Touch Not The Cat (37 page)

We held hands and walked down the wooden steps into the lovely shallow glass of the maze. I led Rob through, and up past the wreck of the lower sluice, where the fishing cat, tumbled in the mud at the foot of the water stair, bore witness to the rashness of the men who had meddled there.

There was debris everywhere, but the moat was back in its borders, and the swans guddled happily in the Pool, with their grey flotilla alongside. The old house dreamed above its reflection, with nothing but a tidemark to show how high the water had risen last night. On the mud of the drive, under the lime trees, stood a rusty-looking Volkswagen. And on the main bridge, gazing around him, was my cousin Francis.

The other Ashley. Fair hair and grey eyes and elegant bones, and the same sweet line to his mouth that my father had had. My gentle cousin, the poet. He was surveying the wrecked garden, the mud lying on the bridge, the waterlogged avenue, with a contemplative expression that held no more than a suggestion of dismay.

He looked up and saw us approaching him. If he noticed anything strange about Rob's crumpled clothes, or my nightdress and bedraggled housecoat and bare feet, his expression gave no hint of it.

"Bryony!" he said, his face lighting. "Rob, nice to see you! What on earth's been going on here? It must have been some storm last night, to leave a mess like this. I would have thought the High Sluice would stand even a cloudburst."

"It would, if it hadn't been meddled with," said Rob, flatly. Then, as my cousin's eyes widened: "Aye, it's more of a mess than you think, Francis. We've a lot to tell you, and it's not good hearing, but I'm afraid it won't wait."

My cousin glanced from one to the other of us, and for the first time seemed to notice something odd about our appearance. "All right, then. Tell me."

Rob looked at me, and nodded. "It's your story, love. Go ahead."

So I told it, right from the beginning on that steep Bavarian road, leaving out nothing but the parts of it that were Rob's and my own. I said nothing, either, of the secret of William's Brooke; that was something I would have to tell Rob when we were alone. When I got to last night's scene in my cottage with Emory and James I hesitated, wondering how to gloss over Leslie Oker's telephone call, and the reason for Emory's sudden, murderous decision. But I need not have worried. Rob's growing anger at the scene I was describing was blinding him to everything but his own fury. To this day I am not sure whether his explosion of rage over Emory's attack on me was in words, or whether it burst straight from his mind into mine with the force of an armour-piercing shell. By the time he had got hold of himself, the tricky part was past, and the tale was told.

After I had finished there was silence. Rob sat down on the parapet of the bridge beside me, slid an arm round me, and drew me to him. I could still feel the ebbing shock wave of anger and protective love.

Outside and beyond it, like something barely relevant, I was conscious of the tremor running through his arm. He kept silent.

The sun was really warm now, and the light skimmed glancing off the water below us. I half shut my eyes and leaned back against Rob's arm. Francis stood with his back to us. At some point in the story he had turned away to take a couple of paces across the bridge, and he stood there by the other parapet, looking down at the water.

We had been lucky, I thought, that the first herald, so to speak, of the daylight world had been the one man who could share its burdens with us. I knew that Rob, running parallel with my drifting thoughts, was, like me, thinking ahead, trying to come to terms with that world and what the night's work would mean, not only to Ashley and my family, but to our own future.

Some of it could be guessed at. Even if Emory eventually recovered (which, from Rob's account of his apparent injuries, seemed unlikely), the twins would never come back to Ashley, either to make a claim or to fight one. With Rob's claim hanging over it, the land was unsaleable, and therefore profitless to them. And any threat to Rob or to myself had been voided by last night's action; once Mr. Emerson and the police knew the whole story, Emory and James might count themselves lucky if they could keep clear of us. I would make sure of it, I thought. I would write down the story of the last few days, fact for fact, and lodge it, with photostats of the relevant papers, as surety for the future. Further than that, out of mercy for the twins' sick father, and for Francis himself, we surely need not go? Under English law, unless Rob and I chose to press charges, there were none that could be made. The hit-and-run accident in Bavaria was another matter; however relieved I was to know that it had indeed been an accident, I could not forgive Emory's subsequent act of brutal self-interest; but I was still not prepared to add to his father's troubles by giving information to the Bavarian police. I would telephone Herr Gothard as soon as I could, and ask him to send the photograph back for my files. As for the debts the twins had incurred, William's Brooke, as well as endowing the Court, would take care of those, and set their father's mind at rest. Then, presumably, the twins—or James, the survivor—would settle in whatever haven was left to them. South America? Mexico? Wherever it was, they would have to start again from nothing, and James, if left to his own devices, would fare no better than he deserved. . . . I could not find it in me to care, one way or the other, so long as I never saw them again. All I would ever grieve over would be, not the evil man and the weak man who had been here last night, but the two charming and wilful boys who had lived here with us, so long ago.

Francis turned and came back to us. He was grave, and rather pale, but otherwise gave no sign of emotion. It was like him that, when he began to speak, it was about my bereavement (which had been news to him), and my unexpected marriage, and not about last night's near-tragedy.

He was interrupted. Somewhere down the avenue, beyond the trees, a car door slammed. There was the sound of voices. Three men, two of them in police uniform, appeared round the bend of the avenue, and after them, hurrying to join them, the Vicar. They paused when they saw us on the bridge, and Mr. Bryanston raised a hand in a gesture conveying both relief and greeting. Even at that distance it had something about it, too, of a blessing.

". . . If we could just tell them the bare outline now, and let Emerson handle the rest?"

It was Francis speaking again, rapidly, an eye on the approaching men. "He'll have to know it all, of course, then he can advise us. What I'm most immediately concerned with is what I'm to tell my father."

"It seems to me"—Rob, his anger gone, sounded his old calm, practical self—"that there'll be no need to add to your dad's troubles by telling him what your brothers were after last night. We'll think up some story for him, just as soon as we know where we stand with the law. The truth can wait till he's well enough to hear it . . . if he has to hear it at all."

He paused, glancing at me. I don't know what he read there, but he nodded as if answered, and spoke again, quickly, to Francis. "Something else I'd better say. I don't think, saving your presence, that your brothers will be in any hurry to come back, so it looks as if this lot's going to land on you. Now, we'd had plans, Bryony and me, to emigrate. That will have to wait a bit. We couldn't walk out and leave you in a mess like this, so if you want us to, we'll stay around, and help you get things straight. I don't know much about the sort of discovery we made this morning, but Bryony thinks that, given a push in the right direction, the place might even start to pay its way. So we'll help you push it, mate, and then it's all yours." He slanted another look down at me. "Eh, love?"

"Yes, Rob." I looked around me at the shining water, at the grassy banks sloping straight into their own intense and clear reflections, at the tops of the orchard trees beyond, where the thrush's song, no doubt, still echoed in the blossoming bell tower of the pear tree. Then I looked again at the heir to all this, with all that it owed to the past, and the load of questions that was its future.

If he chose to stay here, to push the Court back onto the map in whatever guise—National Trust monument, market garden, farmstead, building site—I would help him do it. If he chose
to
claim it for himself, and stay here for the rest of our lives, I would do that, too. But if he chose in the end to leave the care of the place to Francis, who loved it ...

Yes, that would be it. When I had told him everything, I knew that he would still say, with that tranquil expression, and the dark eyes fixed on his own, our own, far horizon:

"Francis Ashley, mate, it's all yours.