Wild Island (14 page)

CHAPTER
14

Danger

Rope serrating the corners of his mouth, Ben Beauregard continued to stare upwards at the body of his father swinging above their heads from the portcullis. To Jemima, he seemed extraordinarily cool.

'It's the dummy,' he said, his voice strangled but still audible. 'The dummy from the castle attic. Uncle Carlo and Dad had it made for target practice when they were boys. She dressed it up. A shabby trick.'

Jemima found she was trembling violently. Tears had begun to form in her eyes. She wanted to control them.

'It's maybe a dummy, a grand stuffed body, but it's a warning to you all the same,' commented the man called Aeneas grimly. 'So shall all the lairds hang one day from the battlements when the Red Rose reigns over Scotland. And the Scottish people shall enjoy the freedom of their own land: with no lairds to harry them and drive them from their crofts.' It sounded like the beginning of a speech.

'A new Scotland under the rule of their new sovereign her Majesty Queen Clementina,' added Lachlan quickly, rather too quickly, interrupting him.

'Up the Red Rose,' chimed in Duncan, 'and may the White run Red. Colonel Henry was ever a reasonable man. I'm sure he'll be joining the Red Rose any day now and giving us our lodges for our own. There's no one I'd sooner work for than the Colonel, if I owned my own wee lodge.'

Relief was gradually calming the trembling of Jemima's limbs. Her mind too was regaining its alertness. It was clear to her that even within the gun-laden party now marching towards the vast baronial door of the Castle there were three shades of opinion. While Aeneas, surname and origins unknown, concentrated on the land-for-the-people aspect of Scottish independence - in Jacobin as well as Jacobite terms -Lachlan had from their first meeting shown a kind of romanticism, even reverence, of a very different order. As for Young Duncan, Jemima remembered his fervent recitation of the slogan of the Red Rose on her original journey up the valley. What she had then taken for sycophancy was evidently conviction of a sort. But Young Duncan's conviction was strictly from the point of view of his own prosperity. He had no further axe to grind, no animus against his employer Colonel Henry and no particular reverence for Queen Clementina.

The man called Aeneas equated the Red Rose with the Red Flag - social revolution, in short. For Lachlan Stuart, son of the dead Bridie with her Beauregard loyalties, the two flags were worlds apart.

So must the earlier army of Prince Charles Edward Stuart also have been divided, into revolutionaries, romantics and self-seekers...

The sight of the enormous entrance hall to Castle Beauregard obliterated these thoughts for the time being. Here was the Beauregard Armoury in all its martial splendour. Circles, whorls and cascading spirals of guns and other weapons were pinioned to the walls. Guns were not the sole weapons displayed. Gleaming knives, long pikes, vicious-looking bayonets demonstrated the long history of the art of war. The few weapons of defence exhibited - a shield or two from an earlier age - looked oddly out of place. The martial spirit as interpreted by the Beauregard Armoury was pre-eminently one of attack, not defence.

Here and there the elaborate artistry with which the armoury had been arranged on the walls had been despoiled. A number of guns were missing from their positions as the spokes of a series of rising wheels directly abutting the general's picture. These were the guns in the hands of Lachlan, Aeneas and their companions which continued to menace Ben and Jemima as they trod warily through the hall.

The impression of mediaeval vastness did not fade as the party left the hall and began to ascend a broad stone staircase, on the walls of which huge flags of indeterminate royal and Scottish nature were hung. No expense of royal Victorian spirit had been spared in building this fantasy palace.

Lachlan stuck a thumb in the direction of a narrow arch giving a glimpse of descending stone steps.

'That way to the dungeon.' hesaid. After a moment Jemima realized that he was not joking. As they reached the crest of the great staircase, two portraits dominated the entrance to what was presumably the Great Drawing Room. Or the Great Library. It scarcely needed the gold label affixed to the ornate frame to inform Jemima that here was the founding father of the Beauregard family - if you believed the legend - Bonnie Prince Charlie himself.

Only, this portrait was in itself a Victorian fantasy. Magnificent in tartan, many different shades and patterns of it combined, bedizened with sporran, plaid, dirks and daggers, Celtic brooches and the rest, as well as Victorian whiskers, moustache and beard, his Majesty King Charles III (as the label termed him) was depicted as a portly nineteenth-century Coburg, more an Edward VII than an eighteenth-century Stuart. The background of the picture contained a large red velvet throne and a couple of dogs, too lean for labradors, straining at leashes held by a couple of tartan-clad retainers. No, thought Jemima, life up the Glen for Bonnie Prince Charlie was never like this; but the picture would do very nicely on a whisky bottle.

There was a companion piece, equally splendidly Victorian in its concept and execution. Here Sighing Marjorie - for it could be no other - with flowing chestnut hair, a baby in her arms, delicate white gown and tartan shawl, cowered over a waterfall while a force of red-coated soldiers stood rather woodenly by. The background of this picture consisted of a vivid impression of Castle Beauregard at sunset. Looking at the leading soldier's stolid expression, Jemima was irresistibly tempted to caption it: 'Go on, jump then.'

Entering the Great Library, her first surprise was to rediscover immediately the red velvet throne featured in the Prince's picture.

Clementina Beauregard was seated negligently on it, her pale face and hair set off by the crimson canopy louring over her head. She was smoking the stub of a cigarette. The curtains, heavy, somnolent-seeming plum-coloured curtains, were still drawn. The room was full of smoke and had a recognizable semi-sweet reek. As the heavy oak door to the library swung open, the sound of aRolling Stones record, not in its first youth and played very loud, blared in their faces.

In all this noise and smoky darkness, for a moment the fairylike delicacy of Clementina provided a strange contrast. Yet there was a hint of fancy dress in her own costume. On second thoughts, she did not look so out of place in the Great Library after all. In spite of the hour, Clementina was wearing a long red dress of panne velvet, too big for her and slightly Edwardian in cut, with a type of bustle and tight leg o' mutton sleeves from which most of the buttons were missing. She also wore a black hat, even more dilapidated, but with traces of grandiose feathers and flowers on its brim. Ropes of pale pink pearls hung down across her tiny bosom, which swelled out the red velvet hardly perceptibly. Some of the pearls were peeling or had lost their pinkness altogether.

Above her loomed another vast portrait, this time of an imposing female rather than a male. Built on a far ampler scale, this former Beauregard beauty was wearing identical costume to that of her descendant Clementina, seated beneath her imperious gaze. Did this adoption of the semi-regal outfit of her ancestress indicate that Clementina had decided to put on some sort of show to receive her captives ?

If so, the impulse had passed. Clementina's eyes were fixed unwaveringly on Ben. She did not seem to take in the presence of Jemima. Swiftly, she knocked rather than switched the record player into silence. It was lying on the corner of the dais to the throne; there was a morass of records, none of them looking particularly well cared for, within reach.

'So, Ben, come to take over, have you?' she said in a voice which was considerably slowed down from her usual frenetic diction. 'Castle first, then the island, and last of all pretty cousin Clementina.' Her voice trailed away. She took a brief drag on the cigarette stub in her fingers. From the smell of the room, clinging round the dark drawn curtains and recesses of the library, not strongly but unmistakably, Jemima guessed that she had been smoking the marijuana for hours, maybe all night.

Lamps with dark green pleated shades illuminated the library and there were other pictures to be seen among the books. The exquisite fair-haired lady over the fireplace, a romantic post-war portrait with the Castle in the background -John Merton perhaps? - was so strikingly like Clementina as to be readily identifiable as Leonie Beauregard. There were photographs as well. One pair of portraits, carefully juxtaposed, demonstrated the rakes' progress of the Beauregard twins. On the one hand a carefully posed picture, unmistakably by Cecil Beaton, showed them as soulful and curly-haired angels at their mother's knee: Charles in frilly shirt and satin page's trousers, Clementina in high-waisted flounced dress and sash. The second portrait, by David Bailey, showed a couple of unadorned faces, placed close together, the expressions both pagan and mocking.

Everything in Castle Beauregard, however ancestral, was also highly painted, decorated and where appropriate varnished. The pictures looked as if they had been newly cleaned. The plum-coloured curtains, with their magnificent dark swags of material and tasselled gold fringes, did not look old. The carpets were thick and soft, as well as being tartan, a combination which put the thought into Jemima's mind that Leonie Beauregard's American money must be responsible for the splendour. For one thing, the interior of the Castle, stone-built as it might be, was not particularly cold. The library was positively hot, yet the log fire was not lit. Was it possible to centrally heat a castle, and in August? There was a strange southern warmth about the place.

Not only the warmth but also the good, even brilliant, state of repair of the Castle itself contrasted markedly with the shabbinessof that other Beauregard residence at Kilbronnack, to say nothing of the ruined state of Eilean Fas. Every visit to the Castle by the junior branch of the Beauregards must have rubbed in the contrast epitomized by Dives and Lazarus -Dives: Charles, the heir; Lazarus: Ben and all his siblings.

'Have a smoke,' said Clementina suddenly, extending the stub to Jemima, who shook her head. At which Clementina half minced, half staggered towards Ben and stuck the stub between his lips. Ben did not move. Jemima admired his control once more: the only uncontrolled thing about him she could detect was a vein beating on the side of his temple. After a moment Clementina removed the stub and, standing on tiptoe, put her velvet-clad arms round her cousin's neck. Then she kissed him lightly, on the lips. Ben still did not move.

'Pretty pretty cousin Clementina,' she repeated. 'Don't you want to kiss her now, Ben ? So pretty.' Once again her words sounded slurred.

She turned to Jemima.

'He wanted to kiss me once. He wanted to very much. I didn't tell you that, did I ?'

'There are quite a lot of things you didn't tell me,' answered Jemima grimly. 'In fact I'm beginning to think you told me a pack of lies the other day at breakfast. Though why you should take the trouble -'

Clementina giggled, tottered back to the huge sofa by the fireplace - Jemima noticed she was wearing black satin buckled shoes, much too big for her - and threw herself backwards onto it.

'Then
tell you the truth now,' she said, still laughing. 'We've plenty of time. While they're getting Uncle Henry to sign the paper giving Eilean Fas for a Memorial Island. And cousin Ben here to back him up. We need that island, the Red Rose needs it. Good for morals. I mean morale. That's what he says. Good for morale.' There were more giggles.

‘I’ll be glad to hear the truth,' replied Jemima carefully. 'But why don't you get Lachlan to release Ben while you*re talking? These ropes surely aren't necessary inside the Castle.'

'But I adore ropes!' cried Clementina with enthusiasm. 'So kinky. Don't you adore ropes, cousin Ben, darling?' Then there was another change of mood and she said quite sharply: 'Lachlan, untie Mr Ben at once. Untie him, I said. And then go and get us some champagne from the cellar. The crystal champagne. We must have some champagne to celebrate. And fetch Uncle Henry too - if he's being good that is - he can celebrate too.'

Celebrate what? Jemima wondered.

'I've got no orders to fetch the Colonel from the dungeons,' said Lachlan in what for him was a surly voice. He looked at Aeneas, who shook his head.

'Orders, whose orders are you talking about?' replied Clementina petulantly. 'It's my orders now at the Castle.' She tapped her small foot in its bent black shoe, so that the paste buckle rattled. Then it fell off. Clementina paid no attention.

'Our Chief's orders, your Majesty.' Lachlan gazed quite steadily at Clementina as he spoke.

They were interrupted by the shrill sound of the telephone, a sound to which Jemima found that she had grown so unaccustomed that the ordinary urban noise made her start as though at a tocsin. Clementina seemed uncertain what to do. Then she staggered over to the instrument and picked up the receiver. She said nothing. Someone was speaking rapidly at the other end. Jemima could hear the voice, but not the words.

'Is it the Chief now ?' asked Aeneas intensely.

Clementina gave one of her high laughs, nodded, said into the telephone, 'Then you'd better give the warning straight away.' She listened briefly and dropped the receiver without saying goodbye.