Devil Water (48 page)

As they turned up the home burn, by the pine trees, Jenny said with a childish tremble in her voice, “I shall be
glad
to be with my father, and I shall take your advice, Rob. I’ll sing no more ‘The Oak and the Ash and the Bonny Ivy-tree.’ “

Rob’s hands clenched convulsively in his pockets, but he did not speak.

It was twilight of the following day before Jenny and Alec crossed the Tyne at Corbridge and entered Dilston’s parklands. They had been delayed by rain, which ceased as they came in sight of the castle, perched on its high cliff. Jenny looked up, and exclaimed, “Why how strange -- isn’t there a torch burning on top of the old tower?”

Alec followed her pointing finger. “I don’t see nothing, miss. The place looks mighty dark to me.”

Jenny was uncertain herself, as a bend in the road hid the tower. It was certainly dark in the woods, and very quiet, except for the clop-clop of the two horses’ hoofs. She put her hand nervously under her lace collar to feel again for the paper she was bringing her father. It was a “true copy” of the Bible entry on Meg’s death, written by Rob, and signed by Nan Wilson and Alec. Now that Jenny was nearing her father, she began to rejoice in her mission’s success. Of Rob she tried not to think at all. He had left the peel, during the night -- set off, said Nan with obvious relief, to catch a carrier’s wagon at Rothbury. They had had no more words together after reaching the peel last evening. Rob disappeared into the byre, Jenny shortly went to bed. And though there was a monstrous hurt, deep down, she was able to subdue it under both anger and reason.

“Yet there
is
a light!” she said suddenly to Alec as they came out of the copse. “ ‘Tis like a cresset burning. Surely you see it now?”

He peered this way and that, but saw nothing, and though a shiver went down his back, he said calmly, “Mebbe Busby’s put it up to guide us. ‘Twas what the family always used to do, when any o’ its members was afield.”

“It is a woman up there,” said Jenny, puzzled. “A woman in white holding the torch high. I can see her arm. Now who could that be?”

As she spoke her mare jerked her head, gave a snort, laid her ears back, and balked, trembling. “What’s the matter with Coquet?” cried Jenny, almost unseated, while Alec’s hunter reared and neighed.

“The horses see her too!” said Jenny patting Coquet’s neck. ““Coquet raised her head and saw that woman on the tower!”

Alec wasted no time. He grabbed Jenny’s bridle, yanked the mare, and mastering his own frightened horse led them both into a gallop. “Hold on tight, miss!” he cried. “We’ll go around by the bridge!” In a moment the tower was out of sight. Coquet ceased trembling, both horses slowed at once to a weary plod.

“What
was
it?” said Jenny breathlessly, rearranging her cloak and skirts.

She was more startled than alarmed. At that distance she could hardly have seen the woman’s face, and yet she had got an impression of terrible sadness.

“I dunno, miss,” said Alec. “And I don’t like it,” he whispered to himself, “there’s more trouble a-coming.” They went the long way around by the mill, and across the Earl’s Bridge up towards the front of Dilston, which obscured the tower. They drew up at Father Brown’s quarters in the gatehouse, and the priest came out at once.

“I give thanks to Saint Christopher for your safe return!” he cried. “Mr. Radcliffe’s been worried.”

“Oh, poor Papa.” Jenny dismounted and curtsied to the priest. “Where is he? I’ve got the paper with me.”

“Good, my child. Very good, though I fear other news is bad.”

“Not Papa, not to do with
him?”

“No, no, he’s well enough. He’s in the chapel praying, we mustn’t disturb him just yet. Come in -- you too, Alec.”

Father Brown led them into his bare parlor, poured a glassful of madeira for each of them. “Mr. Errington was here today,” said the priest, sighing, “with a letter from Brussels -- it’s -- it’s tragic.” The priest shut his eyes and murmured a prayer.

“My Lady Derwentwater,” stated Alec with certainty.

The priest bowed his head. “She died on August thirtieth of virulent smallpox, and was buried immediately at Saint Monica’s, Louvain.
Requiescat in pace”
He made the sign of the cross. “Mr. Radcliffe is praying for her soul, as we all will. It must be at rest, so young as she was and has suffered so much in this life, purgatory for her can’t be long.”

Alec interrupted, unheeding. “It was on August thirtieth Mrs. Selby first saw the white woman in the tower holding a light!”

“I believe it was,” said the priest frowning. “A coincidence.”

“Miss Jenny saw her tonight!” said Alec hoarsely. “Waiting and watching as she always did for his lordship to come home. Oh, my poor, poor ladyship.” He uttered a broken sound and covered his face with his hands.

“Is this true, my child?” Father Brown asked of Jenny, who was staring with round-eyed sympathy at Alec, whom she had never thought possessed much feeling.

“I saw a lady, sir,” she said very low, “just as Alec describes. He couldn’t see it, yet the horses did.”

The priest sat down abruptly on his stool. His weary thoughts ran together in confusion. He believed this girl, where he had not believed Mrs. Selby, and then the
date
-- was it at the very moment of death the unquiet spirit had returned to the place of its greatest happiness, or was it for another reason? Ann had sent over to England with Charles a small silver box which she had asked him to put in the Earl’s coffin, as earnest of the day when her own mortal remains would come to Dilston to join those of her lord. The box contained a lock of her hair and a private prayer, Charles thought, though he hadn’t cared to ask. Anyway, it had meant a great deal to Ann, and she had seemed to regard it as a substitution for the martyred Earl’s miracle-working heart. The latter Father Brown himself had conveyed to France, where it was now cherished by the Augustinian canonesses in Paris. The Earl had so willed it, during the last desperate days in the Tower, having developed great reverence for this particular convent during his childhood at St. Germain.

And now, because of the tragic news from Brussels, the disposition of the silver box had become a dying request, and was the only mortal part of the poor lady which could ever be united with her husband. We shall have to open the coffin, thought the priest with revulsion. He had been combatting this morbid wish of Charles’s and had insisted that to place the box in the vault on the tomb was quite enough. It apparently was not. There might also have to be a form of exorcism.
“Pater Noster, libera nos a malo”
he murmured, turning his anxious eyes towards the crucifix.

Jenny spent that night in a little room next her father’s in the old part of the castle. From the moment she saw him -- pale and haggard, his eyes red-rimmed, a hastily made black band around his left arm -- she set herself to console him. And it was balm to her to see how well she succeeded, and how fervently he welcomed her. He called her his darling, and his pet. He praised her for having got the certificate, though he showed no interest in the actual events at Coquetdale; nor did she try to tell them.

Charles, always volatile, and weary of sadness, reacted from the shock of Ann’s death, and set himself to entertain his daughter and forget the dismal rites Father Brown had ordained for tomorrow. Charles did not know of what Jenny had seen on her ride home. She found herself exceedingly reluctant to mention it, partly because she knew he would chide her for being fanciful, partly because she hardly believed it herself.

When Mrs. Busby, the steward’s wife, showed her to her room, Jenny made an excuse and ran up in the tower. There was nothing there at all except a small empty stone platform open to the night wind and mist.

Charles and Jenny had a gay little supper by the fireside. It was served by Mrs. Busby, who brought them brandy and a rare old claret from the cellar, then left them alone. Charles told amusing stories of his travels abroad; he even told her in a light and prankish way about some of his more respectable love affairs. Jenny listened fascinated, and was flattered that this evening he lost all paternal manner and treated her as an equal and a grown lady. He encouraged her to drink with him, he toasted her in gallant phrases, he sang the old French folk song
“Auprès de Ma Blonde”
and was highly amused when she admitted to understanding the words.

“Ah, sweetheart,” he said, being half tipsy and much exhilarated, “what merry times we’ll have together on the Continent! What pleasure ‘twill be for me to dress you in the latest Parisian gowns, and to show you off to all the beau monde!”

“Am I going to the Continent?” asked Jenny, startled and excited. “But I thought we were poor!”

“Ah, well,” said Charles airily, snapping his fingers. “We won’t be when I marry -- then everything’ll be quite quite all right!”

“Marry?” she repeated, her jaw dropping.

“Of course, darling! Why’d you think I wanted the certificate so badly? Come, come, don’t look like that! Silly one. Twon’t change a thing between
us!
‘Twill only mean that you may ‘sit on a cushion and gloriously dream, and feast all day long upon strawberries and cream’!”

Jenny frowned, trying to adjust to the thought of his marriage, though aware that she had been childish not to guess it before.

He leaned across the table and gently tickled the corners of her mouth. “Smile!” he commanded, giving her one of his most brilliantly tender mocking looks.

She resisted a moment, then burst out laughing. “Oh Papa! Anyway it isn’t ‘sit on a cushion and gloriously dream’ -- it’s ‘sew a fine seam’ instead.”

“Is it indeed?” said Charles, raising his eyebrows. “Yet I’ve noted in you a certain resistance to such labor, so you shall have a maid to do it for you -- two, three maids, a whole gaggle of maids to serve my poppet!”

“Don’t you think,” said Jenny, “that I might get rather fat, just sitting on that cushion and feasting?”

“God forbid!” Charles cried. He cocked his head to one side, and examined her first critically, then admiringly. “I don’t think you would, not the way you’re made -- like a willow wand -- but I’ll see to it you do a lot of dancing and riding just in case.”

“Won’t I have to go to school any more?” asked Jenny, dazzled.

“A pish to school!” said Charles. “I’ll finish your education myself, and we’ll travel, see the world -- there’s a lot of it outside this damnably dreary little island!”

Charles began to tell her about Venice, the shining water streets, the gondolas, the sunlit pink palaces where mandolins and romance eternally dwelt. He became so charmed with his visions and Jenny’s rapturous reception of them that he totally forgot Lady Newburgh, or any of the other stringent realities of which his actual life was composed. His voice dropped to its most caressing note, he spoke to Jenny as though he were luring a desired woman to an assignation, as he passed from recounting the seductive pleasures of Venice to those of Paris and Rome. And when at last Jenny, being flushed with wine and very sleepy, said reluctantly that she had better retire, Charles burst out irrepressibly, “
‘Auprès de ma blonde, qu’il fait bon . . . fait bon dormer!’ “

“Oui,
Papa,” said Jenny sweetly, a trifle puzzled. “It will be nice for us to sleep near each other tonight. It must have been lonely for you here by yourself.”

Charles stiffened, his drunkenness cleared, an immense sorrowing awareness deluged him as with icy water. “Yes, child,” he said slowly. “Go to bed, you must be very tired. I’ll stay up and finish the bottle. And Jenny, I fear I’ve talked a lot of twaddle.”

“Oh, I loved it, Papa,” she said earnestly. “It was like going to the playhouse with Lady Betty, only better because I was partly in the play myself!”

She made him a smiling curtsey, went to her own little room and shut the door, Charles sank back in his chair, and stared into the dying fire.

While Jenny and Charles were supping, Father Brown and Busby were performing a mournful duty, informing the village of Lady Derwentwater’s death, and that there would be a Requiem Mass for her tomorrow morning.

The news was received with varying degrees of lamentation, and in some cases downright apathy, while Abraham Bunting, the weaver, actually shrugged and said, “Good riddance, her ladyship wor a wicked fule.”

“How dare you say that!” cried the priest. “She was good to you, and everyone at Dilston.”

“She wor a Southron,” said Bunting stubbornly. “Anyways she wor a false fulish woman, like i’ the song Mrs. Selby sings.”

The priest repressed his irritation. Mrs. Selby again! A mass of blind prejudices, fancies, and monomaniac hero-worship for the martyred Earl. Still -- he thought, constrained by justice -- some of her fancies, like the apparition in the tower, seemed to have foundation, and since she was a devout Catholic and also a leader in the village she had been helpful to him.

He crossed the village green and made for the blacksmith shop. Selby was still banging away at his forge; he greeted the priest respectfully and said his ould wife was i’ the kitchen.

Father Brown knocked and walked in. Mrs. Selby was knitting. She was a little stick of a woman, with wispy hair, and a faraway glaze in her watery blue eyes. She jumped up as the priest came in, nearly falling over Jackie, her idiot son, who lolled on the floor playing with the ball of yarn. “Good even, sir,” she cried. “Wot a honor!”

The priest replied suitably, inquired after Jackie, who gobbled something and dropped the ball of yarn, then he said, “Mrs. Selby, since I’ve come back here, I’ve heard often of a song you sing about Lord Derwentwater, will you sing it to me?”

“Ah,” she said flushing importantly. “ ‘The Lament.’ It come ter me in a dream, it did, like
he
was telling it to me, hisself.” She gestured towards a picture on the wall, which the priest had never noticed. He got up and examined it. It was a crude daub, painted on wood and barely recognizable as a man, yet the Radcliffe coat of arms, and the golden crucifix the Earl had often worn, identified it. A candle burned below the portrait.