, but even as Lily understands this, she hopes Felix does not know all about Tamáz Edey …
‘He came to the basin and I was not there, but another boatman knew where I was and undertook to take the letter to me.’
‘Where were you?’
‘Limehouse Basin. I had just returned there.’
He does not say where he returned from and Lily doesn’t ask. Her mind is full of Felix, who in his need knew to seek out Tamáz; knew that, where she is involved – more especially, where her safety is involved (and she remembers what his first words to her just now were) – Tamáz will not fail.
‘What is the message?’ she whispers.
Tamáz reaches inside his coat and withdraws a folded piece of paper. Her name is written on it – just Lily – in Felix’s hand. She knows without even thinking about it that Tamáz will not have read the note. Hastily she unfolds it, her eyes flying along the lines of writing.
There is danger at the school for pupils, for staff and I have no doubt for you as well and perhaps more than anyone else because you are there to expose secrets that must be kept hidden. I cannot be specific yet but I feel such a sense of fear for you. I am on my way north to try to discover what lies behind this business and I am so sorry but I do not have the time to seek you out in person, so I am entrusting this warning to somebody I know you trust, as I find I do too.
It is signed simply F.
She looks up at Tamáz. ‘He trusts you,’ she murmurs.
He grins.
‘He’s worried about me, he says there’s a secret and it’s dangerous, and—’
‘Yes,’ he interrupts. ‘I have been aware for some time now that you are in peril, and I was planning to find you even before this.’ He touches the letter.
‘Felix says he’s gone north, where presumably he thinks he’ll find answers, and—’
‘He is doing what he must,’ Tamáz says, once again interrupting, ‘but the more imperative thing was to warn you.’ He lets the words hang in the cold air for a moment, and Lily wants to defend Felix, to protest that he has warned her, he’s sent Tamáz in his stead, but, meeting his level stare, she realizes there is no need.
‘You just said you were already aware I was in danger,’ she says, his words finally penetrating. A shudder of fear shakes her, for she realizes that she already knew this.
‘You are,’ he says. They are right out in the country now, the village left behind and the lane no more than a cart track. Tamáz pauses and looks around, over the empty fields and the winter-quiet hedgerows. ‘I have been here before. It used to be a fair and honest place, its waters clear and clean, its moorings safe and reliable.’
‘Its waters … but there’s no water here, not even a stream.’ He does not speak. ‘Is there?’
He sighs. ‘It changes, cushla.’ He raises his eyes again, and this time his glance ranges right out in a wide arc across the surrounding lands. ‘Once everything here was water, and the Fens stretched from here to the coast, but then the Dutchmen came and brought their particular skills, and they built dykes, and they drained the marshes and sent the water back to the sea, so that now we have lost the wide spaces through which we once roamed in our clever boats and our little craft that could slide up the smallest creek.’ He stops, and she senses that he is far in the past and bringing himself only with difficulty back to the present.
Again she recalls his ancestors. And she wonders just how far back their occupation of the Fenlands goes … Surreptitiously she looks at him, this strange friend of hers with whom the friendship itself is slightly odd. Not for the first time, she reflects that there is so much about him that is unknown, for he is deep.
But one thing she does know is that she trusts him.
‘So it is not a fair and honest place any more,’ she says briskly. Mystical musings are all very well, but she has a job to do.
‘No,’ he agrees as they walk on. For some time he is silent, as if assembling his thoughts. Then he speaks. ‘Many who live in the village and the surrounding countryside are like me – not a few are my kin – and they know this place as I do because the old tales and traditions are passed down through the generations. Those who belong here understand the land and the waters that flow beneath it, for their families would not have endured into the present if they had not learned how to survive here. But now there is a new fear, and people live under its shadow.’
‘You – do you mean the asylum?’ The thought springs into her mind and she utters it without thinking. ‘Yes, I’ve been warned about it.’
She hears Eddy’s voice again. You don’t want to go there.
Tamáz starts to speak, stops, then says, ‘The lunatic asylum evokes dread because those on the outside do not know what happens within. Yet in itself it is not a fearsome place, for the staff are enlightened and patients are treated with kindness, only restrained when it
is for their own safety.’ He looks at her. ‘And that of others,’ he adds.
‘I heard the bloodhounds,’ she whispers. ‘Someone said that a patient had escaped, and they sent the dogs to hunt him down. Very enlightened,’ she adds bitterly.
‘The dogs find the trail,’ Tamáz says. ‘If they succeed in locating the runaway, which usually happens unless he has outside help, they stand guard until the asylum staff arrive to take him back.’
‘But they howl.’ Remembering the sound, she shivers.
‘They bay, cushla. It’s what they do when they are following the scent.’
She is seduced by his words, by his voice, for this strange man has captivated her. But she must resist.
‘So the patients are kindly treated, the bloodhounds don’t harm them and life in the asylum is sweetness and light,’ she says. ‘Why, then, is this place full of fear?’
He doesn’t answer for some time. Then he says, ‘Lily, the folk legends are right, for there are evil things that dwell here in the ancient Fenland, and the modern way of life that has covered up the old ways is little more than a superficial skin.’ He shoots a swift glance at her and mutters, ‘It is why I have been concerned for your safety. I know this place and ever since I knew where you were going, I—’ He stops. After a moment, he continues. ‘When evil comes here – comes to the asylum in the form of a deeply troubled patient, for example – then the malignant forces that are always present are aware, and they come to seek it out, and they reinforce it and make it far stronger. And—’
It is her turn to interrupt. ‘Then why on earth build a lunatic asylum here?’
He looks at her, and she reads the answer in his face. He nods as if to recognize the fact, but then speaks anyway. ‘Because they don’t know.’
‘You could tell them!’
He looks down at himself, and with a gesture of his hand indicates his tall, powerful frame, his beard, his long hair and his distinctive, idiosyncratic style of dress. She is used to him, and has always taken him as himself, as Tamáz, but now she understands what he is implying.
