Crossed Bones (42 page)

‘I didn’t know. I am sorry, Julia.’ She pursed her lips. ‘How charming of him.
Given to you in error
. Like himself, no doubt. Michael is under the impression we’ll get a lot of money for the altar piece once we can prove what it is, and I haven’t disabused him of the idea. In fact, if it’s proved to be the real deal I’ve promised it to the V&A for free as long as they exhibit it with its full family history. Michael will be absolutely furious when he finds out.’ She giggled. It occurred to me suddenly that the balance of their relationship had suddenly shifted in her favour, and that she was enjoying every minute of her newfound power.

Something else occurred to me then. I looked at her intently. ‘Anna, I’ve always known your family were quite well off, but, well: the altar cloth, it was given to Lady William Cecil, the Countess of Salisbury…’

She laughed. ‘Lady William Cecil, née Howard. Mother’s a Howard, you see.’

I gaped at her. ‘You’re one of the Howard family?
The
Howard family, as in Catherine Howard and the Duke of Norfolk and all?’

‘Yes, but it’s all a bit diluted now. Very grand in our time, but we don’t own half of East Anglia any more. All I inherited was Aunt Sappho’s Suffolk house, and some funds and the cottage. I do believe the family owned St Michael’s Mount for a short time before selling it in the Civil War. Pity: could quite fancy living on an island.’

‘So you’re rich?’

She shrugged uncomfortably at my crassness. ‘Well, I wouldn’t go as far as that. Comfortable, maybe.’

‘Then why is Michael always so desperate for money?’

She gave me an embarrassed smile. ‘It isn’t really done to talk about such things in our family. Rather vulgar, I think. Michael doesn’t know much about my assets.’

He’d been married to an heiress and fretting all this time. I laughed out loud. ‘He said you were short of cash.’

Now it was Anna’s turn to laugh. ‘Michael’s convinced having a baby will bleed us dry.’ She shrugged. ‘I told him if he was that desperate he could sell the flat in Soho. He was very shocked: he didn’t even realize I knew about it. But I’ve known for years. I saw you together, going in, coming out, a dozen times. At the beginning it made me very miserable and a bit crazy: I used to follow him, spy on him, if you like.’

I closed my eyes, appalled. ‘And you never confronted him or me.’

She shook her head.

‘You could have left him, married someone else, someone worth having.’

She went very still. ‘Yes, he is a bastard, isn’t he? But I love him, Julia. I really love him, always have, always will. Can’t help it: he’s my Achilles heel, and you can’t help who you love, can you?’

I smiled. ‘No.’

I brushed my hand over Catherine’s work again. It was simply beautiful, the more so for being unfinished. It remained an enigma, a mystery: its absences preyed on the mind, and wasn’t that what love was all about? Even so, there was still one mystery I had to resolve. I lifted my eyes to Anna again. ‘I really need to know what happened to Catherine,’ I said.

∗

Downstairs in the bar, Anna ordered drinks – white wine for her and for me. Idriss surprised me by asking for a beer.

‘Another transgression,’ I teased him as she went up to the counter, but he looked pained.

‘It
is
Friday. Perhaps I should have water instead –’

Michael chose this moment to stride into the bar. Great patches of sweat had darkened the seersucker shirt; he looked hot and annoyed. His glance slid past the two foreigners seated at the table in front of him and fixed instead on his wife. ‘Scotch, and better make it a double!’ he demanded, seeing her at the bar, and the bartender – obviously recognizing a man in desperate need – put aside the beer bottle in his hand, grabbed a bottle of whisky and immediately poured out a large measure. ‘My feet are killing me. I’ve been to every bloody hotel in Rabat looking for the damned woman and she’s not at any –’

‘Hello, Michael.’

He spun around so fast that half the liquid in the tumbler he had just been handed splashed on to his shoes.

‘Good for your blisters,’ I said childishly, and Anna stifled a laugh.

He stared at me, then at Idriss, and a nasty, knowing look dawned slowly on his face. ‘You didn’t waste any time going native, did you?’ he said unpleasantly.

Idriss rose from his seat, the turban adding inches to his already considerable height.

‘Sit down, Michael, and stop making an exhibition,’ Anna said severely. I could imagine her talking to a junior employee in such a tone, but it was a surprise to hear her take it with Michael. ‘This gentleman is Idriss, an expert on the city and its history.’

‘Idriss el-Kharkouri,’ Idriss supplied sonorously. ‘
La bes
.’ He inclined his head, then touched his palm to his heart.

Michael regarded him suspiciously, then rudely turned his back on him. ‘Where’s the book, Julia? I’ve come a long way to get it.’

‘Julia and I have come to an arrangement,’ Anna said smoothly. She passed a glass of wine to me and the beer to Idriss, who took it with a
shokran bezef
, playing the Berber guide for all he was worth.

Michael glowered at her. ‘What do you mean “an arrangement”?’

‘Where are Robert Bolitho’s letters, Michael? I can’t find them.’

‘You didn’t think I’d leave them lying around the room for any thieving Arab to nick, did you? They’re in the hotel safe with instructions for no one to remove them but me.’

This was a different Michael to the one I had thought I’d known, a nastier, more anxious version. Seeing me with Idriss had certainly stung him, and the thought gave me a certain small and unworthy satisfaction.

‘Well, run along and get them,’ Anna said, taking his whisky from him and wiping the base of the glass with a napkin as she might dripping milk from a child’s bottle. ‘Go on.’ She waited until he had gone, then leaned across the table to me. ‘Here’s my promise. I’ll give you the letters if you’ll let me take the book, for now. Our flight back is tomorrow, but I don’t think Michael will set foot on the plane without the book. However, I promise you – and Idriss can be my witness – that it remains your property to do with as you wish, and we’ll exchange the letters and the book when you get back, as long as you’ll come to the V&A with me to authenticate the altar cloth. Is that a deal?’ She held out a hand.

Idriss looked at me warningly, but I gave him a tiny shake of the head.
No
,
it’s OK
. Then I took Anna’s hand. ‘Deal.’

I was halfway through my wine before I remembered another question I meant to ask her. ‘Robert Bolitho’s letters – where did you find them?’

‘They were in Alison’s loft, at the farmhouse at Kenegie. Someone had tucked them inside the cover of the family bible, where they belonged, I suppose.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, Alison’s mother’s a Bolitho, isn’t she? You should know: she’s your cousin. It just always struck me as an odd name. We played that game at college once – you know the one: make your porn star name by taking the name of your first pet and your mother’s maiden name? Mine was Silky Pevsner; hers was Candy Bolitho, both rather good, we thought. Anyway, family ties to the place or not, she’s moving out; it’s a big place if you’re on your own.’

I was appalled, and for many reasons. I remembered the chill I had felt while I was there, the depression that settled over me. I had thought at the time I was being superstitious, that I had sensed the presence of Andrew’s spirit; but what if there had been something else there? I shivered, unwilling to think about that. ‘Where’s she going to go, then, Alison?’

‘She’s going to buy my little cottage in Mousehole; she fell in love with it, and we did a deal: I let her have it cheap and she let me have the letters.’ She gave me a wry little smile. ‘She’s already moved in as a tenant while the conveyancing is done and the alterations are carried out.’

Before I could ask anything else, Michael arrived with an envelope in his hand, looking even more harassed than he had before. ‘God, these people don’t understand a word of bloody English.’

‘That’s because they all speak French, darling. Now, then: Julia has agreed to exchange the book we need for the letters you found.’

Michael looked at me, surprised. ‘Oh, good.’ He hovered over the table, as if suddenly wrong-footed, then sat down, opened the envelope and removed from it several photocopies, plus a sheaf of foxed and spotted foolscap covered in neat ink. Even from a distance I could see it was in Robert Bolitho’s small, neat hand. ‘The book,’ he said, separating the originals from the copies and holding the latter out to me. ‘Hand it over, then.’

Anna tutted. She reached across and took the papers from him, dropped the foolscap sheets into the envelope, folded the copies and passed them back to Michael, then gave the envelope to me.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Michael roared.

‘Fair trade,’ Anna said sweetly. ‘The book, please, Julia.’

Solemnly, I reached into my bag and withdrew
The Needle-Woman’s Glorie
. It felt soft and smooth in my hand. I rubbed my thumb lovingly across the ridges on its spine and the slight discoloration on the back where the corsair captain’s cousin had tried to burn it. ‘Goodbye, Catherine,’ I whispered.

‘
Au revoir
,’ Anna corrected me gently.

‘See you in London,’ I told her with a smile. ‘I’ll be back in a few days. I’ll call you.’

Anna’s fingers folded over mine. ‘Do that, my friend.’ Then she drew away, clutching the book against her ribcage like a breastplate.

I got up to leave. Idriss extended a hand to Anna, who smiled up at him. ‘It was lovely to meet you, Idriss. I hope to see you again.’

‘
Enchanté
,
madame
.
À la prochaine
,
inch’allah
.’

He turned to Michael. ‘I hope you have enjoyed your brief stay in my cousin’s hotel, and that your visit to Morocco has provided something of an education for you,’ he said in his best English. ‘Our culture prides itself on the quality of our hospitality and courtesy. And of course we are entitled to demand that the tongue be cut out of anyone who impugns our honour, or that of any member of our family.’ The flicker of his smile did not reach his eyes.

It might have been the light, but it seemed to me that Michael went a little green around the gills.

Outside, in the bright sunlight, I squinted up at Idriss. ‘Is that really true? About cutting out the tongue, I mean? I know in Saudi with Sharia Law they’ll cut your hand off for stealing, and flog people for drinking, and stone women for adultery, and other horrible things, but I thought Morocco was more liberal.’

Idriss drew me into the shadows of an alley, dipped his head and kissed me, very quickly but very thoroughly.

‘And that earns me a month in prison,’ he said solemnly.

I had no idea whether he was joking or not.

The forest was a strange place. In Cornwall he knew every tree, every plant that grew in the woodlands and hedgerows, their names, their flowers and fruits and seasons. But these trees had a bark that was reddish and rough with long vertical splits and gashes, and their limbs were smooth and round and well spaced. The canopy they made was thick and dark, so the undergrowth grew sparsely, which at least meant there were fewer places from which brigands might ambush them.

They walked in single file, Rob following carefully in the other’s steps. Half a day of walking passed without incident. They ate some of the ship’s biscuit and dried meat, and drank water from a stream, and walked on without a word. This left Rob’s mind free to wander mightily, and he found himself remembering his final conversation with Sir John, which had finished on a bitter note.

‘Two, and there’s an end to it. Bring any more and I’ll sell them into slavery myself!’ Killigrew had told him furiously when he had once more argued they should try to bring away as many captives as the ship could carry. Rob had subsided with as good a grace as he could summon. What would folk say when he returned home with only Cat and one other, when so many had been taken? He knew from the ransom letter that Catherine’s mother Jane had survived, and duty prompted him that it should be this lady he saved alongside his beloved, but, as he turned it over, the idea sat like lead in his stomach. Rob had never cared greatly for the woman. The lads at home would surely scoff at him for his folly in shipping back such a shrewish mother-in-law to berate and belittle him at every turn. But what if Cat would refuse to come away without her? He had never thought them overly close, but it was said that blood was thicker than water. He had much rather save Matty, now that he thought about it – good, stolid, decent Matty. She was a young woman, and Jane Tregenna old and dried, so surely it was more logical to save Matty, so she might live out a long life in a good Christian country, and bring into the world the children that God intended for her? His mind’s eye captured Jane Tregenna’s pinched and discontented visage, and compared it unfavourably with Matty’s rosy dimples, and his decision was made. He could not stop his imagination from running far ahead: surely Cat would wed him with a whole heart when all this was over, grateful for the mighty effort he had made for her, just like one of the knights in the stories she loved so well. But his conscience pricked at him. It was surely wrong to consider Cat’s heart as common payment. If he was making this journey, this quest, with such payment in mind, he was surely being ignoble, for the success of saving her from the heathen ought to be reward enough of itself. Heroic tales took hold of him again: might he not see himself as a Crusader striking a blow for Christendom against the infidel? Yes, that was a finer image to cleave to: if he acted as a godly man on the true path of the Lord, he would earn a reward in Heaven.
But I would rather have my reward on Earth
,
and in my arms
.

A bird came clattering out of the canopy overhead, cawing a warning, its long tail trailing like a pennant.