Jonathan Broughton: The Russian White: A Victorian Thriller

Isobel awoke feeling refreshed. Two hours of untroubled sleep had relieved the fears of the night. James slept beside her, his face peaceful, the tired lines around his eyes smooth and less troubled. His lips formed the beginnings of a smile. He needed sleep, and she crept away without disturbing him.

Outside, the acrid smell of burnt wood persisted. The kitchen staff huddled round a hole in the wall where a door had once stood. Twisted, broken timbers, blackened by smoke, and piles of bricks tumbled into a heap, revealed the remains of the kitchens.

They stepped back as she approached, and watched her with anxious looks.

“It is a terrible thing m’lady.” A large woman, one of the cooks she thought, spoke first. “There is nothing here. It has all perished.”

“Yes.” What could she say? The House levelled; the walls fallen, the stones broken. Only the marble steps of the Grand Staircase still stood. The top of the Staircase had shattered, but the bottom half was still intact, and swept up in a wide curve that went nowhere.

Somewhere in all this ash lay William’s body. Or what remained of it. His charred bones perhaps, but even if she spent days looking, and even if, by chance, she found them, how could she possibly prove that they were William’s? The Russians were dead too, and Terrington, and one of the guards. A pile of bones might be anyone’s. Even – Sylvia’s?

What of her elder sister? Unseen for the last ten years, consumed by paranoia and low spirits and secluded in her room at the top of the House, might there be any chance that she had escaped? She spoke aloud, but to no one in particular.

“Sylvia? Have you seen Sylvia?”

“Yes m’am,” replied the cook. “She’s out the front? She—” The woman faltered, and her hands twisted in nervous agitation. “She’s—on her bed.”

Alive—but, on her bed? Was she hurt? Excited by the news she wanted to run and greet her, but James needed taking care of first. “There’s a friend of mine, in the stables. He’s asleep and I don’t want him disturbed, but I would be grateful if one of you could watch over him until he wakes up.”

“I will see to it, m’am,” the woman bobbed.

“Thank you. Thank you so much. Please come and find me when he’s awake.”

She ran out of the yard and hurried along the path towards the gravel drive. Off to the side, on the grass, a group of men worked on building scaffolding out of splintered timbers and lengths of rope. They stopped working when they saw her looking.

“What is this?” she asked.

One of the men stepped forward and removed his cap. “We’re building a crane, m’am.”

“A crane? Whatever for?”

The man looked uneasy. “For the Lady Sylvia, m’am. To lift—her up.”

She didn’t understand. Why did her sister need such a contraption? “Is she badly hurt?” she asked.

“Not as I noticed, ma’m. It is to lift her onto the cart.”

Confused by this strange observation, she frowned, and waited for an explanation.

“Please, m’am, the Lady Sylvia is just over there.” He pointed towards a group of women, who shielded what she thought might be the broken remains of some furniture. He nodded, as if that confirmed his odd reasoning.

She left the men and walked towards the women. “Excuse me,” she called. “I’m looking for Sylvia.”

The women stepped aside to reveal what they had been hiding.

Before her stood an enormous bed. Its feet sank into the grass, and its shattered canopy suggested that once it had been a four poster. Now it resembled some mad ornament left behind by an experimental gardener.

She gasped with surprise, for on top of the bed and covered in patterned curtains and old blankets, sprawled the biggest woman she had ever seen in her life.

The bed trembled as she moved her gargantuan body. Long blond hair cascaded over the mattress onto the grass, where it concertinaed into folds of luxuriant yellow. Her eyes, dark and tiny, glittered in a face ringed with fat, and her arms rolled and wobbled as she pushed herself up to look. Long curved fingernails curled in the air.

“Sylvia?” Isobel whispered. Was this her sister? She didn’t recognize or remember anything about her. She glanced at the women stood around the bed. Might one of them be able to explain? Not one of them met her gaze.

“Sylvia?” she repeated, a little louder, and the fat face melted into a smile of sweet coyness, and the cheeks bunched up into two rosy orbs, and the huge woman opened her mouth and gurgled like a baby.

“That’s what she keeps doing all the time, m’am,” Mistress Paignton, the Housekeeper, explained. “She wants feeding and we have precious little to give her.”

The other women muttered and nodded in agreement.

“I’ve sent to the village for supplies.” Mistress Paignton folded her arms, and her voice moaned with weary tiredness. “But she’ll have to wait until the cart arrives.”

Isobel said; “I don’t think she recognises me.”

“Hard to say, m’am. She’s not spoken a word since we found her.”

“Sylvia?” Isobel stepped closer to the bed. “I’m Isobel. Do you remember me?” Strange, speaking to her elder sister like a child. “Are you all right? Were you hurt in the fire?”

Sylvia lifted her hand and waved her fingernails to encourage Isobel closer.

“Take care, m’am,” Mistress Paignton warned. “Those nails is lethal. One of my girls got a nasty scratch off of one of them. She thinks you’re coming to feed her.”

“How did she get here?” Isobel asked. “Like that, on the bed?”

“Don’t rightly know, m’am. But my guess is that the floor gave way and she sort of fell here.”

“From the top of the House?”

“As I say, m’am, I don’t rightly know.”

That Sylvia lived was a relief, though she had to admit to being at a loss as to know how to communicate with her.

Sylvia beamed and gurgled and waved her fingernails. Was it a greeting, or excitement at seeing a new face? Decisions concerning her sister’s welfare were now her responsibility. That terrible size must be some sort of illness that required immediate medical attention. She might speak again if she lost weight.

“What plans have been made for her?” she asked Mistress Paignton.

“The men are making some sort of pulley to lift her onto the cart when it arrives.”

“That’s good. I want her taken to London. I will go ahead and make arrangements for her arrival. I would like you and your women to travel with her.”

“Yes, m’am.”

A hint of weary insolence coloured Mistress Paignton’s reply; Isobel overlooked it. Her duty, as head of the family, was to take immediate control of all household matters. “Thank you Mistress Paington. I’m very grateful for all your help.”

“Thank you, m’am.”

Sylvia opened and shut her mouth and made munching noises.

“I’ll see you very soon in London Sylvia,” Isobel explained. “I’m going to help you to get better.”

She waved goodbye, and Sylvia waved back, rattling her fingernails.

The light faded as the clouds rolled in. Isobel wandered along the gravel drive and peered through the broken windows. She glanced back at the marble staircase to realign herself with the layout of the old House, though apart from that one indomitable feature, nothing remained that she recognised. It was all ruined; a jumbled mass that held no meaning.

She didn’t feel sad, or angry, just numb. Maybe in time she might understand the importance of losing this symbol of her wealth and privilege and be able to grieve for it, and for her brother too, for it was remembering him that stopped her from crying. His determination to destroy her without the slightest qualm of conscience chilled her into incomprehension. She felt grateful for the warmth still emanating from the smouldering rubble.