The Last to Know (5 page)

And so, dear Cousin, imagine if you will my situation. I was a guest at Carsholt, and now, unwillingly, I was deep within—nay, at the center of—some family tragedy of the very greatest seriousness.

A knock heralded Jane’s arrival. Backing the door open, in one hand she bore a bowl within which was a pounded mass of fresh green herbs and, in the other, a large plate piled high with bloody slices of fresh meat beneath a starched white cloth.

“Cook says I’m to bind the meat to the bruises on your back and then . . . Miss Elinor!” Jane ran to the bed. She had seen my distress.

“Jane, we must find Mr. Kit. Something terrible is happening.” Dramatic words, Cousin, but I remember them so well. And I was right, as you shall shortly see.

Over the protests of my maid, I insisted she dress me, but, as it was, with my general weakness and the pain of my back—which Jane insisted on treating with the herbs, if not the meat—more than the morning had fled before I descended, not without dread, to the ground floor of Carsholt Hall for the second time that day.

But, to my very great surprise, as I walked through room after deserted room, a very Psyche in the halls of Eros, I found myself alone. Carsholt Hall was deserted; no servants, neither of my hosts, just Jane and I, wandering at will. Sending my maid to find at least one of her fellows, I set out to see where Sir Henry or Lady Mary might be.

I have never in my life, from that day to this, been in a larger house. Once away from the very few rooms I knew, I quickly became lost. Somewhere, distantly, thunder began to mutter, and the skies beyond the shining windows darkened. An autumn storm was brewing. Perhaps this was the changing of the year at last, from heat to cold.

“Lady Mary? Sir Henry?” To an observer, I might have resembled a ghost. A white lady perhaps, crying out to find her long-vanished family, for I was dressed in pale, simple voile sprigged with tiny flowers. And since the day had become warm, my gown was very light and only delicately boned after the adventures of the morning.

I ceased calling out, for I was frightened. It was as if my voice had disturbed ancient echoes of other voices that should, long since, have died away.

Had I become caught in a dream perhaps, or was I like an insect trapped in liquid amber as it began to set? Perhaps the only way out was to pinch myself awake so that I should open my eyes in my bed at home in Portman Square, being bounced upon by my sisters? But this was fond fantasy, for I had now come to a part of the building which, in style, was closer, Cousin, to the heraldic towers at the gate than to the graceful, light salons of the newer parts of the house.

It was dark where I found myself, for the windows were small and few, and perhaps that is why I began to imagine that human misery had been trapped here long ago and, being caught, had seeped into the walls around me. I sensed then that these low spaces had seen much sorrow, heard much crying in the night.

The rooms were modest and somber, paneled in old wood, and all were connected—with each door opening directly into the next chamber. Mostly they were empty, but what furniture there was had been draped in white calico. The effect was shroud-like, and, beneath my feet, dust lay thick and soft. It had the effect of snow without the chill. All was muffled silence.

“Lady Mary, where are you?” I whispered the words but heard my voice crack as courage leached away.

It was then that the weeping began. In my anxious state, at first I thought the sobs were mine, but another moment altered that apprehension. I was no longer alone. It was the voice of a woman I heard—a woman in very great distress.

I hurried toward the sound: it seemed to emanate from behind a low door of black oak. I pushed upon it hard, and, with a groan, the door gave inward upon a dim space whose only light was one wavering candle flame.

The crying stopped. “Who is there? What do you want?”

“Lady Mary?” I had recognized her voice, but, oh, how altered she sounded—wild with grief. As my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, I saw her, and I saw where we were.

And I saw what she held in her arms.

The space was nearly circular. All at once it came to me. In my wanderings, I had found my way to the base, the very base, of one of the towers for which Carsholt was so noted, perhaps even that in which I slept. Towers which had once formed part of the defenses of this place and were of a very early date in its history.

But, more than this, it seemed I had discovered a crypt, the crypt of the Carsholt family itself, perhaps, for ranged around the floor and on massive wall shelves were stone sarcophagi and lead-covered coffins of all sizes.

And there stood Lady Mary, abundant hair loose and wild about her shoulders, and clasped in her arms was a tiny casket—an infant’s coffin. Cousin, the horror of that moment has robbed sleep from my eyes for many and many a night. “You asked me about my son. This is my son!” she said and collapsed to her knees, cradling the white box to her breast. I hurried toward her and, not caring for the dirt of the floor, knelt down.

“And I am his father.” Holding the sobbing woman with her dreadful burden, I looked up to find Kit Carsholt framed in the doorway behind me. It was he who had spoken. “The last of the Carsholts. There will never be another.” His voice broke; his anguish as great as hers.

Lady Mary stumbled to her feet. I could not stop her; she had the strength of the crazed. “We must baptize him, Kit, it’s not too late. He must go to heaven with all the other little babies. It is not his fault, it was never his fault. He must . . .” Her voice died away as Kit moved to her side. Lovingly he kissed the fair, wide brow of the woman at his side; gently he held her. Together they gazed down upon the box that contained the remains of their child.

I was transfixed by the horror of the scene; a son and his mother
and their child
? Their baby must be long dead. What priest would baptize a coffined corpse, the product of incest?

Soothingly, Kit spoke to the distraught woman in his arms. “Yes. He shall be christened, my darling; we owe him that. We will find someone who understands, a kindly priest. But he is already an angel, our little boy, with all the others. How could it be otherwise?”

Kit Carsholt looked at me. He was a lost and broken man. The restless, raffish idler from the train had vanished; here stood one who had suffered greatly but returned, it seemed, to face what must be faced.

And I, ashamed, understood in that moment that my callow judgment of Mr. Kit was the gravest error of my life. The glittering surface of the man had seemed the substance, but I was wrong, so very wrong. Until this day what had I known of the human heart, its strength and power? What had I understood of the burdens it carried in silence?

Slowly the grieving parents moved off into the shadows of that place, murmuring endearments to their dead child. A nightmare had crossed into our living world.

And I? I backed away, Cousin, a hand to my mouth to stifle the pity and the terror. A great wave of desperate sadness engulfed me. I was crazed as they were with grief. Distantly, muffled by stone and the weight of centuries, I heard a gun discharge. And I knew.

Graveney had hurried to his master when he heard the shot, for he understood where Sir Henry would be. There, in the oldest part of the house, amongst the swords and shields of his ancestors, under the eyes of their portraits, amongst their armor and the spoils of forgotten wars, Sir Henry Carsholt had put an elephant gun to his temple and pulled the trigger.

Having fled the crypt, I found my way to the great hall, to the chaos of shocked and sobbing servants, amongst whom was Jane. Softly she whispered to me what I had already guessed of Sir Henry’s fate.

Cousin, he could not bear the shame. His wife, his beloved
second
wife, had had an affair with his son. And once Sir Henry was told the dreadful facts—Lady Mary herself had confessed them—Kit was disowned and banished.

But her punishment was to remain at her husband’s side, for he would not release her from the marriage, though he could have. And the misery continued for Lady Mary. She had never given Sir Henry a child, but she had conceived one with her lover, his son.

It might have seemed a blessing, at first, that the baby died on the day of its birth; the little boy was never mentioned again between the husband and the wife—neither was Kit. And through the succeeding year, Lady Mary continued the toast of the county, as she had always been, holding her head high amongst the swirl of gossip, refusing all comment until, at last, starved of fuel, the malice died away. Henry Carsholt thought that the routine of duty and family honor was stronger than love. He was wrong.

Secretly, Lady Mary had sought her lover as he wandered from country to country in the long, erratic months of his exile. An exile in which he strove to obliterate his past and his name, strove to find oblivion in places so far from Europe some were recognized on no existing map.

Lady Mary’s messenger had reached him finally in Irkutsk as that summer waned. Her letter contained an account of the birth and death of their son, but she had also sent him a packet in which there was a ring engraved with the Carsholt crest. It was a token of her enduring love and a reminder of who he was and always would be: the eldest son of an ancient and noble house. This was the ring I had seen on the train, the very same that had been amongst my sheets that morning.

Lady Mary had not expected Kit Carsholt would return to England—she had been too proud to ask for that—but she reckoned without the true strength of his feeling for her. A weeks-long journey followed the arrival of her letter as he found his way by sled and horseback and boat until, finally, fate decreed that he and I should meet, strangers on a train, acting out the roles which society and custom had assigned to us.

Perhaps my presence as a guest eased the moment of Kit’s homecoming for all beneath the roof of Carsholt Hall—since the façade of normalcy must be maintained for outsiders to the family. Yet I was merely an incidental player in this tragedy, a walker-on. They, the Carsholts, carried the burden of the drama . . .

And, Cousin, I never knew, and I was never told, how the ring came to be in my bed on that fateful morning. But I believe Kit put it there, intending I should give it to Lady Mary, as, indeed, I did.

Now there is little enough left to tell, but for the final thing. Bear with me, I pray, as I write what remains.

Carsholt Hall was sold not long after Sir Henry’s death, and, to this day, I do not know what became of Lady Mary and Kit Carsholt. They disappeared immediately following the tragedy, and their flight was more than a nine-day wonder in the county and in London. Speculation and lurid tales stalked their memory like shadows for a time, though none of them was the truth as I knew it.

For many years I liked to think, and hope, that they were permitted to make a life together, somewhere far away from the prying eyes, the vicious tongues of the county. Italy, perhaps, where this is little English society once away from Rome or Venice, and where the manner of life is, I believe, more relaxed.

And I liked to hope, too, that they had other children to replace the little boy who died, though, of course, she was so much older than he.

As for me, I returned home from Carsholt Hall to Portman Square on the train with Jane that very evening. We had to travel in third class—the train was full and I could not persuade the conductor otherwise. Naturally, my mother and father were much alarmed to find us home at dawn of the next day, setting down from a hackney.

She, my mother that is, demanded and received the truth—every shred of it. And though incredulous, horrified, and scandalized, my parents decided that what had happened should never be spoken of again. They vowed me to silence on the events at Carsholt Hall in honor of Sir Henry’s memory and, from my point of view at least, of Lady Mary’s as well.

This trust I kept sacred until this very moment of writing to you. I refused to speak of what I knew, even to my sisters, something which caused considerable heat between us for a time. Naturally, my mother said that I must endure the gossip, the curiosity, and the questions which swirled around me in the course of the next Season with restraint (yes, Cousin, you were one of my interrogators, as you may recall).

But what, I hear you ask, has now changed that I may finally share what I know with you, my lifelong friend? The answer lies in the contents of a package I received only lately in the post. Perhaps you have guessed what I am about to tell you.

It was only a little box, but inside it there was a ring: a diamond ring engraved with the crest of the Carsholts. And with it, a simple note addressed to me from a certain lawyer who has offices in the Inner Temple.

I had been left a legacy—the ring—from his client, a certain Mr. K. Carsholt, who had lately passed away. The lawyer had been instructed to tell me that “the stranger on the train” apologized to me for any alarm or offense he might have unwittingly caused on the day we met, and that he wished me to have the ring as token of his regard for me and for my family. And his thanks for my discretion over the years.

There was nothing else.

And now this sad history is done. You may well imagine the relief it has been for me to share, at last, the secrets I have known for so very many years.

I, yes, I freely confess that the events at Carsholt Hall changed the course of my life, for, even so young, I was vouchsafed a glimpse of transcendent passion. Afterward, the callow affections of girlhood and even those of maturity were never enough for me.

In the end, I did not meet a man whom I could have loved as much as Lady Mary loved Kit Carsholt, as much as he loved her. And I decided that my life must be all or nothing, Cousin. All—or nothing.

And now I must close, as the shadows of evening beckon, and my bed awaits. I am tired but very glad that, finally, you know the truth.

And I shall remain, forever,

Your very good friend and affectionate cousin,

Elinor Fairfax

P.S. May we shortly meet once more, in this world or the next. Even if I have changed, you will recognize me, for I shall be wearing Kit Carsholt’s ring.