Sarah Rayne - What Lies Beneath

I shrugged. It made no odds to me whether I was stuck inside a Turkish fortress or in a British castle.

‘The Pasha has promised the sick people will be given the best of what there is,’ Crispian said. ‘We’ll make sure you’re all right, Jamie.’

I nodded.

‘But,’ said Gil, who was lounging on the end of the bed, ‘I think there’s going to be a good deal of hardship ahead. The supplies of food are already running low. It’s being said that provisions will have to be rationed. If it goes on for long we could be facing what’s virtually a famine. I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘that we have a very difficult and painful time ahead.’

Cadence Manor, Early 1913

Serena Cadence knew she had a difficult and painful time ahead.

The actual birth of the child – the twin that had survived the brutality of the mercury treatment – did not especially worry her, even though she knew it would be painful and exhausting. It was what lay beyond the birth that was so frightening.

Dr Martlet had tried to reassure her. He had said after the birth they might try the mercury procedure again or consider the new German drug. Salvarsan, it was called; he had been able to read some of the reports on it. The outlook was really very promising, he said.

Serena listened politely but she knew he was lying. The outlook was not promising at all. She knew what this disease did. She had seen it ravage Julius’s body and then shred his mind, and the images were sickening ones. But what was far worse was the macabre memory of Fay Cadence.

There had only been one occasion when Serena had seen what lay beneath Fay’s shawls and veils, but even that brief glimpse had sickened her. A nightmare figure, she had thought. The skin had been ravaged and corroded; the lips and eyes distorted by the scars and sores. Was that what lay ahead for Serena herself?

Dr Martlet said very firmly that it was not. It might take a very long time for the disease to develop; it might be quiescent for years. In fact, it might remain quiescent and never trouble her in the future. The changes that her pregnancy were currently creating had brought it to the surface, that was all. After the birth, it would recede. But Serena saw the look in his eyes when he said this and she knew that what had happened to Fay – and later, Julius – would eventually happen to her. It was not an absolute certainty, but it very nearly was. And it was a bitter and cruel irony that Serena, of all people, should become afflicted with a tart’s disease, with a sickness that infected libertines and whores.

Fay had been a whore. No matter how Colm tried to pretend otherwise and Julius tried to make excuses, Fay had been a cheap little tart. Even so, they had all done their best for her, including Dr Martlet, although the treatments he had tried had proved useless. At last, Julius and Colm had come up with the idea that Fay should live permanently at Cadence Manor. The west wing was a separate suite of rooms, said Julius; poor Fay could be entirely private. And Dr Martlet, so absolutely trustworthy, would go down regularly and give her what help he could.

It had been the only possible solution. The fact that one of the family had contracted such a shameful illness could not be made known. Serena thought they had all been clear about that. Fay had sobbed with despair, but in the end had agreed to the plan. Her life was over in any case, she said, and all she could do was die quietly and unobtrusively somewhere. Cadence Manor would do as well as anywhere else for that. Serena had been unable to decide if Fay was being courageous in the face of death or simply hysterical and attention-seeking. The vain little creature was so self-centred it was perfectly likely she did not believe she would die.

Whatever her real emotions, Fay had gone docilely enough to Priors Bramley. It would not be for long, Dr Martlet said privately to Colm and Julius. A few months, perhaps. A year at the very most. Colm had gone with her, of course, and Serena had detailed one of the older maids from the London house to live at the manor with them. She was a rather dour woman, a Miss Crossley, not very popular with the other servants, unlikely to gossip in the village or form foolish friendships with local people. When Fay died, Crossley could either be retired on a small pension or she could remain at the manor if she wanted, as a caretaking housekeeper.

The family continued to use Cadence Manor for the summer and for the big Christmas house parties Julius liked to give and Serena always tried to avoid. She had thought Fay’s presence would provide an excuse, but Julius said the west wing was remote and contained, so Fay could safely be left to her seclusion. Life must go on as normal and the rest of the manor was big enough to house their guests. As for Jamie, he need never know the real facts, said Julius. Looking back, Serena was glad they had kept the truth from Jamie. He had been only a toddler then, and for him to see the nightmare thing his mother had become was unthinkable.

The only unsatisfactory thing in the plan was Fay herself, who must needs confound Dr Martlet’s prediction and linger for four long years. When she eventually died, a trustworthy and incurious undertaker from London came down the next day and arranged a discreet funeral at a church some ten or twelve miles away. St Luke the Hospitaller, it was called, and there was a brief private burial. Julius attended, but Serena was in London. She did not travel down for the funeral because it was important not to attract too much local attention. Also, it was a hot August that year, and the journey would have been exhausting.

And then, more than a decade later, Fay’s ghost returned. A diseased ghost. Because it turned out that the light-minded slut had slept with Julius. She had actually allowed Serena’s husband into her bed, and the seeds of her filthy, unpredictable illness had been passed to Julius. And, years later, Julius had given it to Serena so that Serena herself was now under sentence of death, living in seclusion at Cadence Manor, exactly as Fay had done.

She wandered through the rooms, finding grisly traces of Fay everywhere. At the back of a housemaid’s cupboard was a stack of mirrors, five or six of them, hidden away so Fay could not accidentally catch a glimpse of her reflection. In the bedroom that had been hers, shawls and veils were folded in a drawer. Lavender bags had been tucked into the folds, but when Serena opened the drawer the indefinable scent of disease and death drifted out.

That’s what’s ahead of me, she thought. They’ll have to hide the mirrors and keep the curtains closed. Eventually I’ll give orders that the gas jets burn at the lowest possible glimmer even on the darkest of evenings.

A few years ago Julius had wanted to install electricity in the manor, but it had turned out to be too expensive for the old fabric and, remembering this, Serena was grateful. She was not grateful for very much else, though.

The west wing where Fay had lived for those four years had long since been rearranged and cleaned out, and nowadays Colm lived there, pottering contentedly among his books. If his dead wife’s shade walked those rooms, he did not seem to notice. He and Serena shared lunch or dinner a few times after her arrival, but she had never found Colm easy to talk to and he seemed to have grown nervous and almost hermit-like with the years. He was still looked after by the dour Miss Crossley, who had nursed Fay all those years ago; Dora said there had been a few battles in the kitchen between Mrs Flagg and Old Crosspatch.

‘Her name is Miss Crossley,’ said Serena.

Dora said that was as maybe, milady, but to everyone downstairs she was Crosspatch, and was there anything else needed tonight, milady, on account of it being her night off. She and Hetty were going along to the Red Lion.