by Deryn Lake
And what he said was true. He had been born when the sign of Cancer the Crab had held ascendency in the heavens and, like all those governed by that symbol, John Joseph Webbe Weston had almost to be at the point of death to release his claw.
‘Yes,’ answered Cloverella, ‘I realize that — but I think you should put aside sentiment and think of the future.’ She added just a shade too casually, ‘They say Lord Dawe is looking very old these days.’
John Joseph gave her a penetrating look.
‘Are you trying to tell me that one day soon Marguerite will be free?’
Cloverella stooped to put a log on the fire, her back turned completely.
‘How many years is it since you have seen her?’ she asked in a muffled voice.
‘Five.’
‘Then I wish you joy,’ said the witch girl, standing up and wiping her palms on her skirt. ‘I meant you to look to the real future. You are a fool to yourself, John Joseph. I regret that you were ever my lover. I dislike the thought of consorting with clowns.’
An angry flush had come into John Joseph’s cheeks as he said, ‘Cloverella, every argument we have had has been over her. From where I stand you seem a jealous shrew.’
‘Then I am sorry that we shall part on bad terms once more — but part we must. I shall care for your mansion house, Sir, if you still wish me to do so. But let me say this to you.’ She took a step forward and stared straight into his eyes. ‘Sometimes destiny shows you the path. No, more than that, tries to guide you upon the right way, for there are always two roads open. But if you refuse the one that is meant — then God help you. You will have to strive hard to come back to that same point.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ answered her employer. ‘I believe that I am master of my own fate, that I can bring circumstances round by my own endeavour.’
‘Then I can only put my blessing upon you and hope that no evil befalls. Goodnight, Sir.’
And with that she left the room leaving John Joseph alone with the sleeping child. He stood staring into the flames for a long moment and then bent down gently to look into Jay’s face. Beneath his scrutiny the little boy stirred and woke, quite unafraid to find himself alone with a stranger.
‘Jay?’ said John Joseph.
‘Yes Sir?’
The boy yawned and stretched, putting his arms over his head.
‘Did your mother ever tell you your father’s name?’
‘No, I don’t think so, Sir. Why, are you Papa?’
Before he could stop himself John Joseph had echoed, ‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Oh dear,’ said the boy, ‘I would like you to be.’
‘Do you miss a father then?’
‘No. But I don’t want you to go.’
‘Don’t worry, Jay,’ said John Joseph as he stood upright and picked up his greatcoat, ‘I’ll be back to play with you. In fact I shall try to come back every year.’
The innocent child smiled up at him, unaware that the only thought in the mind of the master of Sutton Place was that Marguerite Dawe might soon be widowed and free to receive his courtship.
And outside the warmth of the bonfire was nothing to the crackling fire of his heart. He rubbed his hands together cheerfully, full of plans and hope. He would resign his commission, restore Sutton Place and have the woman he worshipped at his side. John Joseph’s imagination had not progressed a jot in all the years he had been away; his vision as narrow as that of a man in a tunnel; his soul as empty as a worn-out cockle shell. He did not deserve help.
But, quite unknown to him, Cloverella had finally tired of the situation. Very rarely in her life did she practise the arts which had been passed down in her family from Cloverella the Witch. But now she knew that the time was right for her to assume power. She also knew that to misuse this power would mean, in the end, that she must pay the penalty.
But now she thought only of what had to be done. From virgin beeswax her fingers formed a female image which she crowned with a scrap of human hair, picked up from Lady Dawe’s private pew in St John’s, Woking. Then, from a tin hastily slipped into her dress, she withdrew five of John Joseph’s hairs taken from the collar of his greatcoat when she had helped him off with it.
Then she moulded a male doll and put John Joseph’s hair to its head. A look of triumph crossed her face. From inside an old book she produced a folded slip of paper within which lay a full lock of one of Marguerite’s curls. Cloverella smiled. She had cut it off while her mistress dozed, all those years ago when Mrs Trevelyan had ruled Sutton Place. Like her famous ancestress before her Cloverella had been taught always to collect the hair of one who might prove to be an enemy.
Now, saying aloud, ‘The heart of John Joseph Webbe Weston,’ she made a small wax heart and, while it was still warm, pressed the lock of hair into it. She marked it with John Joseph’s initials and pinned it on to the male figure. Then she said, ‘Evohe! Met in lust, part in loathing,’ and plucked from the now solidified heart one of the hairs.
The spell was nearly over. She cried out again, ‘Evohe! Evohe! When all is gone, then so dies love.’
She bowed before the images and opening a small casket put that of John Joseph inside. Then she picked up the wax Lady Dawe and walked with her across the Great Hall and back into the library.
Jay slept as peacefully as when she had last seen him, a golden guinea — which John Joseph had obviously left for the child alone to have — clutched in his grubby fist. Cloverella bent to kiss him and then stood gazing into the fire, passing the waxen dolly from hand to hand. Eventually she thought better of destroying Marguerite entirely and put the likeness outside the kitchen door with some rubbish.
‘Get you out,’ she said, ‘vanquished and gone. Sutton Place and its master have no further need of you — and never will so long as he lives.’
*
‘What’s the matter, John Joseph? You look a trifle pale.’
Lady Gunn bent forward solicitously, spilling her port as she did so. The erstwhile Miss Huss had taken to imbibing in widowhood and dreaming the fevered dreams of her youth — those in which she loitered for military men — in a haze of drink.
She had, in the manner of the true drunkard, grown immensely thin with age and this, coupled with her flat chest and bony hips, gave her a sexless air. It could have been man or woman who sat swathed in black satin, a black lace cap upon its head, nodding away at the poor Captain, who dabbed at his moustache nervously with a linen handkerchief.
‘It’s nothing, Miss ... Lady Gunn. A slight pain, that is all.’
‘Have another port,’ came the response — and a generous helping for both him and the hermaphrodite followed forthwith.
It was just at that moment Cloverella had drawn the first hair from the heart of the wax dolly; a ritual she would repeat weekly until every strand of the curl had gone. And John Joseph had felt it as a physical pull at the very strings of his heart.
‘It was so sad the loss of your poor dear father. I was so overcome at the funeral. I am so sorry that I could not take my leave of you.’
As Lady Gunn had been carried out unconscious — presumably having been well fortified against the cold before her arrival — John Joseph could not help a twitch of the lips.
‘Ah the old days,’ she went on, not pausing for more than a quick swig at her glass. ‘Do you remember that terrible Christmas when Sam Clopper went missing? And to think he was found all that while later. Do you know several people have written that tale since — a child playing hide-and-seek in an old oak chest — just as if they had thought of it themselves?’
‘No, I didn’t know.’
‘Well, they have. It is incredible how these stories get round. I was told the other day whilst playing whist that young Mr Dickens — have you read Nicholas Nickleby, so funny and yet so stark? — has heard the story of poor Miss Melior Mary Weston and was most impressed with it.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’ Lady Gunn finished her gl
ass. She was a brilliant conversationalist when in her cups. Out of them she had a tendency to be morose. ‘And I am quite sure that just such a character — an old woman who locks herself up in her house and allows it to decay around her — will appear in a novel of his one of these days.’
‘Good gracious,’ said John Joseph.
He was not really interested. All sorts of ideas were beginning to flood through his mind; the need to get back to the Angel Inn before the frost made the roads impassable being paramount. Then thoughts that he had not had since he sailed for Europe; worries that his life was drifting by, that he would be twenty-eight this year and still preferred the company of loose women, that he had not really got his future into any kind of shape other than that of Captain in a foreign army. He shifted in his chair restlessly.
‘Not in any further pain, dear John Joseph?’
Lady Gunn’s hair beneath its widow’s cap appeared to have slipped sideways and he realized with horror that it was a vast wig.
‘No. But I really must be taking my leave. The roads were very bad getting here. Will you forgive me?’
‘No I won’t, she said, lurching up archly. ‘You don’t come and see me often enough, you naughty boy.’
He detected a glint in her eye which had him backing nervously to the door.
‘A fault that shall be rectified. I will call whenever I am in England.’ He clicked his heels and bowed, military style. ‘Goodbye, dear Lady.’
She raised her glass of port, which was miraculously once more full to the brim.
‘I drink to you, my gallant Captain. I knew that you would be an Army man when I watched you play with your tin soldiers. Adieu, adieu.’
She struggled to kiss him but the effort was too great and she fell back into her chair.
‘Goodbye, Lady Gunn. I may see you in a year’s time if all goes well.’
But this idea — though sincerely meant — was not destined to come about, for as soon as he arrived in Vienna he received a posting to Poland.
So when, later that year, Horatia Waldegrave asked, ‘Do you hear a great deal from John Joseph?’ his sister Caroline replied, ‘No, he has been sent to Cracau. There is insurrection there, you know.’
‘And when is there not in the Austro-Hungarian Empire? It seems far too big to control,’ was the rather sad reply.
‘Too big and too uneasy. There will be terrible bloodshed one of these days.’
‘Don’t speak of it,’ said the younger girl, very solemn. ‘I would not like to think of your brother in danger. It quite puts me into gloom.’
Caroline laughed.
‘Well, we can’t have that on Annette’s wedding day. Let me change the subject and say how beautiful your dress is.’
For at last poor Annette — who seemed to have been betrothed for ever — had achieved her dearest wish and actually married Archibald Money, now promoted to Colonel and grown slightly pompous.
The ceremony had been in St James’s, Westminster, with all the family there, Algernon and the Dowager Duchess — the rather elderly title bestowed on Anne now that George had married Frances Waldegrave — George and Frances themselves, she only just twenty but already with a knowledgeable look in her pretty eyes, and Caroline and Francis Hicks. The Ladies Horatia and Ida Anna had walked behind the bride as her attendants, wearing dresses of ice blue and rose pink respectively, and with wreaths of flowers in their hair.
Afterwards everyone had stood upon the steps for a daguerrotype image to be struck. Then they had proceeded to Webb’s Hotel in King Street, Covent Garden, for the breakfast. And it was here, with Lady Horatia seated opposite Caroline, that the conversation between the two of them had taken place.
‘Thank you. Annette wanted us both in pink but I refused.’
She laughed and shook her foxfire hair, swept on top of her head in a mass of curls, and the shades of damson that grew nearest to her neck were visible for a moment. Caroline caught herself thinking that her brother must be a total fool not to have fallen in love with Horatia. For she was quite sure — though neither of them had said a word to her — that something had passed between them.
She sighed to herself. What was it about John Joseph that made him so detached? She hoped that Mary was wrong, that he did not still nurse a passion for the wretched Lady Dawe. Aloud she said, more forthrightly than she had intended, ‘Are you fond of John Joseph, Horatia?’ The girl coloured up. ‘Yes — but it is not reciprocated. He thinks me a babe-in-arms. A silly nursery goose not fit to leave its governess.’
‘But he is only ten years older than you are!’
‘In his eyes it could be a hundred!’
‘Then if I were you I would forget all about him. There must be scores of young men just longing to throw their hearts at your feet.’
‘That sounds horrible — and extremely messy!’
Caroline laughed. ‘You know perfectly well what I mean. Did you ever meet John Wardlaw?’
‘Who?’
‘A distant relative of mine who lives in Hastings — that is when he is not stationed abroad with the Army, which he practically always is. He was so smitten with the sight of you driving along when you were there on holiday that he ran after your carriage and fell down. It caused a mild sensation. Do you remember?’
Horatia grinned. ‘I remember something. I heard somebody shout but never saw properly who it was. We were all terribly flattered and wondered which one of us had taken his fancy.’
‘Well it was you.’
‘I’m delighted.’
‘He’s in India now: a kind of spy for the military.’
‘How exciting! Will he come back?’
‘One day I suppose. His brother has returned to get married. In fact both Jackdaw’s ...’
‘Jackdaw?’
‘That’s his nickname. John Wardlaw — Jackdaw. Both his brother and his sister Violet are to be married in the spring. This is quite the year of the wedding.’
Horatia counted on her fingers. ‘Annette, Jackdaw’s brother and sister — anybody else?’
‘Yes, thank God. My funny middle sister Matilda has got herself a proposal at last. She is to wed her French beau in Paris in the summer and Francis and I are going.’
‘Will John Joseph be there?’
‘If he can get leave from his Polish tour. But if he does so it will mean that he cannot return to England this year.’
Horatia looked momentarily sad before her mermaid eyes brightened.
‘But he will be back one day,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ answered Caroline slowly, ‘one of these days the master must return to Sutton Place.’
*
The manor house changed with the seasons; the moulded alabaster grew white and crisp in the spring time, the brickwork glowed rose as the warmth came back to the land.
And it was with Strawberry Hill gleaming in the same summer sunshine that the Earl and Countess Waldegrave were taken away to prison. ‘The Waldegrave Outrage’ had caught up with him at last.
The savage beating of the policeman had taken place before his marriage — during Derby Week — when he and the rowdy Waterford set had lurched back from Kingston Fair. But it had taken a year, while the press cried out for justice, for him to come to trial. The sentence of six months’ detention in the Queen’s Bench and a fine of £200 seemed only fitting.
Yet it had surprised many that Frances had decided to take up residence with her husband.
‘She must be made of steel,’ said Anne to Algernon, putting down her copy of The Times. ‘I don’t know whether I admire her or not.’
‘You must,’ he said, his wise face on. ‘She is the most determined character of the age — of any age probably.’
‘Yes, but Algy, that doesn’t mean I have to like her.’
‘No. Do you like her?’
‘Definitely not. I think she is determined to climb high and has used my sons — both my sons — as her ladder rungs. Unscrupulous little bitch.’
; ‘Nonetheless we must go and visit them tomorrow. And afterwards perhaps we might take a train into the country.’
‘To anywhere in particular?’
‘I thought perhaps Woking, Guildford way.’ He looked decidedly like a retriever. ‘There’s a great house there I want to show you. It belongs to that young man John Joseph — Caroline’s brother. I was very taken with it when I first saw it.’
Anne picked up her newspaper again. ‘Very well, my dear. What is it called?’
‘Sutton Place. I feel quite sure that you are going to like it, Anne.’
‘No doubt, no doubt,’ she said from the depths of The Times.
And with that they fell into silence and the manor house was temporarily forgotten.
16
The world had never been more beautiful, England had never been more beautiful, London had never been more beautiful! And the very act of getting on to a train — hissing and puffing and smelling like dragon’s breath — had never been more exciting. Or, at least, that was how it seemed to Major John Wardlaw — smart as paint in his uniform of the 9th Lancers, his mistrust of the railway system finally at an end. In fact he leapt on to the York-bound train with such alacrity that he almost sent a charming young woman flying and she, all blushes, hardly knew where to put herself with such a dashing and rather attractively limping Army man escorting her to her seat.
But any hopes she might have had of striking up a conversation were dashed when, first of all, he picked up Charles Dickens’s latest book — The Old Curiosity Shop — and then, tiring of that, stared out of the window as if his eyes could never get enough of the scurrying landscape and that spring morning in 1842.
‘You have returned from abroad?’ she ventured.
‘Yes, three years in India. I had forgotten England in a way. Forgotten just how fresh the countryside can be.’
‘It is very pretty,’ she said, staring to where cherry trees formed an arch of snowflake under bridal white clouds in a bluebell sky.
‘It’s glorious,’ he said. ‘I hope I am never posted again.’
‘Are you journeying far?’
