Dorchester Terrace (5 page)

The fire was low, but had clearly been lit since early morning, filling the air with the scent of applewood. There were paintings of northern Italian landscapes on the walls: one of Monte Bianco gleaming white in a clear evening sky; another of early morning light on Isola San Giulio, catching the roofs of the monastery, and making shadows in the clear water of Lago d’Orta, where half a dozen small boats lay motionless.

The decor was chaotically eclectic, and full of life, and Vespasia smiled at a score of memories that crowded her mind. She and Serafina had sat at a pavement café in Vienna and drunk hot chocolate while they made notes for a political pamphlet. All around them had been excited chatter, laughter at bawdy jokes, voices sharp-edged, a little too loud with the awareness of danger and loss.

They had stood on the shore at Trieste, side by side, the magnificent Austrian buildings behind them and the sweeping Adriatic skies above, high-arched with clouds like mares’ tails fanned out in the evening light. Serafina had cursed the whole Austrian Empire with a violence that twisted her face and made her voice rasp in her throat.

Vespasia returned to the present with a jolt when the tea was brought. She had nearly finished it by the time a young woman came in, closing the door softly behind her. She was in her mid-thirties, dark-haired, but with such unremarkable brows and lashes that the power of her coloring was lost. She was slender and soft-voiced.

“Lady Vespasia. How gracious of you to call,” she said quietly. “My name is Nerissa Freemarsh. My aunt Serafina is so pleased that you
have come. As soon as you have finished your tea I shall take you up to see her. I’m afraid you will find her much weaker than you may remember her, and somewhat more absentminded.” She smiled apologetically. “It has been quite some time since you last met. Please be patient with her. She seems rather confused at times. I’m so sorry.”

“Please think nothing of it.” Vespasia rose to her feet, guilty that it had been so long since she had come to see her friend. “I daresay I forget things myself at times.”

“But this is …” Nerissa started. Then she stopped, smiling at her own mistake. “Of course. I know you understand.” She turned and led the way out across the parqueted hall again and up the handsome staircase. She walked a little stiffly, picking up the dark, plain fabric of her skirt in one hand so she did not trip.

Vespasia followed her up and across the landing, and—after a brief knock on the door—into the main bedroom. Inside it was warm and bright, even in the middle of this dark winter day. The fire was excellent; the logs must be applewood here also, from the sweet smell. The walls were painted light terra-cotta, and the curtains were patterned with flowers, as if Serafina wanted to carry the summer with her, regardless of the iron rule of time and season.

Vespasia looked across at the bed and could not keep the shock from her face.

Serafina was propped almost upright by the pillows at her back. Her hair was white and dressed a little carelessly. Her face was devoid of any artificial color, although with her dark eyes and well-marked brows she did not look as ashen as a fairer woman might have. She had never been beautiful—not as Vespasia had been, and still was—but her features were good, and her courage and intelligence had made her extraordinary. Beside her, other women had seemed leached of life, and predictable. Now all that burning energy was gone, leaving a shell behind, recognizable only with effort.

Serafina turned slowly and stared at the intruders in her room.

Vespasia felt her throat tighten until she could barely swallow.

“Lady Vespasia has come to see you, Aunt Serafina,” Nerissa said with forced cheerfulness. “And brought you some Belgian chocolates.” She held up the box with its beautiful ribbons.

Slowly Serafina smiled, but it was only out of courtesy. Her eyes were blank.

“How kind,” she said without expression.

Vespasia moved forward, smiling back with an effort that she knew marred any attempt at sincerity. This was a woman whose mind had been as sharp as her own, whose wit nearly as quick, and she was no more than ten years older than Vespasia. But she looked empty, as if her fire and soul had already left.

“I hope you’ll enjoy them,” Vespasia said, the words hollow as they left her lips. For a moment she wished she had not come. Serafina appeared to have no idea who she was, as if the past had been wiped out and they had not shared the kind of friendship that is never forgotten.

Serafina looked at her with only a slow dawning of light in her eyes, as if shreds of understanding gradually returned to her.

“I am sure you would like to talk for a little while,” Nerissa said gently. “Don’t tire yourself, Aunt Serafina.” The instruction was aimed obliquely at Vespasia. “I’ll put another log on the fire before I leave. If you need anything, the bell is easy to reach and I’ll come straightaway.”

Serafina nodded very slightly, her eyes still fixed on Vespasia.

“Thank you,” Vespasia replied. There was no escape. It would be inexcusable to leave now, however much she wished to.

Nerissa went over to the fire, poked it a little, which sent up a shower of sparks, then carefully placed another log on top. She straightened her back and smiled at Vespasia.

“It is so kind of you to come,” she said. “I’ll return in a little while.” She walked over to the door, opened it, and went out.

Vespasia sat down in the chair next to the bed. What on earth could she say that would make sense? To ask after her friend’s health seemed almost a mockery.

It was Serafina who spoke first.

“Thank you for coming,” she said quietly. “I was afraid that no one would tell you. I have bad days sometimes, and I don’t remember things. I talk too much.”

Vespasia looked at her. Her eyes were not empty anymore, but
filled with a deep anxiety. She was desperately searching Vespasia’s face for understanding. It was as if the woman Vespasia knew had returned for a moment.

“The purpose of visiting is to talk,” Vespasia said gently. “The whole pleasure of seeing people is to be able to share ideas, to laugh a little, to recall all the things we have loved in the past. I shall be very disappointed if you don’t talk to me.”

Serafina looked as if she was struggling to find words that eluded her.

Vespasia thought immediately that, without meaning to, she had placed further pressure on Serafina, acting as if she was hoping to be entertained. That was not what she had meant at all. But how could she retrace her steps now without sounding ridiculous?

“Is there something you would particularly care to talk about?” she invited.

“I forget things,” Serafina said very softly. “Sometimes lots of things.”

“So do I,” Vespasia assured her gently. “Most of them don’t matter.”

“Sometimes I muddle the past and the present,” Serafina went on. Now she was watching Vespasia as if from the edge of an abyss in which some horror waited to consume her.

Vespasia tried to think of a reply, but nothing seemed appropriate for what was clearly, at least to Serafina, a matter of intense importance. This was no mere apology for being a little incoherent. She seemed frightened. Perhaps the terror of losing one’s grip on one’s mind was deeper and far more real than most people took time or care to appreciate.

Vespasia put her hand on Serafina’s and felt the thin bones, the flesh far softer than it ever used to be. This was a woman who had ridden horses at a gallop few men dared equal; who had held a sword and fought with it, light flashing on steel as she moved quickly, lethally, and with beautiful grace. It was a hand that so swiftly coordinated with her eye that she was a superb shot with both pistol and rifle.

Now it was slack in Vespasia’s grip.

“We all forget,” Vespasia said softly. “The young, less so, perhaps. They have so much less to remember, some of them barely anything at all.” She smiled fleetingly. “You and I have seen incredible things: butchers, bakers, and housewives manning the barricades; sunset flaming across the Alps till the snow looked like blood. We’ve danced with emperors and been kissed by princes. I, at least, have been sworn at by a cardinal …”

She saw Serafina smile and move her head in a slight nod of agreement.

“We have fought for what we believed in,” Vespasia went on. “We have both won and lost more than the young today have dreamed of. But I daresay their turn will come.”

Serafina’s eyes were clear for a moment. “We have, haven’t we? That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“What frightens you, my dear?”

“I forget who is real and who is just memory,” Serafina replied. “Sometimes the past seems so vivid that I mistake the trivia of today for the great issues that used to be—and the people we knew.”

“Does that matter?” Vespasia asked her. “Perhaps the past is more interesting?”

The smile touched Serafina’s eyes again. “Infinitely—at least to me.” Then the fear returned, huge and engulfing. Her voice shook. “But I’m so afraid I might mistake some person now for someone else I knew and trusted, and let slip what I shouldn’t! I know terrible things, dangerous things about murder and betrayal. Do you understand?”

Frankly, Vespasia did not. She was aware that Serafina had been an adventurer all her life. She had never let her causes die from her mind. She had married twice, but neither time had been particularly happy, and she had no children. But then she could outride and out-shoot so many men, she was not an easy woman to be comfortable with. She had never learned to keep her own counsel about her political opinions, nor to temper the exercise of her more dangerous skills.

But this was the first time Vespasia had seen fear in her, and that was a shock. It touched her with a pity she could not have imagined feeling for such a proud and fierce woman.

“Are any of those secrets still dangerous now?” she asked doubtfully. It was hard to sound reassuring without also sounding as though she was patronizing Serafina, implying that her knowledge was outdated and no one would still be interested. It was a judgment so easy to mishandle. Vespasia herself would hate to be relegated to the past, as if currently not worth bothering about, even though one day that would assuredly be true. She refused to think of it.

“Of course they are!” Serafina told her, her voice husky with urgency. “Why on earth do you ask? Have you lost all interest in politics? What’s happened to you?” It was almost an accusation. Serafina’s dark eyes were alive now with anger.

Vespasia felt a flash of her own temper, and crushed it immediately. This was not about her vanity.

“Not at all,” she replied. “But I cannot think of anything current that might be affected by most of my knowledge of the past.”

“You never used to be a liar,” Serafina said softly, her mouth a little twisted with unhappiness. “Or at least if you were, you were good enough at it that I did not know.”

Vespasia felt the heat burn up her face. The accusation was just. Of course some of the events she knew, the acutely personal ones, would still be dangerous, if she were to speak of them in the wrong places. She would never do so. But then she always knew exactly where she was, and to whom she was speaking.

“Those sorts of secrets you would keep,” she told Serafina. “You would not mention them, even to the people involved. It would be such awfully bad taste.”

Suddenly Serafina laughed, a rich, throaty sound, taking Vespasia back forty years in the time of a single heartbeat. Vespasia found herself smiling too. She saw them both on the terrace of a villa in Capri. The summer night was heavy with the scent of jasmine. Across the water Vesuvius lifted its double peaks against the skyline. The wine was sweet. Someone had made a joke and laughter was swift and easy.

Then a log burned through and fell in the fireplace with a shower
of sparks. Vespasia returned to the present: the warm bright room with its flowered curtains, and the old, frightened woman in the bed so close to her.

“You had better ask Miss Freemarsh to be sure that certain people do not call on you,” Vespasia said with absolute seriousness. “There cannot be so many of them left now. Give her a list, tell her you do not wish to see them. You must have a lady’s maid who would help you?”

“Oh, yes. I still have Tucker,” Serafina said with warmth. “God bless her. She’s almost as old as I am! But what reason shall I give?” She searched Vespasia’s eyes for help.

“No reason at all,” Vespasia told her. “It is not her concern who you will see, or not see. Tell her so if she presses you. Invent something.”

“I shall forget what I said!”

“Then ask her. Say, ‘What did I tell you?’ If she replies by repeating it, then you have your answer. If she says she can’t recall, then you may start again too.”

Serafina lay back on her pillows, smiling, the look in her eyes far away. “That is more like the Vespasia I remember. They were great days, weren’t they?”

“Yes,” Vespasia answered her, firmly and honestly. “They were marvelous. More of life than most people ever see.”

“But dangerous,” Serafina added.

“Oh, yes. And we survived them. You’re here. I’m here.” She smiled at the old woman lying so still in the bed. “We lived, and we can share the memories with each other.”

Serafina’s hand slowly clenched the sheets, and her face became bleak with anxiety again. “That’s what I’m afraid of,” she whispered. “What if I think it’s you, but it’s really someone else? What if my mind takes me back to the days in Vienna, Budapest, or Italy, and I say something dangerous, something from which secrets could be unraveled and understood at last?”

Her frown deepened, her face now intensely troubled. “I know terrible things, Vespasia, things that would have brought down some of the greatest families. I dare not name them, even here in my own
bedroom. You see …” She bit her lip. “I know who you are now, but in thirty minutes I might forget. I might think it is the past, and you are someone else entirely, who doesn’t understand as you do. I might …” She swallowed. “I might think I am back in one of the old plots, an old fight with everything to win or lose … and tell you something dangerous … a secret. Do you see?”