Rose Trelawney (21 page)

I believe towards the end of the meal it occurred to him I had not eaten. I didn’t try to conceal it, but gazed soulfully on his delicious looking chicken. He was in a great hurry, however, and by the time he asked, rather apologetically, whether I had lunched, and I quickly assured him I had not, he had nearly finished his coffee.

“I am most eager to get home,” he explained. “Would you care to have a sandwich wrapped to eat in the carriage?”

Indeed I would, along with a piece of the plum cake I saw going to other tables. A carafe of coffee was added as well, in a glass bottle of the sort used for preserving fruit. I was afraid Colroy would make some comment about my lack of luggage, but he seemed rather distracted, his mind probably on business. I ate hungrily once the carriage was rolling, for it was well into the afternoon by this time and I had had nothing since breakfast. Mr. Colroy’s chaise was not so elegant as Kessler’s. We had a somewhat mangy fur rug, but no hot bricks. The coffee was still warm, however, and quite delicious, a little sweeter than I liked. It made me think of Annie. I must not fall into the foolish habit of wishing I were back at Granhurst with my friendly jailers. Still, with the food and warm drink in my stomach, I found myself going back there, in my mind. I yawned luxuriously, and felt sleepy enough to have a nap. Hadn’t closed an eye all night, I remembered lazily. My troubles suddenly seemed faraway, trivial. Mr. Colroy aroused from his reverie and commented, “You look drowsy,” in a fatherly way. “Why don’t you finish up your coffee? It will waken you up.”

I didn’t particularly want to wake up, but I finished the coffee, as it was already poured into my cup.

That is the last thing I remember before coming to some hours later with a splitting headache, tied up on a bed in a perfectly black room, with a gag in my mouth, feeling utterly confused and frightened.

Chapter Fifteen

Someone is trying to kill me. That much I think is clear now. The attack outside the chapel and the drugged coffee—no accidents or misadventures, but attempts by the same hand to do away with me. Why? Surely of all the harmless people in this great big world, no one could be more harmless than a girl who doesn’t even know her own name.

What nonsense! Of
course
I know my own name. ‘Elizabeth Grant is in a rant!’ The children used to chant those words at me when I went to school. They made fun of me for something, mean little beasts. They were jealous because I lived in the best house in the village. Used to—

‘Elizabeth Grant is in a rant

Her mammy’s dead and she lives with her aunt.’

I felt a scalding tear start in my eye—Mammy was dead all over again, and I was thrown into that
wretched
dame school for the children to point and poke at me. Laugh at my fancy gowns, that became progressively less fancy as I outgrew them, and they were replaced by Aunt Jessica. God, how I hated those fustian gowns. ‘You don’t want to stand out from the others!’ Jessica informed me. But I
did.
I didn’t want to be Elizabeth Grant, in a rant, with Mammy dead. I wanted to go back home, up on the hill. I shivered—I didn’t want to remember any more.

How cold it was here. This must be an attic. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I distinguished one rectangle an infinitesimal fraction lighter than the rest of the blackness. A window, the glass divided into twelve small panes. Very like the windows in my own office. A fear gripped me. In all the chill, perspiration popped out on my forehead, my upper lip, deformed with this foul-smelling rag. I must be rid of it before anything else. Frenzied jaw motions and tongue pushings succeeded in loosening the gag. A shoulder proved useful in dislodging it till at last I could breathe properly. Great lung-filling gulps of the cold air were swallowed greedily.

I glanced again to the window, half expecting to see it had disappeared. It had become clearer. One pane of glass was broken. No wonder I froze here, with no covering but my cloak. My fur-lined cape should be warmer. My chin, brushing the coverlet, told me it was not my own—it had a rough texture. Ah, but of course, it would be the one I wore to fool Mr. Gwynne. Why was it I wanted to fool him? It was Kitty’s idea. It had something to do with the missing madonna. Oh, but my head ached! Everything, every memory dissolved with the pain of it.

I closed my eyes to rest and sleep. When I awakened, the rectangle of window was markedly lighter. It was navy blue, the rest of the room still black. My head cleared, and suddenly I knew exactly who I was. Elizabeth Knightsbridge, and still in a rant. Jumbled pictures from a past life darted into my head, each clear and sharp-edged like a
trompe l’oeil
painting, but with no coherence, in jumbled order. Elizabeth Grant, yelling and screaming at ten was followed immediately by some pale-cheeked woman standing at an altar in a chapel in Italy, with delightful frescoes all around her, being married to John, and grieving, grieving in her heart—is it for the marriage or for the death? I thought my mind deceived me still. Why was I marrying a man with silver hair? Kitty’s voice, authoritative, firm, pealed in my ear. “It was your father’s intention, and wish, Beth. Indeed I see no way out, of it. John has already given him a great deal of money as your settlement, to cover his more pressing obligations. And how are you to go on, alone in a foreign country?” I see Papa being bowled over by a passing coach, see his head hit the cobblestones, see the red blood . . . No, I won’t think of that. All right, Father died of an accident in Florence and I was left alone, without funds.

How had I got to Florence? I had some dim, shadowy pictures, why were they growing dimmer? of a wretched scene at school, and later at home with Aunt Jessica. Yes, it was the McCurdle sisters—no! Not elderly spinsters at a dame school. Two sisters then not yet grown into gossiping spinsters, practicing up their craft on me, while I rose to every taunt. Blushed for my fustian gown, railed at being rooted out of my own fine home, and insisted my father
did
love me, and would take me out of this horrid place very soon and buy me a silken gown. Oh yes, my gowns and appearances meant a great deal to me. They meant security, and Mama and safety. They meant escaping that school and Aunt Jessica. Well, Papa
did
love me. When he sobered up from the monumental drunk following Mama’s death, he had taken me away, away forever from Aunt Jessica and that school.

I suspected the reason I couldn’t understand why we had lost our home when Mama died was that I never had been told. It had always been Mama’s family that bailed us out, and maybe they were not of a mind to go on bailing once Mama was gone. So we drifted, Papa and I, floated across seas and international boundaries like a pair of vagabonds, buying and selling paintings, painting a portrait ourselves upon occasion, but always with ‘the dice against us,’ as Papa said. The ‘Rembrandt’ bought for a song would be worth exactly what we paid for it, while the dark old religious painting that reminded one vaguely of Caravaggio but of course couldn’t possibly
be
his work, Papa would sell cheap, only to read in the papers next week that the Comte de Planat had come upon an unknown Caravaggio worth thousands.

So I married Mr. John Knightsbridge, because he was quite determined to have me, and because my father had borrowed money from him, a fellow Briton met by accident at an art auction in Florence. We always loved Florence, Papa and I, till we met the Knightsbridges, that is. Papa told me John wanted to marry me, told me one day we were driving about the countryside, and had stopped at an olive orchard—hot and dry and dusty—to try to sell the owner a set of candlesticks that we called Berninis. I married a man not much younger than my father, and as well as married his aunt, too. Kitty Empey, his mother’s youngest sister, formed an integral part of our household from the beginning. John and I might have dealt much better without her. I shouldn’t feel all this angry aversion, for John had been kind to me, treated me more generously than I had ever been treated since Mama’s death.

We traveled for a year, Kitty and John and myself, selecting purchases for the Knightsbridge Museum, to be opened as soon as we returned to Edinburgh. The timely conclusion of the war had even allowed us to finish our tour in Paris, which had been inundated with Englishmen like ourselves to celebrate the victory. I didn’t want to leave it and go back to Edinburgh. Who lived in
Scotland?
It was cold and damp, with nothing but rocks and heather and sheep. I used often to dream of rocks and sheep in the days following my marriage, yet I had seen little enough of them after I was married. We lived a civilized, urbane existence, in a fine mansion in the fashionable district of Edinburgh.

The days were busy and happy, the evenings held many social engagements, and if it had not been for the late nights, alone with John, I could have been happy. A girl of eighteen married to a gentleman of forty-two whom she does not love cannot ever be
quite
happy, however. She will feel cheated of romance, and while she will remain faithful to her silver-haired husband if she is not an outright villain (which I hope I am not), she will not be able to control her eyes just as she ought. A smile warmer than it should be will occasionally escape her lips, to cause jealousy and scenes, and even to set up the hackles of one’s husband’s family and friends.

I am afraid I set up a good number of hackles. John’s uncle Jeremy called me quite bluntly ‘that wench picked up in a foreign country,’ while an aunt married to a bishop tried her hand at arranging an annulment. All their anger and schemes came to naught. John fooled them and died in his forty-fourth year of pneumonia. Kitty blamed it on a broken heart, and I blamed it on her talking him into remaining in cold Scotland when both John and I had wanted to go back to Italy. I believe the relatives would have cut me off on the spot had I not been in an ‘interesting condition.’ I was with child, but miscarried in my third month. What a horrid thing to say, but I was not completely sorry.

Kitty Empey had no thought of cutting herself off from me, nor had I the means of severing myself from her, either. John’s will proved a cunning document that left all to me, the mansion, the money (and there was plenty of it), the museum, providing I gave a home to Kitty for as long as she lived, and providing I not remarry. Upon any remarriage, I lost everything but one hundred pounds. I think only the very
meanest
of minds would have bothered with that addendum. What is a hundred pounds? It would prevent the world from saying he cut me off without a penny, and John cared a good deal what the world said. He was always harping on it, but of course over the months I had come to manage him pretty well. With such a carefully controlled fortune, suitors proved as scarce as whales’ feathers. Bereft of child and independence, I threw myself into running the museum, opened two years ago and dedicated to my husband, John Francis Knightsbridge. Kitty did the same, and proved useful as she knew a great deal about art. She had far-flung associates in the art world, including a Mr. Grafton, of Gillingham, with whom her family was connected somehow on Mrs. Grafton’s side. They frequently corresponded, comparing opinions on acquisitions, the suitability of prices offered on various works up for sale, the choice of an expert to authenticate a painting, and so on.

It was through Kitty’s correspondence with Mr. Grafton that we learned he possessed one door of our Medici triptych, purchased by my father in Italy and left to me, his sole worldly possession of any monetary worth. We were eager to acquire the Grafton door, but it was not only the door that precipitated our visit south. A number of matters conjoined to bring it about. I, always eager to escape Edinburgh and the family, wished to visit London. Friends of John’s and mine were stopping with us on a visit to the Highlands, and extended an offer to me to return to London with them. The Mayhews it was, a youngish couple met in Germany during our honeymoon. I hoped to get away from Kitty for a few months, but there was never any escaping her. She received a letter from Miss Grafton that decided her to join us on the trip south, though not necessarily to London.

Miss Grafton feared her guardian, Mr. Morley, was mismanaging her estate, not purposely but through ignorance. At sixteen, she did not know a great deal about art yet herself, but she knew her uncle had sold two paintings her father treasured, and had got a low price for them. She knew as well that Miss Empey was considered quite an authority by her father, and asked her advice as to what she should do. It was enough. With no real life of her own, Kitty was always eager to interfere in another’s. She would go herself and look into the matter. She took the notion, always thinking the worst of everyone, that Morley was not ignorant but a scoundrel who was pocketing Miss Grafton’s money. While there, she was to try for the door of the Medici triptych for the museum. We left her off at Gillingham, where we all stopped overnight. She went incognito on the public tour of the Grafton collection that Monday and managed to make herself known to Miss Lorraine Grafton. Her keen eyes had picked out the Giorgione forgery, and she learned from the girl that her father had believed it to be genuine. Grafton was certainly thought to have purchased the original, and Kitty could not feel he had been gammoned by this copy. This pretty well convinced her Morley was a criminal, and to catch him, she arranged to go to the house as a companion to Miss Grafton. The uncle had been looking out for such a lady, and with Lorraine begging her housekeeper to give Miss Smith (as Kitty christened herself for the role), the position, she was hired on probation, a firm commitment being left to Mr. Morley when he returned from London.

Before leaving next day for London myself, I had a note from Kitty requesting me to make enquiries in the city whether the original Giorgione was known to have been purchased there. This, she felt, would positively incriminate Mr. Morley, though she was already by this time alerted to the name of Uxbridge as a possible criminal. Kitty was very efficient, to give the she-devil her due. She dropped an enticing hint that success in this project might see the Medici door turned over to us at a reasonable price. She had learned as well that Mr. Gwynne, a neighbor not too far away, was believed locally to have the other door. This filled me with excitement. To assemble the whole triptych would be a major coup, and a sort of posthumous fulfillment of my father’s futile life as well. He, who loved art so much, would be instrumental in restoring this treasure to mankind.