Descent Into Dust (2 page)
“Roger, it is so very good to see you,” I replied sincerely. “Your home is…quite unique. How are you liking living back here, lord of the manor in the house where you grew up?”
He made a face as he drew my arm through his. “The house is atrocious, it always was.” Leaning closer, he lowered his tone conspiratorially. “Do not tell my wife I said so, but I find it depressing. We have been here but a fortnight and I am already longing for our lesser lodgings in Cheltenham. But Mary will have me play the country gentleman now that the house is ours.”
“And Henrietta? It must be all a great adventure to her, a new house, woods to explore…”
“She is a quiet child,” he said, not answering my question.
“She is an absolute angel, and if you have scruples about being a braggart over her, I do not.”
He laughed. It was no secret that I absolutely doted on the child, had done from the day of her birth. She was what my uncle Peter, who was the wisest man I knew, called an “old soul”: a calm, peaceful presence with a serene nature and penetrating mind. “Perhaps she and I shall do a bit of exploring tomorrow,” I suggested. “We can have an adventure or two.”
He hesitated, frowning slightly. “I’d prefer it if she kept close to the grounds. Henrietta is hardly familiar with the surroundings, and with you as her guide, someone who is equally unknowledgeable of the safe—well, that is to say, the better-traveled areas—I think it best if excursions out of doors are kept to a minimum for now.”
“Why, certainly,” I murmured, somewhat dismayed by his excessive caution.
“Oh, dear, I almost forgot,” he added with a snap of his fingers. “We are going for rabbit in a day or two. You must join the shooting party; I will not take no for an answer from you, even at the risk of my wife’s darkest scowl. Like those hearty ladies of the American West, you are an excellent shot and I require you with me.”
That was why I liked Roger so well. He didn’t seem to mind my being unconventional. Only Simon had liked me just as I was. “You must remember my paltry skills at riding, which may hold the party back. And as for my cousin’s scowl, it will be substantial, I should think.”
“But I do approve, and a husband must have his way every once in a while.” He patted my hand resting in the crook of his arm. “Now, let me introduce you before Mary scolds me for neglecting my duties. I am to make a toast to the queen. Come let me get you a glass.”
He steered me to the elderly curate, Mr. Bedford, and his pleasant wife. Mr. Bedford was a large man, with not a wisp of a hair on his head. His wife was a straight-shouldered matron whose beauty had not quite faded. Turning from them, Roger introduced me to a knot of men who were discussing the quality of local horse breeding, where I was presented to the local squire, Sir William Pentworth, and his son Ted. The former had little interest in me, and I likewise in him. The latter, however, a rather rakish-looking young man, perhaps a year or two my junior, gave me an utterly male look that bordered on impertinence, and immediately lifted my spirits.
Another was introduced as George Hess, a retired Oxford don. Sporting a wild mane of gunmetal-gray hair and a keen, intelligent face, Mr. Hess proved a friendly man with the air
of an elder statesman. I felt an immediate affinity toward his gentle presence as we exchanged pleasantries, after which I fortified myself and at last approached Alyssa and Alan.
“You are late,” she murmured, taking in my wrinkled skirts and then on upward to the softly curling hair at my temple. “I’ve been waiting for you all day. Alan and I arrived yesterday, you know.”
I made the only response I could as I bent down to kiss her cheek. “Darling, you are absolutely lovely.”
This was no faint praise. Alyssa was perfectly beautiful. Fair where I was dark, petite where I was tall, plump where I was lean, we looked nothing like sisters, a fact attributed to our having had different mothers.
Alan Spence, posted like a sentry behind his wife’s chair, inclined his head in my direction. I nodded in reply. Alyssa’s husband was a cold man, handsome in the extreme, and devoted to my sister nearly as deeply as he was to himself. He did not like me, nor I him, but neither one of us would dream of giving the other so much satisfaction as to ever demonstrate even a hint of anything less than cordiality.
We were all given glasses of sherry and Roger led the salute. “To Her Majesty Queen Victoria,” he bellowed, raising his glass up high. We followed suit and chimed out agreement, after which we found seats. The curate’s wife settled down by me. She was the chatty sort and immediately launched into a discussion of the area, the grand houses, which delighted Alyssa, and the old Roman road that cuts across the chalk downs close by.
“Did I not read about Avebury having a stone circle like Stonehenge near here?” I asked.
Mr. Hess joined us, taking an empty seat to my right. “Several of them, in fact, and an entire complex of avenues and barrows
as well. We are not nearly as famous, but known well enough.”
“It is because many of the stones have been removed,” Mrs. Bedford chimed in.
Mr. Hess’s expression of distress was acute. “Oh, the pity of it. But there are still enough remains to keep me busy.”
Mrs. Bedford smiled at him. “Mr. Hess has come to the area to study the ruins. He has several absolutely grisly theories as to the purpose of the monuments.”
“I was persuaded once to go to Stonehenge,” Alyssa said. “I found it unutterably boring. Nothing to see but large rocks, and not very pretty ones at that.”
My sister could be charming, but never when she was in a snit, as she was now. We had yet to make our amends, she and I, and she would sulk until the proper ritual had been observed.
“I am not familiar with the term ‘barrow,’” I said to Hess.
“It is, in effect, a mass tomb.”
Alyssa gasped and gave an exaggerated shiver. “How dreadful.”
Hess smiled at her. “Our barrow is part of an avenue of standing stones that stretches all the way to West Kennett. What we call The Sanctuary is the other end of the line, where stones once stood in a circle. The West Kennett stones are still present and quite majestic.”
Mrs. Bedford poured a second cup of tea for herself. “Who was that who studied the stones, Mr. Hess, who wrote that book to which you are always referring?”
“It was William Stukely,” Hess replied, his enthusiasm growing. “He called it
The Great Stone Serpent
. The combination of the structures create the shape of a snake as it lies on the countryside. The complex almost certainly had to do with funerary purposes. The ancients were quite devoted to the
dead, you know. It is noteworthy that the serpent, by virtue of its cycle of renewal in shedding its skin, is considered a symbol of eternal life.” He paused, and smiled sheepishly. “I am lecturing, am I not? I tend to do so. Forgive me.”
“Not at all,” I rushed, for I wished very much to hear more.
Alan sniffed and rolled his eyes. “I warn you from handing too much significance to the habits of these long-gone peoples. Weren’t they the ones who worshipped trees?”
Alyssa joined him in a stifled snicker.
I sat back, adding a small amount of sugar before taking my first sip of the tea, darting a sharp look at my brother-in-law. It would not do if Alan continued to mock Mr. Hess, whom I had decided I liked very much.
“What a silly conversation,” Mary declared. “Worshipping trees, indeed. That is a stunning shawl, Alyssa. Is it Chinese?”
The transition was expertly done. My sister grew more cheerful. “Oh, it was my grandmother’s. You know how that generation loved all things Oriental. The prince regent’s influence.” She smiled, rearranging the silk, obviously feeling very proud that she, too, could speak a word or two on history. I had to credit her—no one knew the history of clothing better.
The conversation went the way of fashion plates and the merits of silk over taffeta for evening gowns. I sipped my tea, savoring the feeling of the heat on the back of my throat and closing my eyes against my returning headache. Placing two fingers against my temple, I rubbed gently.
“Emma?” Roger’s tone was almost strident. “You are not unwell, are you?”
My eyelids flew open to find everyone looking at me.
“Roger, darling, that cannot affect us,” Mary chided in a
strained voice that conveyed a meaning beyond her words. A tense silence fell.
“Is something the matter?” Alyssa inquired suddenly.
“No, dear. It is nothing. You mustn’t worry,” Mary said quickly.
“There is an illness in the village,” Roger explained.
“But that is among the farmers, darling,” Mary countered, her face growing florid.
“Illness?” Alan said, his eyebrows rising slightly. On Alan, this was an expression of great alarm.
“It is nothing to be concerned about.” Mary spoke with authority. She picked up the pot and refilled all of our cups without asking permission. “A family lost several children recently. It was very sad, their deaths coming as they did one right after the other. We sent food and blankets to them, of course.”
“The house had to be quarantined—”
“—which prevented the illness from spreading to the village,” Mary was quick to add. “So, it was only the one family affected.”
“And the man outside town,” Roger added darkly. “He was found in the road, dead, apparently of the same wasting disease.”
The band around my head constricted. Outside, the icy tap of a forceful rain began. It sounded like the light touch of sharpened nails on the old leaded glass windows. A maid moved quickly to draw the hangings, and the sound was muffled behind folds of green velvet.
“It is nothing contagious,” Mary assured everyone.
“We do not know the nature of the illness.” Roger was grave.
Mary put the pot down with a resounding thud. The lid clat
tered and the noise jerked all of our attention to her. “An unfortunate sickness of the local crofters is a sad story, to be sure, but it is of no consequence to any of us here. Illness occurs, Roger, we cannot become overset by it. Now, we are going to have a wonderful visit and put all thoughts of such unfortunate happenings out of our heads.”
There was an awkward silence, ended when Mrs. Bedford said with pointed cheerfulness, “Well, I for one am looking forward to bowls tomorrow.” She turned to her husband. “I do hope the weather holds, for I love a good match of bowls, isn’t that right, dear?”
Mary was happy to have a change of subject introduced and launched into a discussion of the activities she had planned, but I could see Roger’s brow remained furrowed. His disquiet sat heavy with me, for I felt a strange mood hovering over me as well, a sense of something not right. But I did not yet imagine what it was.
I
awoke early the following day, startled out of sleep by some unremembered dream. The skies had cleared during the night, parting the veil of mists which had shrouded Dulwich’s grounds yesterday and splashing them with the lemony sunlight of morning. The cheerfulness of the day invited me outdoors.
I required no more than fifteen minutes to make a quick toilette and don sturdy boots. I slipped out of the house unseen, for no one was yet awake, and set off on a brisk walk toward Overton, my intention to travel the short distance to the ancient monument of standing stones described last night.
The headache was still with me, although sleep had done it good. I wondered if Alyssa would thaw enough for us to have a
serious conversation or if she was bent on punishing me for the duration of the visit. My strides were long and quick, my energy fueled by the memory of the arguments, many and futile, that had driven this wedge between us over time.
Alyssa and I were simply too different. She adored everything I despised and disapproved of everything that enchanted me. It had always been so, all the way back to the time when we were children and my father had been alive. Alyssa had been his pet. She had but to enter the room and he’d break into a broad smile, beaming at her—prim and pretty in a ruffled dress, her blond hair shining like the sun. While he loved me—that was never in question—the specter of my mother always stood between us. Quite often I would notice how he looked at me: so quietly, so still, so wary.
When I was old enough to understand why he gazed at me thus, I wanted to shout: “I am well. I am not like her.” I’d seen that careful scrutiny in the eyes of others; saw it still to this day. They look for the taint of my mother’s madness. What a frustrating impossibility it is to try to prove one’s self sane. No matter how I remained rational, calm, tractable, pleasant, there is always that small element of doubt that perhaps the demons which lived in my mother’s fragile mind had been passed on to me. No, no one would ever completely trust my mind. Not even I.
I had not known her, my mother. I had no memory of her, for she died when I was a small child. Laura existed on as a mysterious figure whom I had heard spoken of only in whispers, more as a ghost than a parent.
It did not take me long to find the avenue that stretched across the downs. The stones leaned drunkenly in some instances but were solid and surprisingly beautiful against the green and blue of the plain. I followed them away from the vil
lage, up to the place on Overton Hill, which Mrs. Bedford and Mr. Hess had called The Sanctuary, to view where the circle of sarcen stones had stood long ago.
The name intrigued me. A sanctuary was, of course, a place of shelter, of safety. I had never really had such a thing, even in my childhood home. Certainly not living under the watchful, worried gaze of my father, and not in the sights of my stepmother Judith’s stern eye.
But those days were long past, and I was free. Simon had given me that freedom, I reflected as I crossed the empty circle. As a widow of independent means, I had no one telling me what to do. No father, no husband.
And yet, without those ties—not a single person whose regard I would strive for—I was left with one enormous emptiness. It was possible my existence in this world would have come and gone and in the end amount to nothing of much consequence. I had never strived for greatness, but one wishes to matter. To someone.