The Shrouded Walls Page 4

  “My father came to London—probably more out of curiosity than anything else—to see what his half-foreign son was like. I remember very well when I first saw him. He was very tall, taller than I am now, and wore a wig which looked as if it had seen better days. He had an enormous paunch, massive shoulders and a voice which I believe would have frightened even Bonaparte himself. I could well understand how he managed to have such powerful influence in the town of Rye and the other Cinque Ports, he would dominate any gathering. England was, and is, the richest, most powerful country in the world, and he was to me then a personification of England—tough, arrogant, self-opinionated and rude—but generous to a fault with his money, compassionate when something touched his heart, and unwaveringly loyal to his friends, to his king and country and to those principles which he believed were right and just.

  “ ‘Ho!’ he said, entering the room with steps which made the china tremble on the mantelpiece. ‘You look just like your mother! Never mind, you can’t help that. What’s your name?’

  “He nearly expired when I told him. His face went purple and his eyes were bright blue with rage. ‘Damned foreign nonsense!’ he roared. ‘I’ll call you George. What’s good enough for the king should be good enough for you. What’s all that Frenchified nonsense around your throat and wrists?’

  “It was the fashion in Vienna at the time for small boys to wear jackets with lace cuffs and a lace kerchief, but my English wasn’t good enough to tell him so. ‘Zounds!’ he said (or something equally old-fashioned), ‘the child can’t even speak his native tongue! Never mind, my boy, we’ll soon put that right.’

  “So he promptly removed me from my uncle’s care, much to my uncle’s relief, took me to Haraldsdyke and hired a tutor to teach me English. He had married again by this time, but my half-brothers Rodric and Vere were little more than babies and Ned was yet to be born, so I was a solitary child. When I was twelve he sent me off to Westminster in the hope that boarding school would complete the process of turning me into a young English gentleman.

  “I left there ignorant but tough at the age of eighteen and asked to go back to Vienna as I suspected my uncle of defrauding me and wanted to investigate how he was conducting his guardianship of my financial affairs. My father was very angry when he heard that I wanted to go back to Austria, but I remained firm and after he had roared and bellowed at me for an hour or more he realized I couldn’t be dissuaded.

  “So I went back to Austria—and became involved in the Austrian interests I had inherited from my mother. Eventually I married an Austrian girl of good family and—much to my father’s disgust and disappointment—settled in Vienna.

  “Yet my English education and my acquaintance with English people had left their mark. After my wife died I devoted myself more to my business interests and succeeded in establishing an outlet for my interests in London. After that I often journeyed to and fro between the two countries and occasionally managed to visit Haraldsdyke as well.

  “But my father never entirely forgave me for returning to Austria. He had three other sons now by his second marriage, and I was always aware of being a stranger there, a foreigner trespassing on English soil.”

  He stopped. Flames from the enormous fire nearby roared up the chimney. Hardly liking to interrupt his first long conversation with me I waited for him to continue but when he did not I said puzzled: “And yet he left Haraldsdyke to you when he died.”

  “Yes,” he said, “he left Haraldsdyke to me.” He was watching the leaping flames, his face very still. “I knew towards the end that he was disappointed in his three sons by his second marriage, but I never imagined he would cut them out of his will. Yet they received merely nominal bequests when he died.”

  “Why was that? What had they done to disappoint him?”

  He hesitated, fingering his tankard of ale, his eyes still watching the flames. “Ned the youngest was always a sullen, difficult child,” he said at last. “No one took much notice of him. He was dark and ungainly and not in the least handsome. Vere, the second son, was too serious and staid, and he and my father could never agree on anything, least of all on how the lands should be farmed. Vere is keenly interested in agriculture and wanted to use new scientific methods which my father thought were a great deal of nonsense. The crowning disaster came when Vere secretly married a village girl, the daughter of the local witch. My father disowned him, then repented and forgave him later. I think in spite of himself my father was impressed by Alice, Vere’s wife. She’s clever enough not to try to be something she’s not, and she’s made no effort to adopt a refined speaking voice or wear clothes which are too grand and extravagant. She’s quiet, very simple and unaffected in her dress and manner—and at least presentable. Also I believe she’s an excellent mother. She’s born Vere five or six children, if my memory is correct. Not all of them have lived, of course, but I think three are surviving so far. However, in spite of the fact that the marriage was not unsuccessful, my father never fully forgave Vere for marrying beneath him.”

  “And the eldest son,” I said. “Why was he a disappointment?”

  “Rodric?” A sudden draught made the flames leap up the chimney with a roar again before subsiding beneath the glowing logs. The wind rattled fiercely at the shutters. “Rodric died. It was the day of my father’s death. He rode off across the Marsh to Rye and the mists blew in from the sea to engulf him. I went after him but all I found was his horse wandering among the dykes and his hat floating among the rushes near a marshy tract of land. His horse must have missed its footing on the narrow path and thrown him into the boggy waters of the mere.”

  I shivered, picturing all too vividly the mists of the marshes I had never seen, the twisting path from Haraldsdyke to Rye. “Is there no road, then?” I said in a low voice. “Is there no road which links the house to the town?”

  “Certainly, but Rodric didn’t want to take the road. He was trying to escape, taking the old path across the road.”

  It was like that moment in many dreams when a familiar landscape is suddenly contorted without warning into a hideous vista. I had been listening so tranquilly to Axel’s narrative that I did not grasp the drift of what he was saying until it met me face to face. The shock made the color drain from my face. I stared at him wordlessly.

  “My father died as the result of a blow from the butt of a gun,” said Axel quietly, “and it was Rodric who struck the blow.”

  The landlord came in then to inquire whether our meal was satisfactory and whether there was anything else we required. When he had gone I said: “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  Axel glanced aside. I sensed for a moment that I had come closer than I had ever come to disturbing the smooth veneer of his sophistication. Then he shrugged his shoulders. “The story is past history,” he said. “It’s over now, the affair closed. It’s necessary that you should know of it as you will undoubtedly hear the story from other people, but it need not concern you.”

  But I felt that it already concerned me. “What brought Rodric to do such a terrible thing?” I said appalled. “I don’t understand.”

  “No,” he said. “You would not understand. You never knew Rodric.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “He’ s dead, ” said Axel. “You need not concern yourself with his ghost.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “He was as wild and turbulent as Vere was staid and predictable. He was like a child in his ceaseless search for some new adventure which would give him a bizarre sense of excitement. He was always in trouble from an early age, and the older he grew the more he resented his father’s power. There was a clash of wills. However, my father tended to favor Rodric and in spite of all his rages did his best to extricate his son from each new scrape in which Rodric found himself. But the relationship deteriorated. In the end my father was threatening to inform the Watch at Rye of Rodric’s current activities and swearing he would disinherit Rodric entirely.”

  “And
was it then that Rodric killed him?”

  “He was the last to see my father alive and it was known that they quarreled violently. Part of the conversation was overheard. Directly afterwards he rode off over the Marsh.”

  “And the gun—”

  “It was his own gun. He had been out shooting and had just returned to the house when my father called out to him from the library. Rodric went in to see him, the gun in his hand. I know that to be true, for I had been out shooting with him and was in the hall when my father called out.”

  “Was it you, then, who found your father dead?”

  “No, it was my step-mother who found him. Rodric had already left and Vere had been out all the afternoon on the estate. He didn’t come back till later. Then the footman told us that Rodric had gone and I rode after him to try to bring him back. But I was too late.”

  “And the quarrel—part of it had been overheard, you said?”

  “Yes, by Vere’s wife Alice and by my father’s ward and god-daughter Mary Moore, whom I don’t believe I’ve mentioned to you before. They were in the saloon adjacent to the library and when my father raised his voice, he could easily be heard through the thickness of an inside wall. After a while they became embarrassed and retired to the drawing-room upstairs. Or at least, Mary did. Alice went off to the nursery to attend to the children.”

  “And your youngest half-brother Edwin, Ned, where was he? Didn’t he hear or see anything?”

  “He was in the hay with the second scullery maid,” said Axel with a bluntness which startled me. I was reminded with a jolt of the relationship existing between us and the frankness that was now permitted in our conversation with each other. “The entire account of his adolescent escapade was duly revealed at the inquest.”

  “Inquest!”

  “Well, naturally there had to be an inquest. The coroner’s jury held that my father had been murdered and that Rodric had met his death by accident while trying to hasten as quickly as possible from the scene of the crime. They also recommended that no blame should be attached to the living for my father’s death, so that although as a coroner’s jury they were not allowed to judge whether Rodric committed the crime or not, their recommendation was sufficient to tell the world that in their opinion Rodric was guilty.”

  “I see.” I was silent, picturing the inquest, the stuffy courtroom, the stolid jurors, the gaping gossiping crowd. “Was the inquest at Rye?”

  “Yes, it was. Fortunately the coroner was a friend of my father’s lawyer James Sherman and was anxious to spare us as much as he could, but the affair caused a tremendous amount of gossip and speculation throughout the Cinque Ports. There was even more gossip when the contents of my father’s will became known and I discovered, to my acute embarrassment, that he had left everything to me. Everyone was stunned, of course. We all knew that he had threatened to cut Rodric out of his will, but no one had guessed that he had already actually done so. Furthermore, neither Vere nor Ned had had any idea that they too were disinherited. But according to James Sherman, the lawyer, my father had signed the new will on the day before he died.”

  “But if the inheritance was such an embarrassment to you,” I said, “could you not have renounced it? Or assigned it to your brothers?”

  “Yes, I could have done so and in fact I did consider it at first, but then I realized it would be a betrayal of my father’s wishes and the trust he had placed in me. He had made this will in a sane rational frame of mind and no doubt had reasons for eliminating his other sons from any share of Haraldsdyke. I felt the least I could do to implement his wishes was to accept the inheritance nominally at least. However, I had my own affairs to manage and it was obvious to me that I could not stay long at Haraldsdyke. The estate was at any rate in the hands of trustees for a year—this was because my inheritance was contingent on my marrying an Englishwoman and was not mine outright until I had fulfilled this condition. I told the trustees, James Sherman and his brother Charles, that I wished Vere to be allowed the practical administration of the estate in my absence, and then I returned to Vienna to arrange my affairs so that I could return to England at the earliest opportunity and seek a suitable wife.”

  “But supposing you hadn’t married,” I said. “What would have happened to the estate then?”

  “It was willed to Vere’s son, Stephen, who is at present a child of three. Even now, if I die without issue, the estate is to pass to Stephen. If Stephen dies childless before the age of twenty-one, his younger brother will inherit—and so on ... Every contingency is provided for.”

  “I see.” I was silent. “Will you still have to go back to Vienna often?”

  “About once a year. I’ve consolidated and delegated my business interests to enable me to spend most of the year in England.”

  “And Vere and Alice? What’s to happen to them? How they must resent us coming to usurp them!”

  “I see no reason why they should be usurped. I would welcome Vere’s help in administrating the estate for I know nothing of agriculture, and Alice will be able to show you how a country house should be run.”

  “But how old is Alice?” I said, feeling very insecure indeed. “Won’t she be angry when I take her place?”

  “You forget,” said Axel. “Alice is a simple, plain country girl who has had experience of acting as housekeeper in a large mansion. You are a young woman of an education and background far above her. There won’t be any conflict at all. It will be obvious from the beginning that you are the rightful mistress of the house. Alice won’t mind in the least—it will give her more time to attend to her children. She’s the most excellent mother.”

  “But the others, your step-mother...”

  “Esther and I have always been on the best of terms,” he interrupted. “She will be glad to see me again and anxious to see that you feel comfortable and at ease at Haraldsdyke. Who else is there? Only Mary, my father’s ward, and she is a mere child of fourteen who will be far too busy trying to please her governess to be much concerned with you. You needn’t worry about her in the least.”

  “And Ned,” I said. “You’ve forgotten Ned again.”

  “Ned? Well, I hardly think he need concern you much either. I think I shall suggest to him that he enlists in the army. He must be nineteen now and it’s high time he did something constructive with his life instead of idling it away in the taverns of the Cinque Ports or the haystacks of the Romney Marsh. He’s not intelligent enough to go to a University. Any attempt at providing him with further education would be a waste of money.” He drained his tankard of ale and took out his watch to glance at it. “I think we should retire soon,” he said abruptly. “We have another long day ahead of us tomorrow and you should get plenty of rest to avoid becoming too tired.”

  “As you wish.” I was recalled at once from my thoughts of the past by the dread of the night to come.

  “The landlord fortunately has a private room for us both,” he said. “So often in these English inns one has to share a communal bedroom even if not a communal bed.”

  I tried to look pleased.

  “Perhaps you will have some wine with me before we retire?” he said. “It’s such a damp chill night and the wine will warm us both.”

  I protested half-heartedly but then agreed readily enough. I would have seized on any excuse to postpone the moment when I would be alone with him in the bedroom.

  The wine not only warmed my blood but made me feel drowsy and relaxed. I meant to ask him on the stairs what “activities” Rodric had pursued which would have offended the police at Rye, but my mind was hazy and I was unable to concentrate sufficiently to revive our earlier conversation. Marie-Claire was waiting for me in the bedroom, but I dismissed her at once to her own sleeping quarters for I could see she was greatly fatigued, and undressed as quickly as I could without her. I discovered that she had stretched my nightgown over the warming-pan in the bed, and I felt the luxurious warmth soothe my limbs as the silk touched my skin. A second later I
was in bed and lying sleepily back on the pillows.

  He had been correct in the assumptions he had made that morning at Claybury Park. Matters did improve; at least this time I was spared the shock of disillusionment. Afterward he was asleep almost at once, but although I moved closer to him for warmth and even ventured to lay my head against his shoulder he did not stir, and I was conscious even then of his remoteness from me.

  The next day we set off early from the inn at Sevenoaks and journeyed further south through the meadows of Kent until we reached the great spa of Tunbridge Wells which Charles II’s queen, Henrietta Maria, had made famous over a century and a half before. It is not, of course, as celebrated as Bath, which is famed throughout Europe, but Axel found the town interesting enough to linger in and thought that a short journey that day would be less tiring for me. Accordingly we dined at an excellent tavern near the Pantiles and stayed the night at an inn not far from the Pump Room. Again we shared the same bedroom, but this time it was I who slept first and did not wake till it began to rain at seven the next morning.

  We had not spoken again of his family, but as we set out on the last stage of our journey on Wednesday I began to think of them again. I was particularly anxious at the thought of meeting Alice. I hoped she would not be too much older than me so that my disadvantage would not be so great, but if she had had six children already it was probable that she was at least twenty-two or even older.

  I began idly to count the months to my eighteenth birthday.