Serpent in the Garden (49 page)

“No! The current is too strong. And your skirts will weigh you down. You might easily be washed away.”

“Very well, then,” said Bridget, “if that is your only objection, I shall remove them.” To Joshua’s utter astonishment, she threw off his coat, undid the clasps of her skirt and let it drop, then untied her petticoat hoop and removed it as well. She stood in her shoes, stockings, and a flimsy underpetticoat that barely reached her knees. Joshua would have averted his eyes, but Bridget showed not one glimmer of shame or modesty.

“Do not, I beg of you, discuss the seemliness of this conduct,” she said, before turning abruptly to Brown, who was as astonished as Joshua. “Come, sir, did you not hear Mr. Pope? There is no time to waste,” she said sharply. Then, without warning, she took Brown’s hand and pulled him into the water.

Before Joshua knew it, the pair were washed over by the current just as he had been. And they came to their feet in the same state of spluttering confusion.

“Come slowly,” he directed them. “Mr. Brown, I think it would be prudent if you held on to Miss Quick until I can reach her.”

“Don’t trouble yourself on my account,” protested Bridget, who, having overcome her earlier fears, now appeared more robust than either of them.

When they were all assembled at the requisite spot, Brown lowered himself to allow Bridget to climb onto his back, and Joshua did likewise for him. Brown held on to Joshua’s shoulders with a talonlike grip. His knees clenched at Joshua’s jaw and neck as if Joshua were an unreliable mount and Brown feared being thrown at any minute. Joshua held on to Brown’s calves in the hope it might steady him and encourage him to release his grip a little, but no such effect was forthcoming.

With the current eddying about, and the combined weight of Brown and Bridget on his back, Joshua’s balance seemed almost insupportable. His legs buckled and several times he thought he was on the brink of collapsing, but he found the strength to lock his knees and brace himself as best he could.

“Can you reach?” Joshua shouted up to Bridget.

“Yes,” she shouted back, “but you will have to hold still, and I will have to stand up on Mr. Brown’s shoulders or I won’t get out.”

For several minutes after that Joshua heard the groanings of Bridget’s exertions, but he dared neither look up nor shout for fear of interrupting some delicate maneuver and causing her to fall. Then, suddenly, miraculously, the burden on his shoulders lessened.

“Brown,” Joshua gasped, “is she up? Has she succeeded?”

“Yes,” he answered, “I believe she has.”

With this they tipped back their heads. Framed in the bracken window, the round, fair, bedraggled face of Bridget Quick smiled triumphantly down on them.

“Thank God it’s your turn now, Brown. At least then you will desist from clawing my shoulder and crushing my skull. You have ruined a perfectly good shirt, not to mention the damage to my senses!” said Joshua wryly.

“Pardon me, I hadn’t realized!” Brown replied with the same faux lightheartedness. “I promise to buy you a new shirt, but as for the damage to your brain, I fear it was far from perfect in the first place.”

“Go, Brown,” Joshua urged, serious once more. “No time to lose.”

“Tell me first, how will you manage after I’ve gone?”

“You will have to lower something for me. I am confident that the price of a new shirt won’t deter you from effecting my rescue.”

“You may rest assured on it,” Brown said, patting Joshua on the head, rather as one pats a horse that has run a good race. “I suppose now I shall have to stand on your shoulders.”

“Then if you hadn’t already ruined my shirt you will do so now. You realize it cost twenty shillings?”

“I never paid more than ten for any of mine,” Brown declared, kneeling and then crouching. He clutched at Joshua’s hair as he raised himself up to stand. Joshua winced at the searing pain in his skull, but just then Brown grabbed at the rim of the opening. Then Bridget grasped his arms, and with her vigorous assistance Brown hauled himself out.

FROM OVERHEAD Joshua heard distant shouts, two echoing voices congratulating themselves on escaping death. He looked up, trying to quell a surge of envy and mounting panic. Two faces now looked down from above. How far away they seemed—a distance of twelve feet might have been a hundred times more. All this while, the floodwater had been rising. It was now up to Joshua’s neck.

To avoid futile argument and wasting precious time he had deliberately neglected to explain to the others that once they were safe they had to find a means to rescue him. If the good Lord intended him to live another day, something would present itself to Brown and Bridget. If not, at least two lives had been saved.

Now, turning away from the light, facing the sinister waters about him, his optimism seeped away. In a few minutes the water would rise to his chin; then it would reach his mouth, and his nostrils. At some point during its deadly progress he would no longer be able to remain standing, and since he had never learned to swim, his lungs would fill with horrid blackness, he would be unable to breathe, he would be washed away …

S
O ENGROSSED was Joshua in his proximity to death, he was oblivious to the effort to assist him that was taking place above his head. Having prepared himself to drown, he found the prospect less terrifying than he supposed. After all, once he was dead there would be no more fear, no more uncertainty, only blessed oblivion.

He was rudely roused from these melancholic thoughts by the sound of Bridget’s voice trumpeting down from overhead. “Mr. Pope,” she bellowed. “Pay attention, I beg you. Look up; catch it.” He looked up and saw that a rope of jute, with a noose at one end, was dangling toward him, like some great tar-scented serpent of deliverance. “Catch hold of it,” Bridget said again. “Tie it round you and we will pull you out.”

Joshua came slowly to his senses. He grabbed the rope; its prickly roughness and bitumen smell helped penetrate his stupefaction. He secured it under his armpits and raised his hand to indicate he was ready. Then, almost before he knew it, he felt himself being hauled up from the black cavern, into the air, toward the light.

He grabbed at the turf around the opening. Aided by Bridget—Brown could not let go of the rope, which was turned once round the trunk of a tree—he heaved himself out of the opening like a cork pulled from a bottle. He felt the rain drum down on his face. He wanted to express his joy at surviving, his gratitude for being able to feel as wet and cold and miserable as he did. But before he could open his mouth to utter a word, he collapsed on the ground unconscious.

SOMETIME LATER, he became dimly aware of a glass being thrust between his lips and the powerful taste of brandy in his mouth.

“Drink this, Mr. Pope. It will revive you,” someone said. “Should we summon the physician?” another voice said. “No,” answered the first. “Nothing ails him other than cold and nervous shock. Rest is the only remedy.”

Soon after that he opened his eyes. He found himself laid out in bed, in the same room at Astley he had occupied when he was engaged to paint the Bentnick portrait. It was dark outside; a fire had been lit and his wet clothes removed. He was now clad in what he guessed, from its capacious size, was one of Herbert’s nightshirts and a nightcap. Despite the fact that the bed was piled high with blankets and coverlets, he was trembling violently.

Seated in an armchair in the place where his easel had once stood was Lancelot Brown. He too was dressed in a large nightgown and nursed a large glass of brandy. There was also a blanket about his shoulders and a nightcap set upon his head.

“Brown,” Joshua said urgently, half raising himself up as if he intended to hop out of bed and leave as quickly as possible, “where is Miss Quick? How long have I been unconscious? Has Herbert been? Does he know I am here?”

“Calm yourself, Mr. Pope,” said Brown smoothly. “Miss Quick is quite well; she has been spirited off to be properly tended. I cannot tell you how long you were insensible, for I have no idea. I myself lapsed into unconsciousness for some time. And yes, Herbert does know you are here. I regret to tell you that despite everything, he was enraged to discover your reappearance. He says he holds you to blame for the death of his daughter. I believe it was only my presence and Miss Quick’s that persuaded him to allow you to be carried here and cared for at all. He is adamant that no matter your condition, you must leave first thing in the morning. I thought it best that I should deliver this message in person. I am sorry, my friend, there was nothing I could say to move him.”

Brown stood to leave as Joshua sank back into a pile of goose-down pillows. “I cannot say I am surprised. I myself feel culpable for Caroline’s death. But that being so, we must speak tonight. I beg you to stay a minute or two longer, Brown. Tell me what happened to you before I found you. Did you mean it when you said someone deliberately tried to drown us?”

Brown lowered himself back into the chair. “It was that very matter I have just been considering,” he replied, as ponderously as if they had been sipping brandy all day in a clubhouse. “I cannot see any other explanation. But if you are well enough to take in what I have to tell you, I will leave you to decide.”

“Of course I am well enough,” Joshua protested indignantly. “I have suffered an ordeal, but it hasn’t entirely deprived me of my senses. Tell me what happened to you. How did you come to be in that chamber?”

“I didn’t see who it was, but I hazard it was a man. I was struck from behind as I entered the grotto; when I came to, I had been transported to the ledge where you discovered me. No woman would have had the strength to drag me there, nor to open the gate to let the floodwaters in.”

“Then it wasn’t Lizzie Manning after all.”

“I told you before, she would not have had the strength.”

Joshua nodded. Lizzie would have known how to open the gate, but he had to admit it was unlikely a woman of her diminutive frame could have hauled Brown into the cavern. “And now, what was it you wanted to tell me—the subject you mentioned in your letter?”

Brown shook his head. “I didn’t know when I wrote to you that the necklace had been recovered. What I had to say has little relevance now. It concerned the history of the jewel.”

“Nevertheless, Brown, I would like to hear it and judge for myself.”

“Very well. Let me test you a little. What do you know of the origins of the necklace?”

Joshua responded swiftly. “It was won by Charles Mercier, who left it to his illegitimate daughter in his will …”

“Before that? Have you learned the earlier history?”

Joshua racked his memory. “Violet Mercier and John Cobb described a little of its past. As I recall, it was made in medieval times in Nuremberg for a princeling of the region. Charles Mercier won it from a countess, who gave it to her maid to—”

“Quite,” said Brown, holding up a hand. “Mercier won the necklace from a countess. And ignoring maids and their offspring, what do you know about that countess?”

Joshua raised himself onto his pillows, his mind suddenly alert to a wealth of new possibilities. “Never mind what I know. Tell me then, Brown, what it is you know; I can see from your face you are bursting with it.”