Wild Island (15 page)

Ah, thought Jemima, so that's what we're celebrating.

'He mustn't be seen,' said Lachlan in a hard voice. 'He won't want the prisoners catching sight of him. You know his orders. That would be dangerous.'

'Danger! Danger! Give me your answer do. Who's afraid of the big bad danger, the big bad danger,' Clementina sang in a high, rather pretty voice. 'I think I'll put on another record.'

She put on the record of 'Satisfaction'.

‘I can't get any danger out of you,' Clementina sang above the notes of the record.

Jemima thought they were all in danger, from Colonel Henry in his dungeon to herself in the power of a nest of lunatics. Even Clementina, the alternative Queen of Scotland, had apparently something to fear. She also wondered who the' Chief might be - and whether his existence increased or diminished the danger.

CHAPTER
1
5

Official action

'Where was the Chief telephoning from?' asked Lachlan aggressively.

'There were pips,' said Clementina rather vaguely. 'Pip, pip, pip. So it can't have been,' she stopped,' you know where.'

With a jerk of his head, Aeneas left the room taking Ben with him, the gun held to his back. Ben offered no resistance. It was difficult to see how he could have done so: he had presumably gone to join his father in the dungeons. That left Lachlan-and his gun - against Jemima. Clementina, who had wandered back to her throne, plucking some of the flowers from her hat as she did so .and casting them aside in an Ophelia-like gesture, remained an uncertain quantity.

'So you'll be staying quiet, Miss Shore,' said Lachian after Ben had gone, reverting to his vicious tone. 'Till we decide what to do with you. That'll be understood, will it not ? Otherwise it's your paramour, the Colonel, who will suffer.'

Jemima did not deign to answer.

None of the various bibelots in the library was particularly delicate looking. They included a hunting knife with a golden stag's head as the handle.. Both ends looked lethal. The knife reposed on a table entirely made up of twisted antlers' horns. Above the table an enormous glass case, placed between two bookcases, contained a regal stuffed salmon, swimming 
amidst some brilliant reeds. The label beneath it read: 'Caught by HRH Prince Charles Edward Stuart (HM King Charles III) off Eilean Fas ...' Jemima recalled the jolly note struck in Charles Beauregard's original letter, 'My mother's doing...'

'Mummy caught that herself,' volunteered Clementina. 'On the home beat. She told me.' Clearly her concentration had not gone entirely. 'That's why she never put it in her book about B P C. Because it wasn't true. She didn't pretend the rose garden was planted by BPC or Sighing Marjorie either, like some people. She was very serious about her history.'

Jemima shot another stealthy look at the stag's-head knife.

'I've never seen this famous white rose garden.'

'Red rose garden.' Clementina glared at her. Jemima cursed herself. Clementina's moment of weakness - or intelligence -had passed.

'Where the hell's the champagne?' she cried petulantly. 'Hasn't Duncan come back with it yet?'

'Not with the Chief on his way!' exclaimed Lachlan in a shocked voice. 'It would never do for him to find us drinking at this hour in the morning. You know how strong he is against the drink.' The Puritanism was unexpected: she wondered again who the Chief might be, and whether she might get to glimpse him. His identity was doubly intriguing now that the display of guns, the abduction of Colonel Henry, the detention of Ben and herself, had rudely jolted her complacency concerning the Red Rose. She was obliged to take them seriously as a force: it was no longer possible to dismiss them as a mildly eccentric but fundamentally harmless bunch of royalist fanatics.

After a while Clementina began to wander round the library again. She played some more music, loud, aimless. The champagne did not arrive. Nor for that matter did anyone else. Jemima considered it her duty to edge in the direction of the knife. Lachlan, showing signs of nervousness, .put down his gun and demanded a cigarette from Clementina. She tossed him one out of her woven handbag. It was presumably an ordinary cigarette.

The time passed very slowly, according to the ornate golden clock, French perhaps, supported by rampant stags in baroque attitudes, on the heavily carved mantelpiece.

'I could do with a dram myself,' observed Lachlan wistfully after a while. 'Chief or no Chief. I'm no too fond of the champagne, you understand.' He sounded apologetic.

'You drank enough of it with Charles in the old days.' Clementina was cross.

*I was preferring the ancient whisky, though. The great old barrel.'

'You certainly were. I've never seen anyone as drunk as Lachlan on our last birthday. It's extraordinary stuff. Dark brown. Lays people out like flies. One hundred and twenty per cent proof, or a thousand and twenty per cent proof, something like that. Over a hundred years old, Uncle Henry told us. He nearly had a fit when we started to lay into it, the moment Charles was twenty-one, and slosh it about to the ghillies and Lachlan and other good souls like him.'

At very long last - they had surely waited much longer than an hour - the noise of a car was heard. Distant at first, then growing stronger as it puttered up the valley.

Clementina gave a surprised little cry and stepped back from the window.

'Oh, it's not him. It's -' Lachlan sat up sharply, threw down his cigarette and grabbed the gun. In the split second his attention was diverted, Jemima made a dive for the knife with the stag's-head handle and stuffed it down her boot. She blessed the fashion for wide-cuffed cowboy boots. It felt uncomfortable, but safe.

'How
weird!’
Where's the Chief, then?' Clementina sounded genuinely puzzled. The noise of the car grew louder and Jemima reckoned from the bumping, grating sound that it was just crossing the drawbridge; then the most extraordinary sound of singing from downstairs greeted her ears, followed by running footsteps and cries, mixed with protests and more snatches of a very drunken, very Scottish song which as it grew nearer sounded increasingly obscene. Then Aeneas burst into the library, hauling Duncan by his collar. The old man was still trying to sing.

'He's got out,'he panted. 'The devil. He's gone. Bribed him with the whisky and went.'

'It wasn't the drink at all, so it wasn't. It was the paper. We was just celebrating the paper.' As the tears coursed down Duncan's cheeks, he held out a crumpled piece of paper.

'You drivelling old fool,' snarled Aeneas, shaking the old man by his collar. 'What good will this paper do you ? Do you think the laird will honour that?'

'He's promised me the lodge. The Colonel would'na break his word. He's a man of honour.'

'He'll break you more like,' commented Lachlan. 'You'll never stay on the Estate now. Not now you've tried to force the Colonel to sign that paper.'

As an expression of maudlin horror and dismay crossed Duncan's features, Jemima saw her chance. The library door was open. She pelted out of it, slamming it behind her. A vast key, shining and brassy like everything at Castle Beauregard, rattled in the lock as she did so. She turned it. It worked. The lock clicked fast as frantic shouts from the three men trapped inside reached her together with, a moment later, the strong rattling of the door itself. But the door held. Thank God for Leonie Beauregard who had refurbished the Castle in such a splendidly robust style. No rusty keys in locks here.

Jemima ran as fast as she could down the broad stairs to the arched entrance to the dungeon, scrabbling and hobbling in order to remove the stag's-head knife from her boot as she did so. At that moment the sound of other voices, urgently talking -in the armoury, or at any rate inside the Castle - reached her. The unknown visitor - the Chief or another - was within. Jemima was taking no chances. She shrank behind the arch and began to creep as quietly as possible down the stairs.

Footsteps, it sounded like a single man, went past her and right on up the main staircase. Let the unknown, whoever it was, cope with the imprisoned men and Queen Clementina. She had not dared to pause long enough to remove the key from the lock. It was up to her now to find Ben Beauregard.

Dungeons ? There was now a maze of new staircases facing her below the level of the ground. But her task was made unexpectedly easy by the mint-new condition of even the subterranean regions of this castle. There were actually notices in Victorian Gothic directing her.
to the cellars
- she found herself by the entrance to a large room, vast in style, door open, clean, white-washed, vaulted. Not only the racks of bottles but the stink of whisky emanating from an outsize barrel convinced her that here had been Duncan's downfall.

Then she heard a noise behind her. She stopped. The noise stopped too. Someone was following her. Heart thumping, Jemima wondered why, if her pursuer were a member of the Red Rose, he did not immediately brutally grab her. She started to walk on gingerly, extremely gingerly, in the direction indicated for the dungeons. There was no sign of a guard or sentry. Had they left Ben quite unguarded in the furore of his father's escape and the unknown's arrival?

Another stealthy noise behind her. She tested it by stopping. But her follower was quick to follow suit. As Jemima proceeded along the narrowing passage, it was like playing an elaborate game of mediaeval grandmother's footsteps. Then she saw the dungeon - clearly labelled. The door was open. A body - Ben - was slumped in one corner. The ropes were wound round it. He looked horribly inert.

She gave a little cry and tried too late to stifle it. Then a strong muscular arm reached at her from behind and stifled her voice completely. Jemima tried to scream and could not: then she struggled in earnest.

'Keep still, darling,' said a voice in her ear. 'I told you I'd be back. I didn't expect
you
to come looking for me.'

At the same moment as Jemima recognized the voice, deep even in its low tones, she also felt a wave of violent recognition for the physical touch of Henry Beauregard.

'Ben,’ she mouthed.

'Shh,' he said, not letting her go. 'It's only the dummy. Ben's got away.'

Jemima felt her body relax. She realized how corpse-like the body in the dungeon had looked to her. First the father, then the son ... The dummy had a lot to answer for. The Colonel took his hand from her mouth and kissed her. It was done with a certain carelessness as one might kiss a child who has been soothed.

'You poor darling,' he said gently, stroking her cheek, and pushing back the hair which had fallen over her face.

'Ben's gone to get help ?' asked Jemima, still panting slightly from her journey, her fright and now the reassuring kiss at the end of it all.

'Help, I
am
help, aren't I ?'

'I mean,
help;
proper help. The Red Rose, I mean, aren't you going to do anything about them - they kidnapped you,'

'For God's sake, girl, I am doing something about them!' exclaimed the Colonel, his voice getting louder as he struck a note of real indignation.

'What about the police ? You must send for the police. First they kidnapped you, then they locked you up. They locked us up. Besides, they've got guns, they were firing shots over the Land-Rover.'

'They didn't kidnap me, as a matter of fact. There was a signal outside the window. A kind of whistle: family signal, something we use out in the woods. I don't know how they found it out. You were asleep. I left that note and went downstairs. And they jumped me. Three against one. As for the police, these are the sort of blackguards who simply need a good thrashing from some of my stronger ghillies,' he responded robustly.

'The guns—' began Jemima again. He ignored her.

'Besides, it didn't take me very long to outwit them. Duncan never has had a head for drink. None of his family can take it.'

'And you promised him the lodge. For ever. And he believed you.'

'All part of his general idiocy when he's had a drop. As if I'd ever give him the Old Lodge - we need the lodge. He knows that perfectly well: it's right in the heart of the Glen. He can whistle for his lodge. The old fool.' The Colonel sounded almost as contemptuous as Aeneas had done.

'But you're not going to sack him ?'

The Colonel looked at her as if she were insane.

'Sack Duncan Stuart? But he's worked on the Estate all his life. Besides, his son's a rotten type. Have to look after poor old Duncan, y'know. Can't go sacking him at his age.'

'His son—'

'Aeneas Stuart. Red-haired bastard - in every sense of the word. You must have seen him. He's the one who's really behind the Red Rose up here. Too clever by half. A real Red. Went to Aberdeen University and came back with a lot of half-baked ideas about land for the people, and knew less about the land and farming round here than his own grandfather who was an illiterate crofter. Not Duncan's fault: no brains to speak of there. The brains came from his mother Ishbel who was head housemaid before the war: wonderful head on her shoulders, but always causing trouble with the rest of the servants. You know the type: we never could keep a cook when she was around. Eleven cooks in one year, till we sacked Ishbel. You've probably been through the same thing yourself.'

Jemima had not.

'Trouble-makers have to go,' went on the Colonel. 'Same thing with Aeneas. Talk about the perils of educating people above their station. In the end I had him thrown off the Estate, told Duncan I wouldn't have him up the Glen. Suggested the Army, but of course he wouldn't go. Then my precious nephew Charles, he brought him back to spite me.'

'And you're still not going to take any official action ?'

'In my own glen,' replied the Colonel grimly, 'I am the official action. This is between the Red Rose and me. No outside interference. Round One to them. Round Two to me.'

In short, to her utter amazement and, it has to be said, considerable dismay, Jemima found that the Colonel had worked out a plan by which they would now both leave the Castle together, as Ben had done, via the ruins of Castle Tamh. At which point the Colonel would joyously put into effect his proposals for defeating the Red Rose by his so-called 'official action' - it had exactly the opposite sound to Jemima - while she herself struggled back to the Wild Island on foot.

'Meet you there later,' said the Colonel. 'I'll be in touch.' He might have been discussing a London rendezvous, such was his insouciance.

Jemima was torn between admiration for his spirit and a gloomy presentiment, the product of an innately law-abiding nature, that it would be both better and safer in the long run to hand over the Red Rose, Clementina Beauregard and all, to the Inverness-shire police. Let them iron out exactly what charges covered the somewhat strange circumstances; assault, the use of an offensive weapon, they would certainly not lack for material.

But Jemima found that her own sense of propriety and law and order was no match for the Colonel's sense of adventure and challenge. He was quite determined not to be personally done down by the Red Rose: indeed he hardly listened to her arguments concerning the police, which he seemed to regard as charmingly feminine - and as such deserving a reassuring caress rather than any more serious consideration.

Jemima gave up. In England, she knew, she would not have given up. She was not in England.

Meekly, she followed the Colonel through a maze of corridors in the well-dusted dungeons.

'Played in them as a boy with Carlo. Know more about this castle than the Red Rose ever will,' he said by way of explanation.

The little arched side-door by which they eventually left the Castle was swinging open, giving a broad path of light. Ben had left it open. As they approached the door, Jemima caught her breath: framed in the stone arch was an extraordinary vision of crimson, a great slope of roses, slipping away from her eyes towards the loch, like some field of poppies in the violence and concentration of its colour. She was seeing for the first time the famous Beauregard rose garden.