Kingdom of Shadows (12 page)

He made no attempt to touch her. Turning away he walked to a side table and poured himself some wine. Her face had shaken him. He had always thought her a child, playing with his niece to whom she was so close in age; so alive, so vibrant, so happy. Beneath her silken veil her pinched, unhappy face was transparent with emotion. He could see the fear and doubt and defiance chasing each other through her eyes. She was like a little trapped bird, pressed there against the door of his room. He gave a deep sigh. She looked very young and vulnerable. Too young. His tastes were for more mature women. Yet he had to bed her, and at once, then he could get back to more important matters, like the war with England in the south.

He downed the wine and set the goblet with a bang on the carved wood of the side table, then he turned to face her. ‘You look cold, my dear. Why don’t you take off that gown and climb into bed. Let me bring you some wine.’

‘No.’ Her voice was tight with fear.

John sighed again. ‘Isobel. You know what must be done. Come.’ He held out his hand.

Stubbornly she shook her head.

He caught her arm, exasperated. ‘I shan’t be a cruel husband, Isobel. If you obey me, we shall be content together. Come.’ As he pulled her towards him his hand strayed to her face. ‘You aren’t a child any longer, sweetheart. There is strength here, and beauty. I’m a lucky man.’ Leaning down towards her he kissed her on the forehead.

Isobel stiffened, and with a little cry, stepped back, but he tightened his grip on her. ‘You mustn’t be shy with me. Come, show me a proper kiss. I am assured you know how.’ He was beginning to grow impatient. His moment of concern had passed. He was remembering his mother’s warnings; her insistence that Isobel had a lover somewhere out in the hills, her reiteration that the girl had bad blood and that she was a devil’s tease, sent to tempt men from their wives. Her skin was soft and yielding beneath his fingers. At last he was beginning to desire her.

He released her abruptly and turned back to the wine. ‘Drink.’ He handed her the goblet. ‘Now. Every drop.’ He put his hands on her shoulders as she raised the goblet to her mouth. The rough Gascony wine was warm against the cold metal beneath her lips. She sipped it, then obediently sipped again, feeling the warmth travelling through her veins. ‘And again.’ He fetched the jug and filled her goblet anew, watching as she drank it. She felt a wave of nausea and protested, and he pushed it to her lips again. Her head was beginning to swim, and the room spun around her, but still he forced the wine down her. Then he took the cup from her fingers.

She felt him lift her off her feet and lay her on the bed, and she thought she raised her hands to defend herself. But nothing seemed to happen. The room was growing dark.

The branch of candles on the table was dripping wax on to the embroidered cloth in the cool breeze which was blowing in from the sea. Outside, the long summer evening was drawing to a close as bats flitted past the high narrow windows. In the room there was a deep silence, broken only by the sound of the earl’s heavy breathing as he held his young wife down and began to remove her clothes.

5

Clare sat completely still. She was numb from head to foot. Disorientated, she stared around her, then she heard it again. Someone was ringing the doorbell.

Beyond the curtains it was dark now. In the shadowy bedroom the only light came from the flickering candle. She was shivering violently.

Emma was standing on the doorstep. ‘I was just going,’ she said as Clare opened the door. ‘I thought you must have forgotten and gone out.’ She was a tall, striking young woman with glossy chestnut hair and the dark Royland eyes. Beneath her coat she wore a pale blue silk shirt and skirt. ‘Are you all right?’ She peered at Clare suddenly. ‘You look frightful. Is anything wrong?’

Clare laughed uncomfortably. ‘I’m sorry, Emma. I forgot you were coming this evening.’ She stepped back to allow her visitor inside. ‘I don’t even know what the time is.’

‘After seven. What have you been up to? You weren’t asleep?’

Clare hesitated, then impulsively she clutched at Emma’s arm. ‘I’ve got to tell someone. It was awful – so … so real.’ Suddenly she buried her face in her hands.

‘Clare?’ Emma stared at her in horror. ‘Come on, what’s the matter? Is it Paul? What has that bloody brother of mine been doing now?’

Wordlessly Clare shook her head.

‘Then what?’ Emma’s voice was gentle. ‘Come on, Clare. You must tell me. Is it – is it about those tests you and Paul went for?’

Slowly Clare raised her face from her hands. She sat down limply in the Victorian chair near the fireplace. ‘Oh that!’ Could she really have forgotten that? ‘The results have come back, I can’t have children.’

‘Oh, Clare.’ Helplessly Emma stared at her. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She didn’t know what else to say.

‘I was so sure there was nothing wrong.’ Clare stared straight ahead of her at the pattern on the rug near her feet. ‘It’s strange, but I thought I would know if it were me; know in some subconscious part of myself. But I didn’t. I can’t come to terms with it yet.’

‘Are you going to think about adoption?’ Emma asked cautiously.

Clare shrugged. ‘I don’t know what we’re going to do. Paul was foul about it.’

‘The bastard!’ Emma threw herself down on the sofa opposite her. ‘He has got to be the most insensitive, unfeeling, boorish man I’ve ever met!’

In spite of herself Clare smiled. ‘So much for sisterly love.’

‘You know there’s not much of that lost between Paul and me. We’ve always hated each other.’ Emma grinned. ‘I never could see what you saw in him. But you know that.’

Clare smiled. ‘Oh, he has his moments.’ She hesitated, then she frowned. ‘But he has changed lately. He seems to have a lot on his mind and it’s not just the baby business. At least, I don’t think so. He seems to have got some sort of an obsession about money at the moment, almost as if he’s worried –’ she stopped abruptly, shaking her head. ‘Maybe there are problems of some sort at the bank. He never talks about what goes on there.’ She sighed, leaning back in the chair. ‘I’ve been trying to think of ways of taking my mind off everything. And I think I’ve found one. It’s not a permanent solution but it’s a sort of temporary counter-irritant. Inflicting one kind of pain to distract oneself from another worse one. That is what I was doing when you rang the doorbell.’

Emma frowned. ‘I take it that this is something to do with the yoga I’ve been hearing about.’

‘Who on earth told you about that?’ Clare stood up restlessly. ‘But, yes, it’s to do with that. Meditation. It’s the most incredible experience, Em. It’s exciting, frightening sometimes – mind-bending. One empties one’s mind and concentrates, in my case on Duncairn, and after a bit all these images start to appear: people, places from long ago. It is an amazing way of escaping reality!’ She grinned suddenly. ‘It’s as if I were conjuring up the spirits of the dead!’

Emma stared at her, her eyes wide. ‘You’re not serious! What happens?’

‘First I do some yoga to put me in the right frame of mind, then I have a little ritual with a lighted candle that Zak – that’s the man who has been teaching me the technique – taught me. It is a way of opening the doors to some sort of altered state of consciousness. I’m going to buy some incense while I’m up in London – that helps, too, apparently. It’s great fun. Then I begin to meditate, and it all starts to happen – scenes from the past, with real people who talk and move and seem as solid as you or me, and it’s so vivid I feel as if I were there. It is as if, if you had been here, you would have seen them too – seen every thing that happened.’

‘It sounds incredible! You’re loopy, Clare! You do know that?’ Emma grinned fondly.

Clare smiled. ‘I know, it’s frightfully shocking isn’t it? I dread to think what Paul would say if he knew.’

Emma raised an eyebrow. ‘What makes you think he doesn’t?’ She grimaced.

‘There’s no way he could. I’ve never told him. Oh, he knows about the yoga. He thinks that’s one of my typically crackpot schemes. The virtue of yoga is that lots of people do it, and it’s good for the figure.’

‘Even I’ve done yoga,’ Emma said thoughtfully.

‘Well, there you are then. It must be all right.’ Clare smiled at her teasingly. She was beginning to feel better.

‘What you’re doing frightens you, though, doesn’t it?’ Emma was not to be distracted. ‘You were in quite a state when you opened the door earlier.’

‘Was I?’ Clare looked surprised. ‘The doorbell startled me, that’s all. Although’ – she hesitated – ‘it was rather horrible.’

‘What was?’

‘Nothing.’ Clare shook her head.

‘Come on. You were about to tell me, and whatever it was it has nothing to do with you and Paul not being able to have children. It was to do with the meditation – if that’s what it is.’ Emma stood up and rummaged in the sideboard for Paul’s malt whisky. ‘You don’t think you really are conjuring up spirits, do you? Like a medium. Or making ghosts appear or something?’ Her eyes were sparkling. ‘Will you try? While I’m here?’ She gave a mock shudder. ‘Here, for God’s sake let’s have a drink! I’ve gone all shivery!’

Clare laughed. ‘From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties, good Lord deliver us! Oh, I’m glad you came, Em. I would have spent the evening in that other world otherwise and it’s much more fun with you. Isobel – that’s the girl whom I seem to see most – well, her life is not quite as fun to watch as it was. In fact I think it may be strictly for when this one is too awful to contemplate.’ Her face sobered for a moment as she remembered the dark, echoing chamber high in the keep at Duncairn, full of the sound of the sea.

She pushed the picture away firmly. The only merit in the scene she had been witnessing was that Paul had not been able to follow her there too. ‘Come on. Give me ten minutes to change and we’ll go out. I have a feeling Paul has gone back to Bucksters without me – he doesn’t want to miss the party tomorrow.’ She stopped suddenly. ‘Are you and Peter going?’

‘To David and Gillian’s?’ Emma shook her head. ‘No fear. We’re going to the theatre. Clare, seriously –’

‘No, Em. I don’t want to talk about it any more. Let’s go out. Please.’ She collected the two glasses and put them down on the sideboard, then she turned back to Emma. ‘You won’t say anything about any of this to Paul, will you.’

‘Of course not. What do you take me for?’

Clare smiled. ‘A friend. Otherwise I wouldn’t have told you anything.’

Emma grinned back at her. ‘I’m the soul of discretion. You can count on me. You know that.’

The Reverend Geoffrey Royland sat back comfortably at the breakfast table and opened his copy of
The Times
. At the table with him, his wife, Chloe and their two teenage children, Piers and Ruth, were immersed in the post. The large untidy kitchen, the only modernised room in the sprawling Edwardian rectory, smelled comfortably of coffee. When the doorbell rang no one moved.

‘Your turn, Piers.’ Ruth did not raise her eyes from the multi-paged letter in which she was engrossed.

‘It’s bound to be for Dad.’ Piers, two years younger than his sixteen-year-old sister, and already a head taller, was flipping through the latest issue of
Combat
.

‘Even so, it’s your turn, Piers.’ His mother, with an exasperated glance at her husband who appeared to have heard none of the exchange, tried to sound firm. ‘Come on, love. It’s time we all moved. I know it’s Saturday, but that’s no excuse, and Dad’s got a wedding this afternoon.’

Grumbling, Piers climbed to his feet. Clutching his magazine he headed for the hall. Moments later they heard the creak as the heavy front door with its insets of vivid stained glass swung open.

‘It’s Em,’ Piers shouted over his shoulder, then he was gone, two at a time, up the stairs to his bedroom, leaving their guest to find her own way to the kitchen.

Geoffrey, the middle Royland brother, stood up as he saw his sister. ‘What brings you out so early?’ He dropped a kiss on her cheek.

‘Coffee, Emma?’ Chloe slid an extra cup off the sideboard with a surreptitious glance at her sister-in-law. Emma looked tired, and there were dark rings under her eyes. Her normally cheerful face was very sober.

‘Please.’ Emma took Piers’s chair. There was a moment’s silence.

‘Is something wrong, Emma?’ Chloe put the cup down in front of her.

‘I don’t know. I wanted to talk to you, Geoff, about Pete and me.’

‘Ooh, lovely. Gossip!’ Ruth put down her letter, her eyes shining, and pushed her elbows forward on the table amongst the dirty plates and cups.

Geoffrey frowned. ‘That’s enough, Ruth.’

‘It’s nothing very dramatic; I just feel I want someone to talk to.’ Emma smiled apologetically at Chloe.

Geoffrey interrupted her with a gesture of his hand. ‘Why don’t you bring that coffee into my study. We’ll talk there. I know Chloe and Ruth will excuse us. They both have things to do.’

Ignoring the almost identical looks of anger and frustration on the faces of his wife and daughter, Geoffrey led the way out of the kitchen. His study was a ground-floor room, overlooking a quiet tree-lined street. Outside he could see Emma’s Golf parked beyond the gate.

Gesturing her towards what his family referred to as the interrogation chair, a deep-buttoned shabby leather arm-chair opposite his desk, he lowered himself into his own place. ‘You and Peter have been having problems for a while, haven’t you?’ He glanced at her, concerned.

‘Is it that obvious?’

‘Perhaps only to people who love you. Has something happened?’

She shrugged. ‘Nothing special, I suppose.’ She sat back in her chair and sighed. ‘It’s just, well, he’s never there. I went out last night with Clare because I was all on my own again. Then when I got home the house was so – so empty!’

Geoffrey sighed. ‘Poor Em. But from what I hear he won’t change his job. Wheeling and dealing in the Far East is his whole life. Can’t you and Julia go with him sometimes?’

She raised her hands helplessly. ‘If I give up the gallery, I can.’