The Rose Garden

by Susanna Kearsley

  ‘It’s all crap, that’s what.’

  ‘And you would know.’

  My own pain tumbled over, then. ‘I know that life’s too short to live by stupid theories,’ I shot back. ‘I know that if you have the luck to find someone who loves you, then you love them back, you don’t care on what terms.’ I used the phrase of Daniel’s though it hurt my heart to say it, and because I drew some strength from just remembering those words I carried on, ‘Whatever time you have with somebody who loves you, Mark, it should be …’ Something caught hard in my throat, and made me pause to fight it.

  Still defiant, Mark asked, ‘Should be what?’

  I got the words out somehow, just above a whisper. ‘Time enough.’

  And then I turned, because I didn’t want to argue any more. Before I’d gone ten steps he called out, ‘Eva?’

  I glanced back. I’d never seen Mark looking so torn up inside.

  ‘Love isn’t everything,’ he said.

  I shook my head. ‘It is, you know. It’s all that matters, and I hate to see you throwing it away.’

  I left him standing there, to think on that. I’d been purposely avoiding picking up Jack’s memoirs since I’d come back, even though the book still sat with patience on my bedside table, bookmarked to the place where I’d left off.

  I’d read beyond that now, of course, that day I’d spent aboard the Sally, so there really was no harm in reading what I knew already. But I wasn’t too keen, any more, to learn what happened next.

  It was only now, with what I’d said to Mark still nudging gently at my conscience, that I drew the curtains closed against the light of afternoon and curled up fully clothed upon my bed and reached my hand out for the memoirs.

  I could always stop, I told myself. I didn’t have to go beyond what I’d already experienced. It would be enough to feel this closeness for a while, not just to Daniel but to Fergal, too, and Jack, whose voice came through the printed pages as though he himself were telling me the stories.

  While I read I could imagine that the walls around me were those other walls, the bed a larger bed with posts and curtains, and the room beside me not an empty one but home to an inhabitant who paced the floorboards restlessly on booted feet.

  When I approached the place where the pages I’d been reading on the Sally had gone blank I read more carefully, prepared to put the book down. There it was – the bit that I’d read last, continued over to the facing page, and then …

  I stopped, confused.

  Because there was no more beyond that. Nothing written by Jack’s hand, at any rate, although the person who had edited the memoirs had inserted this parenthesised apology:

  Jack Butler’s own account ends here. What follows is the Reverend Mr Simon’s learned lecture on the usefulness of this account in teaching moral lessons to those young men who are tempted to pursue the ways of decadence, for let them be reminded that Jack Butler, having turned his back on both his earthly king and on that other King who rules all men, did thus commit himself to suffer an untimely end; and such an end as does befit a traitor to the Crown, for it was on the very first great anniversary of the accession to the throne of that good King George the First, whom he did so despise and seek to overthrow, that he did chance to fall afoul of the lawmen of Polgelly, and while fleeing from their constable was killed by one sure pistol shot and sent thus in disgrace before his Maker.

  ‘No.’

  I didn’t know I’d spoken till I heard my own voice echo in the silent room, but even as the echo died I knew it didn’t matter.

  Daniel had been right. The words were written there already, printed long before my birth, and there was no amount of wishing that could change them.

  ‘Hard luck,’ was Oliver’s opinion of the way Jack Butler met his end. Head tilted, he tried to remember his history. ‘If it happened on the anniversary of King George’s accession to the throne, then that would mean he died in …’

  ‘August. August 1st, to be exact,’ I said. ‘I looked it up.’

  ‘Ah.’ Leaning on the corner of the desk in Uncle George’s study, Oliver angled a penetrating look down at me while I worked. It was Saturday, and he’d come up to help with cleaning windows at the greenhouse in advance of next week’s opening, but somehow he had found his way in here instead. I didn’t mind. His company was welcome in my current mood.

  He said, ‘You’ve really taken this to heart, haven’t you? Maybe I shouldn’t have found you that book.’

  I couldn’t reveal why the knowledge of Jack’s death depressed me as much as it did. All I said was, ‘It just seems unfair, his being killed like that.’

  ‘Come have lunch,’ he suggested.

  ‘I can’t. I’ve got this press release to finish.’ Searching through the papers at the side of my computer I let out a tight sigh of frustration. ‘If I ever find my proper notes. You don’t remember, offhand, what the name of that big prize was that Trelowarth won back in the 1960s, do you?’

  ‘Sorry, no. Mark would know it, but he won’t be back till late tonight.’

  I glanced up. ‘Back from where?’

  ‘From Falmouth. He and Fee are at the art show.’

  ‘Mark went with her?’ I stared at him. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘that’s the first time I’ve seen you smile all day.’

  ‘Is it? Sorry. I’ve just been a little out of sorts, that’s all.’

  ‘Susan might know what the name of the prize was,’ he said. ‘I’ll go ask her. I ought to be out at the greenhouse now, anyway.’ Straightening, he told me, ‘Sue will be happy, at least, with the way your Jack Butler died. Adds a bit of drama to her story of the smugglers, for the tourists. Just as well, because I still can’t find anything to tie the Duke of Ormonde and his Jacobite rebellion to this area. Mind you,’ he said, ‘it wasn’t much of a rebellion to begin with. Never really got off the ground. The Duke of Ormonde buggered off to France before it happened. He knew Parliament had voted to impeach him and he didn’t wait around to be arrested.’

  I couldn’t really blame him, and I said as much. And then I asked, more slowly, ‘Did he go to Spain, afterwards?’

  ‘He did, yeah. Why?’

  ‘I just wondered.’ I wondered, too, whether he’d brought any kinsmen along on the voyage, to help raise support for the Jacobite cause.

  Oliver remarked that when people like the Duke of Ormonde fell, they landed firmly on their feet. ‘And they always choose warm places for their exiles. Spanish women, Spanish wine, I’m sure it wasn’t any hardship. It was those he left behind him here in Cornwall did the suffering.’

  I didn’t really want to ask him, but I had to. ‘Why? What happened to them?’

  ‘Well, they were arrested, weren’t they? King George learnt what they were up to, and he had them rounded up before they had a chance to rise. They had to watch King James land up in Scotland, watch him lose his battle, couldn’t do a thing to help him. Some were executed, afterwards, and some transported to the colonies, and—’ He broke off, looking at me. ‘You all right?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ I schooled my face and looked away. ‘You said King George found out what they were planning. How?’

  ‘The Duke of Ormonde sent his private secretary down here as a messenger – a Scottish colonel, can’t recall his name. McSomething, anyway.’

  ‘Maclean.’

  I could have told him that the man had used the alias of Wilson; could have told him what he’d looked like, that he’d worn a dark-green coat and powdered wig and high black boots, and that his horse had been a grey. I could have told him that Jack Butler hadn’t liked him much; that Jack had nearly lost his life in going to St Non’s to make enquiries as to Wilson’s true identity, and that he’d learnt that Wilson’s name was actually Maclean. I’d been there when Jack had told us that, when Daniel had assured him that Maclean was ‘indisputably’ a man to trust. The Duke of Ormonde’s secretary.

  Oliver nodded. ‘That’s ri
ght,’ he said. ‘Colonel Maclean. He came down to Cornwall and met all the people preparing to fight on the side of the Jacobites, and then … hang on.’ His mobile was ringing. He took it out to check the number while I looked away, and just for an instant I saw in my mind’s eye a man in a dark-green coat standing in the stable yard with Daniel, the both of them laughing and shaking hands.

  Oliver put his phone back in his pocket.

  ‘And then?’ I made the prompt quietly.

  ‘Then he betrayed them,’ was Oliver’s answer. ‘He knew all the names of the people he’d met, and he gave every one of them right to King George.’

  It wasn’t the knowledge itself that was hardest to bear, it was knowing that I could do nothing about it, that even with all that I knew I was powerless. Useless.

  I’d felt this before, while Katrina had battled her illness. I hadn’t been able to stop that from happening, either. I hadn’t been able to save her. I would have paid any price then to be able to do something, anything, not just stand helplessly by. And I would have paid any price now. But the truth was that, once again, I could do nothing.

  I couldn’t warn Daniel. I couldn’t save Jack. I was trapped here in my own time and I couldn’t simply leap back into theirs by force of will alone, however much I wanted to. I had to wait. And worry.

  I was grateful when the day of Susan’s opening arrived, because it kept me moving constantly, with no real time for thinking about anything except the task at hand. Things went splendidly well – the first coachload of tourists arrived spot on time and the weather held fair and Trelowarth looked beautiful, and the photographer sent down by House & Garden got the whole thing very brilliantly recorded for her magazine. The interviews with Mark and Susan went off like a dream, and when the visitors all crowded into the Cloutie Tree to sample their Cornish cream teas before leaving, their chatter was glowingly positive.

  By the day’s end even Mark was admitting that Susan had proved him wrong.

  ‘Say it again,’ Susan challenged him, mischievous.

  Crossing the carpeted floor of the big front room, Mark sank with visible weariness into the big armchair by the piano and leant his head back. ‘You were right,’ he repeated, with slow perfect diction. ‘And I was …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Less right.’

  I looked up from my magazine. ‘That’s all you’re going to get,’ I said to Susan. ‘And be happy with it, because it’s more than I got.’

  Mark partly opened his eyes. ‘When were you right?’

  I sent him a calmly superior look. ‘Falmouth.’

  ‘Oh.’ His eyes closed again. ‘Well, yes, all right. I was wrong about that, I’ll admit it.’

  Amazed, Susan said to me, ‘Sorry, am I delirious, or did I just hear my brother say that he’d been wrong?’ Her gaze swung, curious, to Mark. ‘What have I missed?’

  He said, ‘None of your business.’

  I knew that he’d gone out a few times since then with Felicity, and though they weren’t yet what I’d call a couple they were at least making a start on it. Susan, who knew and approved of their changing relationship, wasn’t aware that I’d argued with Mark. We had kept that a private affair, between us, and we’d settled it in the same way that we’d made peace when I had been little – the day after going to Falmouth, Mark had set up the badminton net on the side lawn and brought me a racquet, and though I was rusty at playing he’d graciously let me win two of the games. That, I knew, was the way he said ‘sorry’.

  We traded glances now as Susan sighed and said, ‘Fine, be like that. You can’t dampen my mood, I’m too happy.’

  I told her, ‘You ought to be. Today was perfect.’

  ‘Can’t rest on my laurels,’ she said. ‘We’ve still got the coach tour from Cardiff tomorrow.’ She turned again to look at Mark. ‘By the way, you don’t know what’s become of Dad’s display stand, do you? The one we unearthed when we cleared out the greenhouse? I thought we might salvage the sign from it, if nothing else.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Mark said. ‘I’m painting it.’

  ‘Painting it? What on earth for?’

  ‘Well, I’ll need it for Southport,’ he said.

  Susan stared at him as though she didn’t know him. ‘What?’

  ‘The Southport Flower Show. You want to read my blog more often. I announced last week that we’d be going.’

  ‘But you never go to shows. Not any more.’

  ‘A man can change.’ A glance at me. ‘Besides, like Eva said, we need to raise our profile.’

  For a moment Susan looked at him in silence, then she said, ‘Right. Now I know I’m delirious. Eva?’

  ‘I’ll get us drinks, shall I?’ Setting my magazine down as I stood, I asked, ‘Is there wine in the fridge, still?’

  Mark thought that there was. ‘Need some help?’

  ‘Susan’s delirious, and you’re knackered. I’ll manage.’

  I wasn’t sure where Claire had got to, but the house was quiet when I crossed the hall. The kitchen door stood slightly open. Pushing it, I felt it thud on something that not only stopped its inward swing but bounced it back towards me. Damn, I thought. One of the dogs must have decided to stretch out behind the door to take a nap, and now I’d clouted him, poor thing.

  I heard a scuffle and a thump and then the door was yanked back open from the inside, all the way this time, and I could see the thing that had been blocking it was not a dog at all. It was the body of a man stretched out face down across the flagstone floor, his black hair wetly matted where a dark red trickle had begun to stain his collar. It was Fergal.

  Shocked, I raised my gaze to find a pistol levelled steady at my chest.

  I couldn’t focus on the man who held it, because I’d already looked beyond him to the hard eyes of another man who stood close by the fireplace.

  ‘Mistress O’Cleary,’ the constable said, ‘do come in.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  I couldn’t move, at first.

  Not that I wanted to, really. The last thing I wanted to do was step over the threshold into that unwelcoming room. But the man with the pistol had lowered it and now reached forwards to take a rough grip on my arm with his other hand, hauling me in.

  ‘Shut the door,’ said the constable. For all his calmness, he sounded displeased. ‘Mr Hewitt?’

  Someone else moved in the shadows behind him. ‘Yes?’

  God, I thought, how many of them were there? Trying to shake myself out of my nightmare paralysis, I took a wild look round the room and counted two more faces, making five of them in total. Small wonder Fergal hadn’t stood a chance.

  He lay now almost at my feet, and with relief I saw his ribs move slightly.

  ‘Did you not,’ the constable was saying, ‘tell me you had searched the house?’

  ‘I did,’ the man named Hewitt protested. ‘I swear I saw no one. She must have been hiding.’

  The constable acknowledged this. ‘’Tis why they call it “searching”. Would you be so kind as to go try again? With Mr Leach’s help.’

  The man who’d been holding my arm turned his head, gave a nod, and let go of me, slipping from the kitchen in the wake of the disgruntled Hewitt. Left there standing by the door, I tried to show the bravest face I could, my shoulders straightening a little as the constable regarded me with shuttered eyes that took no notice of the injured man who lay between us.

  Almost casually, he asked me, ‘Were you hiding?’

  I remembered not to talk in time, and shook my head. My hands had started trembling and I curled them into fists so they would not betray my weakness.

  But he seemed to see it, anyway. His mouth curved into something that could not be called a smile. ‘In bed, then.’ Spoken with a certainty supported by the way his gaze raked over my appearance, and I realised for the first time that the summer frock I’d worn all day, a loosely fitting peasant-styled frock of plain cream cotton, would to him and all the other men look like a chemise. Dressed as
I was with my hair loose, I could understand why he had assumed I’d been in bed.

  His sneer was more apparent when he asked, ‘Were you alone?’

  For an answer I lifted my chin a half-inch to imply such a question was not worth my answering.

  One of the men near the window-wall said, ‘Mr Creed,’ and the constable’s stare sliced the dark air between them.

  ‘Yes, Mr Pascoe? You’ve something to say?’

  An older man moved to the edge of the firelight, his features familiar. ‘I’ll ask you to mind how you speak, sir. The girl’s done naught to warrant such insult.’

  I recognised him then. I’d seen that same mix of defiance and shame on his face when he’d ridden as one of the constable’s deputies on the day Jack was arrested at St Non’s, and the same unvoiced apology in his quick glance the next day when he’d stopped off in the stable yard to bring the conger eel for Fergal. Fergal hadn’t called him Mr Pascoe, though. He’d called him Peter. That implied the two of them were friends, of sorts, and meant I might have one man in this group who would defend me.

  The constable had brushed aside the protest. ‘It can be no insult, surely, to request the facts.’ He followed my quick downward glance towards Fergal. ‘You fear for your brother? A touching display, but I’ll warrant he’ll live long enough for his hanging.’

  I wasn’t so sure. He appeared to be breathing more shallowly now, and defying the constable’s presence I knelt on the flagstones and stroked Fergal’s hair lightly, trying to find where the injury was.

  When the man Peter took a step forwards, the constable stopped him. ‘No, leave her,’ he warned. ‘Keep your watch.’

  My fingers touched the broad gash at the base of Fergal’s skull and I put pressure on it, hoping that would help to slow the bleeding. They had hit him from behind, a ruthless blow with something sharp enough to leave a cut and with the weight to bring him down – a jug, it looked like, from the jagged shards of earthenware that seemed to have been kicked into the corner by the door behind me.