Island of Bones (6 page)

He turned back into the museum and was glad to feel its relative cool. The little space was lined with all manner of things, his own maps of the area, stuffed animals both foreign and domestic, a collection of mineral samples, an arrow head and a stone axe discovered in a field adjacent to the stone circle. His visitors’ book lay open on the counter, ready for the signatures of any person of quality that might wish to see them.

He began to examine the various corners and cabinets for signs of dust. His maid had broken her ankle some weeks ago, and though it looked as if she would mend, he had not been able to find anyone else so neat in her absence. He ran his finger over the frame of an oil painting of
The Luck of Gutherscale Hall
; his finger came up clean, so he stepped back with a small grunt of satisfaction to admire it.
The Luck
was a jewelled cross which had seemed to disappear into the air when the last
Earl of Greta joined the rebellion in 1715. Legend said it did not wish to leave the lake, so deserted him and slipped from his saddlebag. The picture hung next to the portrait of the 1st Earl with the Luck in his hand, and the artist had used the portrait as his source and added a few more rubies and an extra diamond or two. It was painted against black, and the artist had been of sufficient skill to make the jewels seem gleaming and alive.

Mr Askew’s fairer visitors always sighed over the picture and one in three would buy one of the prettily carved wooden replicas he offered for sale. He wondered how many of them missed the views as they walked by, looking in the streams and under boulders for the thing itself. He had looked himself, especially in the first months of his residence in Keswick. Mr Sturgess had done so too, with some application, but his only find had been the stone axe now on display. What a thing that would be, to have the Luck here in a glass case in the centre of the room where the light from the window would make it shine . . . Askew rubbed his hands together again. His museum would be full every day then, and famous, and no one would then compare it with the pitiful collection of minerals Mr Hale had the nerve to call a museum in Kendal. He would rename his annual regatta on the lake the Regatta of the Luck, and the winner each year would receive a little copy of the Luck itself. It could be processed round the town in the morning, or perhaps during the previous evening by torchlight.

Mr Askew turned his round face towards Heaven with a happy sigh, and remained there, building castles till the bell above the door jangled. A lady and gentleman were crossing his threshold. Father and daughter? Foreign? Mr Askew bowed, blessing the sultry weather, since no lady could stand walking for long in such heat. He saw the young woman’s eye caught by the picture and reckoned another wooden cross sold, and no doubt tickets to his lakeside entertainment the next day. Bless the dry fog indeed! Though it stank of the Devil it wafted guineas into his pocket like the breath of angels.

T
HEIR APPROACH TO
Silverside Hall had been looked for, and when Harriet stepped out of the carriage she was at once greeted by a short, rather square woman of perhaps sixty years, who came very close to her on the gravel and shook her hand so heartily Harriet was afraid for her wrist.

‘Oh, Mrs Westerman! I am so glad you are come in time for our party tomorrow! I know you at once, you see. The papers have been so full of talk of your red hair, I swear I would know you in a crowd – and here you are! “The flame-haired widow”! I am delighted, delighted to welcome you to Silverside. I am Mrs Briggs, you know, and here is my home – yes, the view
is
pretty, and here is the Baron behind you, though of course we must address him as Mr Crowther, must we not? Welcome, sir, welcome!’

Harriet managed to smile and nod during this speech enough to satisfy her hostess while taking in some small part of her surroundings. The carriages had come to a halt in front of a noble building somewhat of the age and size of Caveley, though its granite frontage seemed to be built on a slightly grander scale and was of a darker stone. Glancing behind her, she could see beyond the backs of the horses to a steep open lawn edged with woodland that swept down to the lakeshore, complete with jetty and rowboat. The view across the water was indeed impressive, the lake like pewter below them, the wooded islands, then on the far shore a pleasing mix of fields and woodland lapping upwards to the sweep of the mountains beyond.

Having exchanged bows with Crowther, Mrs Briggs had moved on to the occupants descending from the other coach.

‘And here is
Master
Westerman! You will be a hero of the seas like your poor, brave father, I imagine, young sir! And this is your tutor – very good, very good. You have the air of a man who could walk the fells all day and eat a good dinner. Is that not so? I am glad to see it.
Now, young Mr Westerman, I hope you will run about and make a great deal of noise while you are here. I insist on it. My children are all grown and gone and I hate to have the place so quiet. Remember, lots of noise! And you may take the rowboat on to the lake whenever you like. I insist on that also. Miriam!’

A young blonde maid bobbed down the steps behind her mistress, smiling broadly. ‘My dear, do show Master Westerman – Stephen, is it, my dear? Very good! Yes, yes, Ham, lead the horses round and have the luggage placed. My, what comfortable-looking carriages they are! Now, Miriam, do show this young man and his tutor – your name, sir? Quince? A fine name. I know several men of that name and nothing but good of them! – and Mr Quince to their rooms, and then I am sure Stephen would like to have a run about the place before we dine. Mrs Westerman, I shall show you to your rooms myself. What a pleasure it is to have the house full!’

And so, without having to trouble themselves to utter a word, the party were ushered into the house.

The lobby was a fine bright place – the walls painted cream and the stone flags broken with large carpets of Turkish design. Harriet thought she caught an expression of slight surprise in Crowther’s face.

‘Yes, my lord. My apologies –
Mr Crowther
. No doubt much has changed since your day. But when your father built the place, he was not building it for a family like mine. We seem to need a little more light, hence the changes you see. Though the library is still in the same quarter and we have only added to your father’s collection. Lor, how many books that gentleman had. We had to cram in ours any old way. Kittie!’

Another maid appeared. ‘Show Mr Crowther into the library, dear. There are some refreshments there, and your sister is waiting to meet you.’ Harriet discovered by the friendly pressure on her arm that she was not to go to the library with Crowther, but found herself propelled instead towards the elegant sweep of the staircase.

‘Now, Mrs Westerman, let me make you comfortable so you and I
may have a dish of tea and something in your sitting room and get acquainted, if you will be my host! I wish to hear all about your journey. Lord, I hate to travel! I have scurried about Europe with my husband in our time, but I would not leave Silverside from one year end to the next if I had my way. But then I would never see my daughter and her children if I did not. Have you met Lady Hill in Town? She is my eldest child, though of course she would have mentioned it in one of her letters if she had made
your
acquaintance . . .’

Mrs Briggs’s voice died away behind him as Crowther was led into the library. This room was indeed much as he remembered it from his childhood. The last day he had spent here had been the eve of his father’s funeral while his elder brother spent that night in Carlisle Prison before being sent for trial at the House of Lords. He had sat here a little while. When he went back to Keswick to complete the business of selling the house and land he had not returned to the house itself but had taken advantage of his lawyer’s hospitality in Keswick. He had told himself the arrangement was more convenient, but in truth when he had left the room to see his father buried he had sworn never to come back. Yet here he was – and the room, it seemed, had been waiting for him. Heavy drapes across the windows filtered out the sunlight leaving the space a cavern of shadows in tobacco browns and bottle greens. The old spiral staircase still stood in the middle of the far wall, giving access to the narrow runway that ran round the shelves of the upper level. He realised it was the one part of the house he had missed a little.

What light there was still seemed to fall in the same way – unhurried, as if it entered the library to rest. The considerable floorspace was scattered with armchairs and low tables. In the centre of the room were the promised refreshments. The wine decanter gleamed red; a clean glass stood next to it. There was a movement from one of the armchairs that sat with its back to him, and a thin hand extended, its fingers covered with jewels that echoed the wine sleeping in the decanter, and placed
another glass, part-filled, on the table next to the first. There was a rustle of fabric and the lady stood. Crowther saw thin shoulders and hair swept up from the neck and powdered. Then, slowly, she turned.

Crowther would not have known the woman before him as his sister if they had passed on the London streets, yet as he looked at her, around her eyes, in the height of her cheekbones and slimness of her form, he saw something he recognised from the mirrors in his own house, or the reflections he caught in the glass of one of his preserving bottles. She could have been a statue, but the lines around her eyes and mouth were too delicate for any sculptor to have made. He felt her eyes travel slowly over him, and he made his bow. She dressed a little young. Suddenly her shoulders relaxed and she came towards him with her hands extended. Crowther fought the impulse to step backwards.

‘Charles!’ she said with apparent delight. ‘Or rather I shall call you Gabriel. I have so rarely heard either name in my mouth. I can swap them with ease.’

He set down his cane to take her hands. ‘Margaret. You look well.’

She gave a shrug. ‘Oh, I look old. You missed me at my bloom.’

‘I am sorry for that.’

‘Are you?’ She returned to her seat and perched on it, slightly pouting, and watched him settle himself opposite her. ‘I rather doubt it, but I give you credit for saying so.’

Crowther did not reply but poured wine for himself and drank it. It was very good and he remembered vaguely that Mr Briggs had had an interest in the import of liquors.

‘So, my lord, what do you think of our childhood home? This room excepted, it is all much changed.’ Her tone suggested she did not entirely approve. ‘Do you remember how Addie used this space to put on his little plays? When he came up from London I would beg to have a part. Did he ever recruit you?’

‘From time to time,’ Crowther said, studying her, ‘but I fear I was never much of a performer. I found the whole business humiliating.’ She gave a knowing smile at that which Crowther found irritating.

‘Have you reached that stage of life where one becomes terribly interested in one’s own past? Is that why you are here?’ she said.

‘I came because I was asked,’ Crowther replied.

‘Is it so simple to conjure you? I had no idea. You mean to say that if I had requested you come to me as a girl in Ireland, or as a young wife in Vienna, I would have had the pleasure of knowing my brother before now?’

Her voice was still light, the babble of the drawing room, but there was a brittleness there too. Crowther regarded her carefully.

‘I have never observed that my acquaintanceship gives much pleasure,’ he told her. ‘I cannot say, Margaret, if I would have come; the occasion did not arise. But it is possible I would
not
have done so unless the circumstances were extraordinary. We have never known each other; perhaps I would have thought it better to leave it so.’

The Vizegräfin lifted her hand to cover her lips as she drank, blinking rapidly. ‘And of course, I have never been able to offer the additional attraction of a mysterious corpse before now. You are honest, at least. I am not surprised. I knew when I was established in Ireland that you wanted nothing to do with any of us.’

‘Any of us?’

‘I mean my mother, my father, our brother
or
myself.’

Crowther leaned back in his chair. ‘Three of the persons you have mentioned were dead. It would have required some great spiritual intervention for me to have any commerce with them.’

She set the glass back a little sharply on the table. The coquette disappeared; her features seemed to sharpen and age. ‘They were somehow a great deal more dead to you than they were to me, Gabriel. You would not even do the duty of thinking about them. I did. I felt my losses. You cut them off from you like rotten wood, and myself with them.’

Crowther paused, looking into the air above them as if considering the question for the first time, then replied, ‘Yes. That is true.’

He heard his sister take a sharp breath and wondered how this scene had played in her imagination before he had opened the door. Had she
expected him to be ashamed? Had she thought he would approach her on his knees, weeping in self-reproach the moment she put out her hands? If so, he felt a sudden burst of pleasure to have disappointed her. She continued: ‘I note you do not come to me in a penitent or sentimental mood. Good. I would not think better of you for it.’

Crowther realised he did not care very much what his sister thought of him. Part of his mind told him he should feel guilt, but he would not. He had made his decisions and would not now revel in feigned regret. ‘Do you feel I have wronged you so greatly, Margaret? You have always been well provided for, and as I said, you have never made the attempt to establish any communication with me.’

‘I was a child. It was your
duty
to write. And later in life . . . Your pride is in our blood. You were born with it forming the spine of your character, as was I. How could I turn to someone who had so conclusively turned away from me?’

Crowther did not reply directly to this.

‘I hope your time with the O’Brien family was not unhappy.’