The Shrouded Walls (15 page)

“I sent Ned to the stables with the message.”

There was more conversation. I heard Esther’s voice then and Axel saying “Good morning” to her. Footsteps echoed in the hall.

“Everyone seems to be assembling now,” I murmured to Mary, and then saw to my astonishment that there were tears in her eyes. As she saw that I had noticed them she blushed and made an awkward gesture with her hands.

“Sunday mornings always remind me of Rodric,” she said shame-faced. “I so much used to enjoy traveling with him to church. He is not—was not—very reverent towards the rector but he used to make me laugh no matter how much I disapproved of his jokes on principle.”

I stared at her curiously. It was not the first time, I suddenly realized, that she had referred to Rodric in the present tense. To do so once was a natural enough mistake; twice was still excusable, but I was sure she had made the error on more than two occasions. Wondering whether it was simply an affectation assumed to underline her grief or whether it had any other possible significance, I said off-handedly: “Why do you so often talk about Rodric as if he’s not dead at all? You’re constantly forgetting to talk of him in the past tense! Is it because you think he may be still alive?” She stared at me round-eyed. Her mouth was open in surprise and I could see that one of her teeth was discolored with decay. And then as I watched her in mounting fascination she turned bright red, licked her lips and glanced wildly around the room to see if anyone had slipped in to eavesdrop while her back had been turned. I glanced around too, but of course there was no one there. The door was slightly open, just as I had left it, and from the hall came the vague sounds of footsteps and snatches of conversation.

“—
M
y best fur,” Esther was saying far away. “Quite ravaged by moth
...
Vere, you’re not taking the child to church, are you?”

“Stephen behaves very well in church,” said Alice, “and I shall take him to see my mother afterwards. Let me take him, Vere. Here, precious, come to Mama
...”

“Where’s your wife, George?”

“And Mary!” said Esther, faintly exasperated. “Where’s Mary? That child is always late
...”

“Mary?” I said in a low voice.

But she was shifting uneasily in her chair. “He’s dead,” she mumbled. I had never heard a lie told so badly. “Dead.” She stood up, fumbling with her gloves, not looking at me.

“I don’t believe you,” I said, curiosity making my voice sharp and hard. “You’re lying. Tell me the truth.”

The poor girl was so nervous of me that she dropped both her gloves on the floor and started to grovel for them helplessly, but I was ruthless. “So he’s alive,” I said, pitting my will against hers and watching her defenses crumble beneath the pressure. “How do you know? Answer me! How do you know he didn’t drown in the Marsh that day?”

My voice had risen in my determination to extract the truth. I saw her put her finger to her lips in an agony of worry lest someone should hear us.

“Shhh ... oh please—”

“How do you know he didn’t—”

“I saw him.” She was half-whispering, still motioning me to speak more softly. “I saw him come back to the house after George had told us he had found Rodric’s horse and hat by a bog in the Marsh.”

I stared at her.

“I—
I w
as so upset when I heard the news of his death,” she said “that I went to see Ned first, but Ned was too upset himself to comfort me. Then I went to Rodric’s room to sit for a while with his possessions around me, I couldn’t believe he was dead
...”

“And he came back.”

“Yes, I heard footsteps and hid behind a curtain because I didn’t want to be found there. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. And then—and then
...
he came in. At first I thought it was a ghost—I—I nearly fainted ... He came into the room, took some money out of a drawer, glanced at his watch and then went out again. He wasn’t in the room for more than a few seconds.
”

“And you didn’t speak to him? You didn’t call out?”

“I was too stunned—I was nearly fainting with the shock.”

“Quite. What did you do then?”

“I waited for him to come back.”

“And didn’t he?”

“No, that was what was so strange. I waited and waited and waited but he never came. I never saw him again.”

“But didn’t you tell anyone what you’d seen? Didn’t you—”

“Only George.”

“Axel!” I felt a sudden weakness in my knees. “Why Axel?”

“Well, I thought and thought about what I should do and then since George was the one who broke the news about Rodric’s death I decided to tell him what had happened. But he didn’t believe me. He said it was a—a hallucination
born
of shock and he advised me not to tell anyone or people would think my reason had been affected ... So I said nothing more. But I have gone on hoping. Every day I go to wait in his room in case—”

“But you did see him,” I said slowly, “didn’t you. It wasn’t your imagination. You really did see him.”

My belief in her story gave her confidence. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I swear I did. I did see him. I know Rodric was alive after George told me he was dead.”

There was a draft from the threshold as the door swung wider on its hinges. Esther’s voice said harshly: “What nonsense! What a despicable tale to tell, Mary Moore! You should be ashamed of yourself!” As I whirled around with a start I saw she was trembling in every limb. “Rodric’s dead,” she said, and her voice too was trembling now. “I loved him but he’s dead and I accepted his death, but you—you stupid foolish child—have to invent fantastic stories of him being alive just to please your sense of the dramatic!
”
She was crying; tears welled in her eyes and she pressed her hands against her cheeks. “How
dare
you upset me like this—”

Vere was behind her suddenly, and Alice. Vere said: “Mama, what is it? What’s the matter?” and beyond Alice I heard Axel’s voice say sharply: “Esther?”

But Esther did not hear him. Fortified by Vere’s arms around her she was weeping beautifully into a delicate lace handkerchief while poor Mary, also smitten with tears, howled that she hadn’t meant what she said, Rodric was dead, she had never seen him return to his room late last Christmas Eve, she was merely indulging in wishful thinking...

“Stop!” Axel exclaimed sternly in his most incisive voice,' and there was an abrupt silence broken only by Mary’s snuffles. “Mary, you should surely know by now that you must not try to impose your own dream world on other people. Haven’t I warned you about that before? Day-dreaming is selfish at the best of times, a dangerous self-indulgence
...
Come, Esther, the child didn’t mean to upset you. Forgive her—it wasn’t done maliciously. Now, are we all ready to leave? We shall be very late if we delay here much longer.”

We were all ready. Within two minutes we were on our way to the church at Haraldsford, and throughout the service that followed I tried to make up my mind whether Mary had been telling the truth or not. In the end I came to the conclusion, as Axel had done, that her “vision” of Rodric must have been a hallucination born of shock. After all, I reasoned, if Rodric really had arranged a faked death for himself in the Marsh, why had he then risked discovery by returning to the house? And if he had indeed returned to the house, how had he managed to vanish into thin air after Mary had seen him? And finally if he were alive today, where was he? Despite my romantic inclination to believe him alive, my common sense would not wholly allow me to do so. He must be dead, I told myself. If he were alive, the situation would make no sense.

And yet for some hours to come I found myself wondering.

My mother had been a Roman Catholic once long ago before her flight from France and her struggles for existence in England, but her faith had ebbed with her fortunes and she had made no protest when a succession of nannies, governesses and finally schools had firmly imprinted Alexander and myself with the stamp of the Church of England. This was probably for the best; at that time there was still a large amount of prejudice against Catholics and besides, my father, although amoral and irreligious, was always quick to champion the Church of England against what he called “damned Papist nonsense.”

The little church at Haraldsford was, of course, as are all Parish churches in this country, Protestant, the rector firmly adhering to the principles of the Church of England. As we entered the ancient porch that morning and stepped into the nave I saw a host of curious eyes feast upon us in welcome and realized that the villagers had flocked to church en masse for a glimpse of the new master of Haraldsdyke and his wife. Axel led the way to the Brandson pew without looking to right or to left but I glanced quickly over the gaping faces and wondered what they were thinking. It was, after all, less than a year since Robert Brandson and Rodric had come to this church. I sat down beside Axel, imagining more clearly than ever now the scandal that must have thrived at the time of their deaths, the gossip and speculation, the endless rumors whispering and reverberating through the community.

Throughout the service it seemed to me that I could almost feel the gaze of several dozen pairs of eyes boring remorselessly into my back, but of course that was a mere fantasy, and when I stole a glance over my shoulder during the prayers I saw that no one was watching me.

The sermon began. The child Stephen began to shift restlessly between his parents, and then Alice pulled him on to her lap and he was content for a while. I remembered that Alice was taking him to see her mother after the service was over, and I began to wonder how I could also manage to see Dame Joan that morning. Perhaps this afternoon I would be able to slip away from the house and walk back to the village. It was a mere mile, after all. It wouldn’t take long. But supposing someone saw me leave, asked questions when I came back ... I should have to have an excuse for returning to the village on such a chill misty afternoon.

During the final prayers and blessing I managed to roll my muff surreptitiously under the pew. No one noticed.

After the service was over, we paused to exchange greetings with the rector and then returned to the carriage while Alice took the child down the road to her mother’s house and Ned disappeared silently in the direction of the “Black Ram” for a tankard of ale. Within ten minutes we were back at Haraldsdyke. I managed to hide my bare hands in my wide sleeves so that no one should notice my muff was missing, and hastened to my rooms to change into a fresh gown.

Dinner was served earlier that day, I discovered, partly to revive everyone after the visit to church and partly to help the servants have a more restful evening than usual. With the exception of Alice, who had evidently decided to spend some time with her mother, we all sat down in the dining room soon after two o’clock.

Ned slunk in a moment later. I thought Axel was going to censure him but he took no notice and after Ned had muttered a word of apology nothing further was said to him. I noticed, not for the first time, how his mother always ignored him entirely. During the meal she conversed with Vere and managed to draw Axel into the conversation while also taking pains to address a remark to me now and again. I was careful to smile and reply sweetly, suppressing any trace of the dislike I felt for her, but by the end of the meal I was wondering if there really was any chance of her taking a house in Rye. Perhaps now that she was at last free and her year of mourning was nearly over, she would find herself a suitable husband and remarry.

I watched her, remembering what Ned had told me, remembering that she had been estranged from her husband for the twenty years before his death even though they had continued to live under the same roof. She must have hated him. What a relief it must have been for her, I thought, to have found herself a widow
...

Alice came back just as we were finishing dinner, and said she would eat in the nursery with Stephen and the other children. Presently, Esther, Mary and I withdrew to the drawing room and within ten minutes I excused myself from them on the pretense that I wanted to rest for an hour or so. Once I was safely in my apartments I changed from the gown I had worn for dinner, donned my thick traveling habit once more and tip-toed out of the house by the back stairs.

No one saw me.

Outside the fog was thickening and I was soon out of sight of the house. It was unnaturally quiet, the fog muffling all sound, and soon the stillness, the gathering gloom and the eerie loneliness of the Marsh road began to prey upon my imagination. I continually thought I heard footsteps behind me, but when I stopped to listen there was nothing, just the thick heavy silence, and I came to the conclusion that the noise of my footsteps must in some strange way be re-echoing against the wall of mist to create an illusion of sound.

I was never more relieved when after several minutes of very brisk walking I saw the first cottages on the outskirts of the village and then the tower of Haraldsford church looming mysteriously out of the mist like some ghostly castle in a fairytale. I hurried past it. The village street was empty and deserted, chinks of light showing through the shuttered windows of the cottages, a lamp burning by the doorway of the “Black Ram.” Everyone seemed to be indoors to escape the weather. Two minutes later I was by the door of Dame Joan’s cottage on the other side of the village and tapping nervously on the ancient weatherbeaten wood.

There was no answer. I tapped again, the unreasoning panic rising within me, and then suddenly the door was opening and she was before me, broad and massive-boned, her curious eyes interested but not in the least astonished; behind her I could see a black cat washing his paws before a smoldering peat fire.

“Come in, Mrs. George.” She sounded strangely businesslike, as if there was nothing strange about the mistress of Haraldsdyke paying a social call on her at four o’clock on a dark November afternoon. It occurred to me in a moment of macabre fantasy that she seemed almost to have been expecting me, and then I put the thought aside as ridiculous.