Island of Bones (5 page)

Although Rachel had turned away, Harriet could see the colour on her cheek. She might have a reputation for her sweet nature, but she had courage to match Harriet’s when it was called on, and a stubbornness that was no less powerful for being better concealed. ‘And what is to become of us, while you are gone?’ she demanded now. ‘Stephen, baby Anne and myself? I am grieved we do not provide sufficient novelty, Harry, but you cannot simply throw a dust-sheet over our heads when you wish to be somewhere else.’

Harriet hesitated for a moment, and then said: ‘I shall not leave you and my daughter here alone. You may all decamp to Thornleigh Hall and Mrs Service can chaperone you in my stead. As to Stephen, I intend to take him and his tutor with me. I am sure the visit will be most instructive.’

‘You wish to show him the corpse?’ Rachel said, shocked.

‘No, of course not. I mean the mountains and lakes, and so forth.’ Harriet waved her hand in the air to describe the extent of the educational possibilities available. ‘Though there is no point in being too precious with Stephen. If he continues in his wish to enter the Navy, he will see corpses enough before long.’

‘He has already seen his father’s,’ Rachel murmured, and the air left Harriet’s lungs rather suddenly. ‘I suppose you may dispose of us as you wish, Sister.’

The bitterness in her voice was such Harriet held out her hand again, but Rachel would not take it. She continued instead, ‘You seem very
courageous to some, Harry, but you and I both know you are simply running away. When did your home become such a prison to you?’

Harriet found she had no breath to reply, so unwillingly adding weight to her sister’s words, she got to her feet and left the room.

Tuesday, 15 July 1783, Keswick, Cumberland

S
TEPHEN
W
ESTERMAN ENJOYED
the preparations for the journey from Sussex to Cumberland immensely. At nine years old he was unencumbered by the necessity of taking any part in planning the arrangements, so was at perfect liberty to enjoy all the fuss taking place around him. The trip had been prepared for in a single night. The house at Caveley, so quiet since the death of his father, had been thrown by his mother’s sudden decision into a state of busy confusion. Firstly the family at Thornleigh Hall were consulted, and a warm invitation to Rachel, little Anne and her nurse was immediately extended and gratefully accepted. Her family thus dispensed with, Harriet had set about her arrangements. The rooms became busy with orders and requests, the scratching of pens and the creak of leather bands tightening round chests and boxes. It made a stirring in Stephen’s heart. He ran from room to room, fetching and carrying until his feet were sore.

Years of service with a family used to the demands of the Royal Navy had made the servants quick and efficient packers. However Mr Quince, Stephen’s tutor, was not used to such sudden changes of residence and Stephen could not help noticing his mother’s eyes begin to flash and her foot start to tap as the man tried to slim down his library of leisure reading and instruction manuals to a size suitable for travel.

The candles had burned all night, and in the confusion no one remembered to send Stephen to bed until midnight had passed. This, and watching his shirts packed flat and the lid slammed shut over them
confirmed him in the idea that he was about to embark on a great adventure. He had often been told that travel and exploration were in his blood. His parents had circled the globe before his birth and he himself had been born at sea. However, his own experience of travel was confined to the occasional visit to London, and once going to meet his father at Portsmouth on the return of his ship to home waters. Now at last he was going to see the world, or at least some other part of it. The only thing that gave him pause was realising that his favourite possession, an elaborate model of his father’s last command, HMS
Splendour
, was too large and delicate an object to take on a journey of this sort. He consoled himself by finding it a station on the table in the nursery where its tiny crew could examine the park beyond the window in his absence.

The following days of travel were crowded with novelty. He slept soundly in a number of strange beds and ate with relish whatever was put in front of him at the inns where they stopped to change horses. His mother spent part of each day travelling with him, his tutor and the majority of the luggage in the second carriage, and they competed to point out elements of the landscape to each other as the countryside began to subtly shift its shape. It was a delight to have so much of her time, and she laughed more often than she had been used to of late. The accents of the postilions and servants in the inns began to change, then change again, and under the guidance of his tutor and mother, Stephen began to get some creeping sense of the variety of his country.

The final day of the journey had begun very early, and as his mother was travelling with Mr Crowther, Stephen slept deeply as only the young can in a jolting carriage. So he found himself being gently shaken awake by Mr Quince as the carriage began its approach to the ancient market town of Keswick. His tutor smiled at him and told him to look out of the window.

‘That river you see is called the Greta,’ the young man said. Stephen hauled himself forward and peered out of the window. Mr Quince consulted his guide to the area, a present from Thornleigh Hall. ‘Greta is the name of the family who used to own much of this land in the
past. Do you remember our discussions of the Rebellions of 1715 and 1745, Stephen? Can you tell me anything of them?’

Stephen yawned. ‘In 1715 the Old Pretender landed in Scotland but was driven off by the Duke of Argyll. Then in 1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie had a try at it and Cumberland did for him at Culloden in 1746. Why do you ask, sir?’

‘Lord Greta joined the Old Pretender in 1715 and was tried for treason the following year. He escaped into exile. I think it was after that, that Mr Crowther’s family came into possession of this land.’ He looked as if he wished to press Stephen on his history further, but the boy quickly pointed upwards.

‘What is the name of that mountain, Mr Quince?’

Mr Quince checked in his book. ‘That is the mighty Skiddaw.’

It was mighty indeed, Stephen thought. The huge flanks of the mountains rose up around him like fairytale giants, their sides mottled and softened with bracken, becoming more broken as they rose with rocky outcrops. It was as if a massive stone fist were gradually tearing through a green mantle. He gripped the edge of the window and stared for a moment, then turned back to Mr Quince. ‘Do you think there are dragons living there, sir?’

His tutor smiled, deciding that further discussions on the Rebellions would have to wait. He was a young man, modest and sober in his habits and manners, but still able to share something of Stephen’s pleasure at the landscape. He closed his guide.

‘It looks like the country for them, does it not? We shall have to search for them.’

Crowther had not enjoyed the journey so completely as Stephen, but then he did not think to. Any suggestion that he might delight in the variety or be discomforted by the quality of his accommodation would be met with incomprehension. He had what was sufficient to his needs and there his interest in his material comforts ended. He found it perfectly possible to read as the carriage surged or jolted forward according
to the state of the roads and so he passed his time reasonably contented. However, on the morning that they began their final approach to Keswick he found his book no longer held him. He closed it to find Mrs Westerman observing him.

‘Crowther, when did you last visit this town?’

He chose to look out of the window as he replied, ‘In 1751, madam. The estate was sold in that year to the current owner, Mr Briggs; I came to sign a number of documents and provide for the staff of the estate in my father’s name, though I never met the gentleman. The sale was made within three months of my brother’s execution. He murdered our father in the late autumn of 1750, and was hanged in the February of the following year.’

The events of Crowther’s past were seldom spoken of between them. Crowther had used the wealth he had inherited to bury his personal history deeply, and turn his youthful interest in anatomy into expertise. He had taken his current name and studied under it in Germany, Italy and London, withdrawing finally into Sussex, his wish to avoid any larger world and dedicate his time to the mysteries of how life exists in the actuality of flesh, bone and brain. His involvement with Mrs Westerman and the corpse she had found on the edges of her estate in the summer of 1780 had pulled him from his candlelit study into the public glare of day, and though his bloody heritage had been discovered and exposed, still he kept the name and manners of Gabriel Crowther, the man he had made himself, a man without connections, a free man. It was an uneasy accommodation, and his former name, his former title and place in society could still itch at him from time to time, or rear up growling. No doubt they would do so even more fiercely here.

‘And what became of your sister at that time, Crowther?’ Harriet said. Crowther looked at the woman opposite him for a moment. Widowhood had not altered her as much as he had feared it might. His sister would be some ten years her senior, he supposed, and might have already made that transition from womanhood to matron that had yet to begin with Harriet.

His sister. She was an infant the age of Anne Westerman when he had left Keswick for his schooling. His visits to the family home had been infrequent from that point. They had met as strangers at the funeral of their mother early in 1750, and when, on his father’s murder, a family of Irish cousins had offered to give her a home, he had accepted the proposal at once and with relief. He had thought to write after their brother’s death on the scaffold but had abandoned the attempt. She became part of a past he wished nothing of. When his lawyers told him of her marriage, the birth of her son and her separation from her husband he had instructed them to make the proper financial arrangements, and there he felt his obligations ended. Her son would be something of Rachel’s age now, and was heir to his wealth and rejected title as well as those the young man would inherit through his own father, a man of minor nobility in one of the Prussian Courts. Crowther wondered, if he had known a Harriet Westerman at that early stage in his life, would events have unfolded differently, but at that time there had been no person so ready, like her, to ignore his wealth, his habit of chilled command as to question him. He had done what best suited him, and never thought of doing otherwise.

‘She went to some of my mother’s family in Ireland. I have not seen her since then. I told my lawyers not to inform her as to either the new name I took at that time, or my address, though I do not think she ever enquired.’

Harriet turned her ring. ‘I am interested to meet her, Crowther. Are you?’

He looked out of the window. ‘I do not know, Mrs Westerman.’

She waited for him to continue, but when he did not, said brightly, ‘So, sir. We have known each other three years and waded through a great deal of blood together. Would you think me impertinent to ask you for your given name?’

He smiled. ‘I was born Charles William Gabriel Penhaligon, and at the moment of my brother’s hanging became the Third Baron of Keswick.’

Mrs Westerman considered a moment, then shrugged and said, ‘I think we are reaching the outskirts of the town, my lord.’

The little town of Keswick was becoming accustomed to the elegant coaches of strangers appearing in its midst. Since it was founded it had known times of prosperity and poverty. When the hills were discovered to be rich sources of metals in Henry and Elizabeth’s day, the inhabitants had found their numbers swelled by German prospectors, and forges and mills had crowded round the rivers. When the mines began to weaken, these buildings had been left to rot and the population had dwindled once more, returning to the ancient agricultural practices of the region while Keswick had hunkered down to wait for better times.

Now the fells and hills were proving to be a source of wealth once more, though in a different fashion. Since the poet Gray’s account of his time in the area, the curious had begun to find their way to the town over the improving roads, wishing to see for themselves the landscape of which he had written in such high style. Other descriptions of the area had appeared from time to time, and nowadays few visitors arrived to take rooms at the Royal Oak or Queen’s Head without Mr West’s guide to the area in one hand, and a Claude glass in the other, eager to be awed by the scenery. The natives of the area were pleased to show off their home and take the guineas of these romantic travellers, so had gained a reputation as generous and friendly hosts. Many had become adept at moulding their histories to the inclinations of their individual guests. To some they pointed out the peaks; to others they spoke of the bogles, fairy people, lost treasures and giants; to others they showed druidical stones and sites of ancient castles built to defend against raids from the borders. In this way, what had been earlier in the century a rather poor little town dreaming of former days of glory had begun to thrive again and take the pleasures of its visitors more seriously with a variety of entertainment and new buildings.

As the carriages passed through the main square, Mr Oliver Askew, one of the prime instigators of these improvements, watched them with
interest from the front door of his new museum. The occupants had money enough, he could see that by the comfort in which they travelled, but the equipage was rolling past the better inns towards Portinscale and Silverside Hall. More guests for Mrs Briggs, perhaps. He thought of the skeleton recently discovered in the tomb on St Herbert’s Island and rubbed his hands. He had commissioned and received a dramatic, if purely imaginative, sketch of the grisly discovery and was keen to hang it, but he was nervous of the Vizegräfin’s reaction to her portrayal. She had heard of his display of pamphlets, cuttings, sketches and curios related to the death of her father and her brother’s execution within a day of her arrival at Silverside, and had sent a note to ask that they be removed from display for the length of her stay. Mr Askew was a naturally pugnacious man, and liked to boast about his habits of plain speaking with manly pride, yet something in the tone of the note had snapped his will like a reed and the display was now boxed up in his storeroom till the Vizegräfin might take herself abroad again. For the time being, the picture of the discovery of the skeleton lay under baize to be exhibited to the curious on request, and only when he was sure those making that request were unacquainted with the residents of Silverside.