The Rose Garden

by Susanna Kearsley

  ‘A clever play on Butler’s part,’ he said, ‘and on your brother’s, for it made me ill-inclined to ask you questions, as they no doubt hoped it would.’

  The knowledge that he still thought I was Fergal’s sister would have eased my mind more if he hadn’t been reloading the pistol while he talked, brushing the used powder out of the firing pan and re-priming it deftly.

  ‘But now that I have heard you speak,’ he said as he took practice aim towards the entrance of the cave and idly sighted down the barrel, ‘I’ve a mind to find out for myself how well you sing.’

  I watched the pistol swing around to point at me.

  He said, ‘You can sing, can you not, Mistress O’Cleary? You will find it is a useful art, for keeping your own head out of the hangman’s noose. Come now, tell me what does Butler mean to shift from here tonight, and where will it be bound?’

  Shaking my head once I took a step backwards, reminding myself he was trying to frighten me. Doing a fabulous job of it, certainly, but he had no real intention of killing me yet. He still needed me for the same reason he’d told his men earlier – Daniel would never submit to arrest without force or coercion, and I was the constable’s leverage, his bargaining chip.

  He wouldn’t kill me yet, I told myself again, and clinging to that little fragment of uncertain courage I stepped back again and hoped he’d think I was retreating from the pistol. I knew well enough I didn’t have a hope of moving out of range – I’d seen the damage his last shot had done the boy, who had been standing further off from Creed than I was standing now – but the dagger, Daniel’s dagger, was still lying on the damp stone floor somewhere between the barrels just behind me.

  My thoughts had not yet focused through my fear enough to let me form a plan of what to do with it, but having any weapon seemed a better thing than having none at all, so I kept inching backwards with a single-minded purpose while Creed said, ‘You do know, do you not, what does befall a woman like yourself in Newgate? And for what? The law is very clear for those who comfort traitors. In the end you will be forced to testify to what you know, and he will hang regardless, and your suffering will be for naught. Speak now, to me, and I may yet persuade the courts to show you mercy.’

  The voice that answered wasn’t mine. It said, ‘A kind offer, but I rather doubt she’ll accept it.’

  I turned my head, astonished, to see Jack not twenty feet from us, inside the entrance to the cave. Keeping his own pistol levelled on Creed and his gaze firmly fixed on the constable’s face he remarked, ‘You have given her small cause to think you’d be merciful.’

  The constable shrugged. ‘Men can change.’

  If Jack felt fear he was hiding it well. He looked calm and completely relaxed as he took a step forwards and ordered me, ‘Eva, go now.’

  I heard Creed’s gun, still pointed at me, give an ominous click.

  ‘Butler, I should have thought saving yourself would outweigh any chivalrous impulses.’

  Jack gave a half smile and said, ‘Men can change, so I’ve been told.’ Still coming forwards, he said again, ‘Eva, go now, he’ll not shoot you.’

  The constable lowered his eyebrows at that. ‘Will I not? And what makes you so certain?’

  ‘Because it is not your design. You’d not even shoot me, if I gave you the chance.’

  ‘You seem very certain.’ Creed’s voice had an edge. ‘Why not put your own pistol aside, and we’ll see?’

  Jack answered without stopping his advance, ‘All right.’

  And as I watched in horror he replaced his pistol in his belt and held his hands out slightly from his sides, to plainly show he was unarmed.

  Creed’s pistol swung away from me to aim at Jack, and as it moved I took advantage of the fact to back away between the barrels, where I’d seen the dagger on the day we’d brought the cargo back from Brittany.

  I’d nearly given up when I saw one faint edge of something metal gleaming in the lantern’s light, and cautiously, my eyes still on the men, I stooped to pick it up. My hands weren’t large enough to hold the dagger’s blade concealed as Daniel did, but still I tried to keep it pointed straight so it was hidden by my wrist as much as possible.

  Neither Jack nor Creed appeared to notice.

  Jack had covered half the space between them now with his sure, certain steps, and all the while his gaze stayed steady on the constable. ‘You want us dead, myself and Danny, but you will not shoot me now, for should I die by your own hand, the people of Polgelly will demand to know the cause of it, and even your authority has limits in this place.’ He tipped his head to one side, questioning. ‘Or do you think those two men you presumably sent after me, the ones I did see running for the woods, will yet return to lend you aid?’

  Creed said, ‘The people of Polgelly have no choice. The laws have changed.’

  ‘Yes, I have heard. We may be taken without benefit of warrant, may we not, and sent to London for our trials? More reason not to kill me now,’ said Jack, his hands still at his sides as he came closer, ‘when you could leave that pleasure to the executioner, while you stand by the gallows and enjoy the entertainment.’ Without turning his head he repeated, ‘Go, Eva.’

  ‘She stays,’ said the constable. ‘For if you claim to know the law, then you will also know that trials do have need of evidence, and she can yet supply that.’

  Jack said, ‘Eva cannot testify.’

  ‘You think I am a fool?’ Creed was dismissive. ‘She can speak.’

  ‘She can. But not against my brother. Or against myself, in fact, if that would so reveal my brother’s crimes.’

  Jack knew. I saw it in the faint curve of his mouth before he dropped the bombshell with the satisfaction of a small boy who liked watching things explode. ‘For if you know the law,’ he said, ‘then you will know no judge will have a woman as a witness at the trial of her husband.’

  Creed stood thunderstruck. ‘Her husband!’

  ‘Ay, that was my own reaction, I’ll confess, when Danny told me, but the vicar did assure me it was true, and for my part I now can see it was a good match wisely made.’ The glance Jack sent my way held reassurance, but beneath it was full knowledge of the danger we were in. ‘So you see,’ he finished off, ‘she’ll be no use to you.’

  The constable’s cold eyes had taken on a colder purpose. ‘Oh, I disagree,’ he said. ‘I can imagine quite a few ways that I might use Mrs Butler, and I’ll keep your brother well informed of all of them while he does rot in Newgate.’

  He turned his head to leer at me, and that brief shift of focus was the chance Jack had been waiting for. Arm’s length now from the constable, he closed the distance in a final surge of motion, one hand reaching for possession of the pistol.

  It was over in an instant.

  With the gun’s report still ringing in my disbelieving ears I watched Jack stagger back and fall, and felt a sudden stinging in my eyes that wasn’t from the burning whiteness of the smoke.

  ‘No,’ I whispered, blinking back the pricking blur of tears.

  I’d saved him, hadn’t I? I’d made a choice and changed things so this wouldn’t have to happen, so he wouldn’t have to die.

  But he was dead. There was no question of it.

  ‘No!’

  I must have spoken that more strongly, for the constable glanced up and with a twisting of his mouth turned back and spat once with contempt on Jack’s unmoving body. ‘Now,’ he said, preparing to reload his pistol as he’d done before, ‘we’ve but to wait for your brave husband, have we not? I must admit I did have some misgivings as to whether he would truly hold your life so dear that he’d agree to let me take him prisoner. A mistress, after all, is but a mistress. But a wife …’ His tone was confident and mocking at the same time, and it struck some switch inside me that I hadn’t known I had.

  I didn’t afterwards remember when I moved, or how, but in the next breath I was somehow there in front of Creed and Daniel’s dagger was no longer in my hand.

/>   He dropped the pistol with a clatter to the weeping stone and raised one hand to grasp the dagger’s handle in his turn. It looked so strangely out of place there, stuck hilt-deep into the centre of his chest.

  His face was angry as he yanked the short blade out and tossed it clattering aside, and looking at the rush of bright red blood that followed seemed to make him even angrier, because he raised his head and started cursing me …

  The words froze on his lips.

  I saw the change in his expression, saw the darkness of his glare give way to fear, and heard the horror in the word he whispered: ‘Witch!’

  He was already fading as his legs gave way beneath him and he dropped hard to his knees, this man who had so often fed upon the fear of others rattling out his final breath with terror in his eyes. And then he fell and his grey shadow tumbled down and thinned to nothingness.

  Jack’s body faded, too, and all the dimness of the cave around me shuddered once and melted into the back passage of Trelowarth House, and I was standing ready to walk through the kitchen door.

  Except I couldn’t move.

  The night had sent me back too traumatised. I couldn’t seem to manage the transition, I could only stand there trembling with the tear stains on my bruised and swelling cheek, wrapped in the rough coat of a dead man that weighed heavily upon my shaking shoulders.

  I’m not sure I ever would have found the will or strength to move if I had not heard footsteps clipping with a cheerful and familiar beat across the kitchen floor, though even when the heavy door swung inwards and Claire stood there in amazement at the sight of me, I couldn’t think of anything to do but fling myself into her arms and cling there weeping like a child who’d just awakened from a nightmare.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Shock does strange things to the mind.

  My senses telescoped to focus on a few small random details while the rest of what was going on I only grasped in fragments. Which was why I knew that Claire had seven buttons on her shirt but didn’t know how we’d come halfway up the steep back stairs.

  I heard somebody entering the kitchen and Mark’s voice below us called me, ‘Eva?’

  Claire answered for me, still guiding me upwards, ‘She’s here with me, darling. I gave her a nasty hard whack in the face with the kitchen door, probably blackened her eye.’

  A tiny voice deep in my mind argued, That’s not what happened, but they had moved on to the subject of doctors and whether I needed one.

  Claire said she wouldn’t be sure till she’d had a good look at it. ‘I’ll let you know.’

  And the next thing I knew I was soaking alone in the tub in the bathroom upstairs. On the edge of the tub sat a small dish of guest soaps, impractical things shaped like roses, six roses, quite violently pink.

  Very slowly, my shaking subsided.

  I wasn’t in the bathroom any more, but in my bedroom.

  ‘There, now.’ Claire was beside me again. I could feel the slight dip of the mattress as she took a seat on the edge of my bed, leaning over to tuck the sheets round me. The cool of her hand smoothed my damply hot forehead while my eyes stayed fixed on the place where a small flake of paint had been chipped from the wall near my headboard.

  Claire’s tone was gently undemanding. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  No.

  I couldn’t form the word yet, but my head moved slightly on the pillow and she understood.

  ‘All right.’ I felt her hand against my forehead for a second time, and then she left.

  At least, I thought she did.

  But in the middle of the night I briefly woke from fretful dreams, and rolling over in the tangle of my blankets I was sure I caught a glimpse of someone sitting in the shadows of the corner by the fireplace, watching over me.

  The house was quiet when I woke.

  No laughter floating up the stairs, no whispers from the room next door, no movement but the swaying of the curtains at my windows as they sought to catch the currents of the spindrift-scented summer breeze before the wind’s inconstant nature dropped them limply back to lie in wait against the window ledge.

  The room felt warm. Too warm to be the morning. And the shadows were not in their proper places.

  Without thinking I turned slightly on the pillow and the sudden painful pressure on my swollen cheek called back the night’s dark memories in a swift, depressing rush.

  I’d killed a man. I’d stabbed a man and killed him, and although he’d murdered others in his turn and would have doubtless murdered me, the fact remained that I’d done something I had always thought I’d be incapable of doing, and that wasn’t such an easy thing to wrap my thoughts around.

  And if my thoughts were horrible for me, I knew it would be even worse for Daniel, coming to the cave to find his brother dead. That the constable lay dead as well would be at least a minor consolation, but it wouldn’t be a balance for the loss of Jack, in Daniel’s view. Or mine.

  I closed my eyes to shut the memories out. It didn’t work. Against the blackness of my mind I saw the play of images, and I remembered everything. The only part that seemed less clear was how I’d come to be up here, in my pyjamas, in my bed … then I remembered that as well, and looked around for Claire.

  I’d need to talk to her, I knew. I’d need to give some explanation for the state she’d found me in last night, though for the life of me I really didn’t know what I could say, where I’d begin.

  But knowing Claire, I wouldn’t have a choice. She might be patient and prepared to wait, not rushing me, but in the end she’d want to have the answers to her questions.

  Getting up and getting dressed took time. My limbs were stiff and everywhere I saw the scrapes and bruises that the night had left. The sight of my face in the mirror wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d feared it would be. My eye had been left unaffected; the worst of the swelling had kept to the curve of my cheekbone and most of the bruising was up by my temple, the cut that had bled barely visible where it ran into my hairline.

  In fact, if I left my hair down and allowed it to swing forward slightly it covered up most of the damage.

  The damage that showed, I corrected myself.

  There was worse on the inside that, while it was simpler to hide, would be harder to heal. But I hid it the best that I could, and went downstairs, composing a speech in my mind as I went, forming lines and discarding them, finding a few that I liked and rehearsing them mentally so they’d sound normal.

  I needn’t have bothered. Nobody was there.

  As I moved through the rooms I tried keeping my thoughts in the present day, focusing on what was actually there, but I found the lines blurring and shifting at random; and when I came into the kitchen my steps dragged a little. I didn’t want to be in here, didn’t want to think of everything I’d seen in here last night, or to remember Fergal lying on the floor just there, between the Aga and the door, the fight knocked cruelly out of him.

  I thought of Fergal’s dark impassive eyes and his dry wit and felt a twist of pain not knowing what had happened to him. With the sharp edge of that broken piece of pot held in his hand he would have had at least a chance against the constable’s man, Leach, who’d been left to guard him. But that was only if Leach hadn’t used his pistol, and assuming Fergal ever had gained consciousness again.

  I couldn’t bear to think of Fergal dead.

  And yet I knew they all were, now. The world had turned and they were dead and in the ground, and there was nothing I could do about it. Daniel had been right the day he’d said to me, ‘This life that I have lived, it has already passed and faded from the memories of the people of your own time …’

  He’d been right, too, when he’d theorised that altering the past might prove impossible. By calling a warning to Jack as he’d entered the cave I had saved him from being shot then by the constable, but time had found another way to do what must be done, and even with my interference Jack had died the way that he’d been meant to. Even Daniel’s dag
ger that I’d used to kill the constable had, in the end, been thrown back to the cave floor and had scuttled to the shadows to lie waiting till Mark came to find it. History hadn’t changed.

  At least, I didn’t think it had. I only knew the present seemed to be exactly as I’d left it. It just felt a little emptier.

  As if on cue, a shadow passed the window and I heard the back door open and Felicity came in, balancing a plastic washing-up tub stacked with cups and saucers while she chatted on the mobile phone held wedged against her shoulder.

  ‘No, no,’ she was saying, ‘all over the floor. Well, we’ve switched it off, yes, but the thing is we’ve got a big tour group arriving a half hour from now, and … oh, would you? Thanks, that would be wonderful, Paul. You’re a prince.’

  Carefully sliding the tub onto the worktop so the china didn’t clink too much, she rang off and greeted me, ‘Hi. I didn’t wake you with the last load, did I?’

  Not sure what she meant at first, I glanced towards the sink and for the first time noticed it was nearly brimful, too, with soaking dishes, and a second empty washing-up tub sat off to the side.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘The dishwasher’s leaking. We were putting these through so they’d be good and clean for our afternoon crowd, only something went wrong in the rinse cycle and we wound up with a flood in the kitchen and lovely baked soap on the dishes.’ She held up a teacup to show me and tapped the hard crystals of soap. ‘Just like rock. I’ve been scrubbing it off.’

  I grasped at the chance to do something to keep my thoughts occupied. ‘Want some help?’

  ‘Claire said to let you rest.’ She looked more closely at my face. ‘She really got you with that door, didn’t she? How does it feel?’

  I didn’t correct her assumption of how I’d been injured, I only assured her it wasn’t as bad as it looked. ‘I’m fine, honestly.’

  Working together in under ten minutes we had both tubs restacked with clean cups and saucers.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, lifting the nearest tub carefully. ‘I’ll help you carry these back.’