Imogen Robertson - Island of Bones

Crowther reached into his pocket and Harriet heard the thin crinkle of paper. ‘I shall speak to my nephew, Fraulein.’ He crossed the room and placed something in Miss Scales’s free hand. ‘If you would be so kind, Miss Scales, perhaps you could have that conveyed to the landlord at the Oak and tell him should any other payment be required, he may address himself to me.’

Miss Scales glanced at what he had given her and went a little pink. ‘Yes, of course, Mr Crowther. Now my dear, you saw my little trap outside as you came in? Let us gather you into it and you may spend the last of the morning with me, for I am sure we shall find your father before it is fully passed.’

Miss Scales carried off the young woman very swiftly, leaving Harriet and Crowther to stare at one another over the coffee cups.

‘What did your sister call that young woman, Crowther?’

‘A whore,’ he replied shortly, and examined his fingernails.

Harriet considered. ‘She did not look like a whore to me. And I rather liked her spirit, tearing up that note.’ She could not help noticing that Crowther winced slightly when she said the word. ‘Do you think she looked like a whore, Crowther?’

He frowned at her and she smiled, a reasonably convincing simulacrum of innocence. ‘I could not possibly judge, madam,’ he said, then hurried on as she opened her mouth again to continue the topic. ‘However, the relations of my sister and nephew with this young woman are no concern of mine.’

‘You made it your concern when you handed over that money. For a man who seems to despise his fellow creatures, at times you can be oddly generous.’

‘More often than not I find money a convenient way of buying peace. Now will you come and speak to Margaret with me, and when we have taxed her memory perhaps we can consult Mrs Tyers.’

It was Harriet’s turn to frown. ‘You wish me to be present while you speak to her, Crowther? I would have thought, given the delicacy of the matter, you would have preferred to speak to her alone.’

‘You presumed wrongly, madam. If you have finished your coffee. .’

Harriet put the cup to her lips again, then wrinkled her nose. ‘Quite cold!’

The Vizegrafin was surprised to see them enter the library and walk towards her with such firm steps. At first she ignored Harriet and turned to Crowther.

‘You have no intention of lecturing me, I hope, Brother?’

Harriet squinted up at the bookshelves on the upper levels and walked behind the Vizegrafin’s chair.

‘You are right to be concerned, madam,’ she said. ‘He has lectured me any number of times, and as you see, it does me no good. However, I have yet to call a lady a whore at the breakfast-table.’

The Vizegrafin reflected on her jewelled hands lying in her lap. ‘Your grasp of the German vernacular is impressive, Mrs Westerman. Did your sailor husband teach you the word?’

‘No, I speak only a little German. Though I think Miss Scales understood the word, or at least its import, by her expression when you spoke. What a great many books! I was proud of my library at Caveley till I came here. Were you bookish as a child?’

‘I learned what was befitting to my role.’

‘Enough,’ Crowther said. ‘I neither know nor care what your association is with that young woman. .’

The Vizegrafin clasped her hands together so her rings clicked. ‘ I have no association with Fraulein Hurst. I believe her father knew my son a little in Vienna. They are not the sort of people with whom I would associate.’

Crowther tapped his cane firmly enough on the carpet to make both ladies start. ‘Margaret, I wish you to tell me something of my father. Can you manage to do that without making yourself ridiculous?’

The Vizegrafin shot out of her seat. ‘ I make myself ridiculous! You dare say such a thing to me, Gabriel , when every paper in Europe has written of your exploits in the company of this woman! Why did you not remain in hiding? Stay under your rock with your knives and your little experiments? My father made you rich, and you sold everything he had worked for before his body was cold, and slunk away. I can tell you this of my father: he was a better man than you shall ever be.’

Crowther looked at her very steadily. ‘I am no murderer.’

The Vizegrafin froze and Harriet thought of them as twinned dragons facing across a family shield. They had the same eyes, the same trick of holding themselves absolutely rigid when angry.

When the Vizegrafin spoke it was as if she had licked each word with something bitter before letting it leave her mouth. ‘No, Gabriel, you only pick amongst the leavings of murderers like a butcher’s dog. My father never murdered any man. Rupert de Beaufoy died at the hands of the law as a traitor to his King. My father did his duty.’

She crossed the room and left the library, her skirts hissing and crackling over the floor. Harriet sank into the chair thait she had vacated. ‘We might have managed that better. Your poor sister will soon run out of rooms to leave in high dudgeon.’ She folded her hands. ‘Who might Rupert de Beaufoy be?’

Crowther sighed and sat down opposite her. ‘He was the brother of the last Lord Greta, whom my sister mentioned to you a little while ago. The one who was caught in the Second Rebellion and executed in forty-six.’

Harriet stared hard into the carpet in front of her, her fingers tapping at the fabric of her dress. She could feel the thoughts and questions plaiting into a braid in her mind like rope in the chandler’s shop.

‘Crowther, when was your father awarded his peerage?’

Stephen had pulled Felix’s arrows free from the straw bed of the target and was now wrestling his own from the slight rise in the lawn either side of the painted roundel. He was just fastening his fingers round the second of these when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

‘Careful there!’ Felix said. ‘Those arrows are delicate things. Free them gently at the angle they went into the ground, or you will weaken them.’ Stephen adjusted his grip, and slid rather than yanked the shaft free from the grass. ‘That’s better. A weak arrow can split under the strain of the string, you know.’ He showed Stephen his palm. In its centre was a faint puckered scarring. Stephen touched it with his finger.

‘Did it hurt?’

‘What do you think? Treat these things with respect, Mr Westerman.’

Stephen squinted up at him. Felix did not seem a man who treated many things with respect. Last evening in the drawing room he had seen him pick up and twirl on his fingertips a tiny porcelain dish of Mrs Briggs’s that he himself would have feared to breathe on in case his lungs might shatter it.

‘Tell me more about hunting boar, sir,’ Stephen said. ‘You must be very brave.’

Felix shrugged, resting the tip of his bow on the ground in front of his feet. ‘I suppose I was. My heart was thudding, certainly. I was mostly excited though. It is one of those times that you are too engaged with the task at hand to think of anything else. The world becomes small and all your worries disappear. No bills, no thoughts of your own future. Just you and what is in front of you. It makes one feel free.’

Stephen was confused. To be a man was to be free, surely? Out of the schoolroom, no longer having to ask permission for anything. He tried to say so, and Felix shook his head.

‘I am sorry, Stephen. We are never free. It is simply as we grow older, the negotiations become more complex.’

As they walked back towards the firing line Stephen watched Felix grow serious; his eyes were clouding and he handed the bow to him without comment or further instruction. Stephen felt his companion’s sudden gloom fall on his shoulders. He thought of his mother, the way she could be so bright at times and quick, then of the number of occasions over the last year when he had found her curled up in her chair in the drawing room looking so still she might have been carved. He knew she was thinking about his father then, and seeing her so sad with her memories meant he did not speak of Captain Westerman as often as he would like. He would lie in his bed trying as hard as he could to remember how it felt to be lifted in his father’s arms and have the air pressed out of him. He would wriggle as if he wanted to get away, but laughing and only in truth trying to get closer to the man, his scent of salt and sweat, the rough stubble of his face.