The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (111 page)

But how did Mr Traherne know about that?

‘If you were mine,’ he said quietly, ‘I should be very strict indeed about what you could and could not wear.’

She looked up at him in puzzlement.

‘In fact,’ he went on, ‘if you were mine, I don’t imagine that I should allow you to wear any clothes at all.’

Belle stopped.

‘Perhaps,’ he went on, ‘just a housemaid’s organdie apron, with a fine gold chain about your neck.’

Belle couldn’t breathe. She was standing in the wet sand with the wavelets lapping her bare feet. The hem of her frock was salt-stained, and her sun hat had slid to the back of her head. Mr Traherne stood a couple of feet away in the dry sand, with his back to the sun. He wore an immaculate white linen suit and a Panama hat, and was still holding the sun-umbrella in one hand and his cane in the other. Belle felt like a savage who’d just disembarked from her canoe and come face to face with a conquering European.

‘You have,’ he remarked, ‘the darkest, most direct gaze I’ve ever seen on a girl. It’s really rather unfeminine.’

Belle’s heart started to thud. The noises on the beach had faded away. The cries of children. The snorts of the horses. The sounds of the grown-ups having tea.

Over Mr Traherne’s shoulder she saw the young man still standing under the wild almond tree. He wasn’t very far off. If she ran, she could catch up with him easily. Or he could come to her.

Please come over here, she begged him silently.

As if he’d heard her, he glanced towards them, and for a moment she thought that he met her eyes.

Please
, she begged him silently.

He turned his back on her and walked away up the beach.

‘You have strong features,’ said Mr Traherne beside her, ‘and quite a strong will. But what you need to remember is that you’re still a female. Which means that you act from your emotions, never your intellect.’

Belle tried to be polite, but she couldn’t stretch her face into a smile.

‘It also means that you are fundamentally immoral. It means that – like all women – you are a coquette even before you fully understand what that means.’

With his cane he began to draw a line in the sand: a slow, wavy line that meandered between them like a snake.

Belle heard the faint rasp as his cane cut through the coarse white sand. She couldn’t take her eyes off the wavy snake-like line.

‘Don’t be frightened,’ he said gently. ‘I shan’t touch you again. I only did it to prove a point.’

‘I’m not frightened,’ muttered Belle.

‘No,’ he said, ‘of course you’re not.’ He paused to shake the sand off the tip of his cane, then resumed the wavy line. ‘You remind me of your grandmother. Dear Rose. She was wild, too.’

Belle tried to swallow. ‘I’m not like her,’ she said, barely moving her lips.

‘Oh, but you are,’ he said. ‘And I can prove it. Tell me. That fancy dress competition. Did you choose your own costume?’

Again she tried to swallow. ‘Yes.’

‘Of course you did. But why did you choose to dress up as the Devil?’

‘. . . I don’t know.’

‘Oh, I think that you do.’

Belle did not reply. He was still drawing the wavy line. With an effort, she dragged her gaze away.

The young man was far away now, stooping for pieces of coral and sending them skimming across the waves. He was much too far away to reach. She had missed her chance. Her eyes returned to the wavy line.

‘Ask yourself this,’ said Mr Traherne in his steady, old gentleman’s voice. ‘Why did you
choose
to dress up as the Devil?’

She did not reply.

‘Why did you
choose
to let me touch you the other day?’

Belle opened her mouth to protest, but he talked over her.

‘Don’t pretend. Don’t try to deny it. You could have run away, as any normal girl would have done. You could run away now. But you didn’t then, and you won’t now.’

The sun was hot on her head and shoulders, the sand glaringly bright.

‘The other day, you simply stood there, as you’re standing here now. You allowed it to happen. Shall I tell you why?’

Head bowed, she waited.

‘Because you’re different.’

‘No,’ she whispered.

‘Of course you are. I know you. You’re that kind of girl.’

‘. . . What – what kind?’

‘You already know.’

Slowly she shook her head.

‘You’re the kind of girl who gives stare for stare, like a man. The kind of girl who rides her pony astride, like a man. The kind of girl who crouches in the hayloft to watch the stallion put to the mares.’

He was right about that. But she’d only watched once, and then got bored. After all, she’d known about babies and things since she was ten, when her mamma had taken her aside and explained it, very matter-of-factly, and to Belle’s lasting embarrassment. But Mamma had said briskly that she’d suffered from not knowing as a girl, and she wasn’t having that for Belle.

Watching the stallion had been a bit frightening, but also slightly exhilarating. Somehow Mr Traherne made it sound wicked.

‘You’re the kind of girl,’ he went on, ‘who will find herself in four days’ time riding that funny little pony of hers over to Bamboo Walk, where she will encounter a very old friend.’

Four days’ time was Thursday, her day for visiting Aunt Sophie. ‘I can’t on Thursday,’ she said automatically – then put her hand to her mouth. That sounded like an acceptance. As if she intended to be there.

‘Yes you can,’ he said with his genial smile. ‘And you will. Teatime, by the guango tree in Bamboo Walk. I shall take it very much amiss if you do not.’

Chapter Four

A ratbat flitted under the giant bamboo, and Belle’s heart jerked.

In the moonlight everything looked different. The river was black. The ginger lilies had a sickly glow. The young duppy tree harboured a fathomless dark.

She hadn’t been back here since the day of the Fancy Dress Ball. She hadn’t wanted to come back. But now she had no choice.

She opened her satchel and took out the ingredients for the spell. A baldpate’s egg. A parrot’s beak. A hammer and a handful of nails. A blue clay ball which she’d found under Grace McFarlane’s porch, and guiltily squirrelled away.

She took a deep breath. The air smelt stale and diseased, and the heat lay heavy on her skin. Jamaica is full of ghosts. They’re called duppies, and they live in duppy trees, and they can be mischievous, or downright bad. Tonight it felt as if all the duppies in Trelawny were watching her.

She set her teeth. The spell had to work. She’d tried everything else.

She’d been silent on the drive home from Salt River, but luckily Aunt Sophie was in a thoughtful mood too, and she didn’t notice. Dodo was asleep.

As the dog cart rattled over the dusty red roads, Belle watched the tangled verges flashing by. Mr Traherne was right. The plants she’d grown up with were all poisonous. Rattleweed. Kill-buckra. Jamaica nightshade. These were the flowers she’d stuck in albums; the leaves she’d picked for playing boil-pot with the pickneys. What did it mean?

She shut her eyes and wondered what to do. Today was Sunday. He’d told her to be in Bamboo Walk on Thursday afternoon. He hadn’t given her a choice. He’d just said to be there.

Ought she to do as he said? Or should she stay away, and risk his disapproval?

She longed to ask someone – some grown-up who could tell her what to do. But who?

The one thing she knew was that Papa must never,
ever
find out. If he did, he would know that she was different: not the normal daughter he thought she was, but a
female
. A female who let a gentleman put his hand on her breast. If Papa found out . . . Even thinking about it made her skin prickle with dread.

So that ruled out telling Mamma, who would of course go straight to Papa. And it also ruled out telling Aunt Sophie, because she would go straight to Mamma.

Which left only her uncle Ben, and her terrible old relative, Great-Aunt May.

She went to see Ben.

More than anyone else she knew – perhaps even more than Papa – Ben Kelly knew his way about. He never talked of his past, but Belle had picked up enough rumours to know that he’d done things she couldn’t even imagine. He’d grown up in the London slums. He’d been a miner in Brazil. He’d lived rough in the Cockpits, and befriended the mountain people. The servants liked and respected him, but they feared him too, and sometimes they told stories about him when they didn’t think the carriage folk could hear.

Belle adored him.

On Monday morning she was lucky, and she had him to herself. Aunt Sophie was in Falmouth making calls, and Dodo had baulked at the eight-mile ride, and stayed at Eden to play with the twins.

‘So what’s up, Belle?’ said Ben as they strolled across the lawns.

As always when she went to Fever Hill, they’d begun by looking over the work on the new house, then shared a jug of her favourite freshly pressed cane juice, with a slip of ginger in it for bite. Now they were on the lawn at the back. Belle’s pony, Muffin, was tethered under a breadfruit tree, but Ben’s mare, a gleaming thoroughbred called Patsy, ambled behind him like a big, docile dog. At Fever Hill, the horses had the run of the grounds.

‘What’s up?’ he said again.

Belle wondered where to start. ‘If a gentleman,’ she said slowly, ‘asks a lady to take a ride with him, do you think she ought to accept?’

Ben put both hands in the pockets of his shooting jacket, and his green eyes became thoughtful. ‘Depends on the gentleman. And on whether he really
is
a gentleman.’ He paused. ‘Not too many of those about, I’m afraid. You’d better watch yourself, love.’

She was relieved that he didn’t ask any questions, but also alarmed. Surely there were lots of gentlemen? Every man of her parents’ acquaintance was a gentleman – unless he was a servant or a field hand or a shopkeeper. ‘How does one tell the difference?’ she asked.

‘By what they do.’

She thought about that.

‘Belle,’ he said gently. ‘Whatever’s bothering you, talk to your mother.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Yes. You can.’ The mare nuzzled the back of his neck, and he gently pushed it aside. ‘You may not realize it, but your mother’s an amazing woman. You can tell her anything. Believe me, I know.’

‘But I
can’t
. That’s why I came to you.’ She bit her lip. ‘I was sure that you’d know what to do. Aunt Sophie says that you’ve seen and done practically everything, both good and bad.’

Ben looked startled. Then he burst out laughing. ‘Did she now? Well, unfortunately for you, she also made me promise not to tell you anything about it. At least, not till you’re a lot older than you are now.’

‘Why?’ demanded Belle.

He sighed. ‘Because you need to do some growing up first. Sweetheart, I know you’re at the age when you’re getting – well, curious about things—’

Belle’s face burned.

‘—and that’s fine,’ he added quickly. ‘But I’m not the one to talk to. Believe me, I’m not.’

‘But—’

‘Talk to your mother, Belle. It’s the best thing to do. It really is.’

Of course she didn’t do as he said. How could she? But by ignoring his advice, she had the horrible sense that she was putting herself irretrievably in the wrong.

The next day, Tuesday, she went to see her only other relation. Great-Aunt May.

Great-Aunt May, or Miss Monroe as she was known to all Trelawny, was Belle’s great-great-grand-aunt, and unimaginably old. She lived in a town house on Duke Street, and never went anywhere. She sat all day in her upper gallery – a dim, shuttered chamber that smelt of camphor and old age – and not even her servants knew how she passed her time. But somehow she found out everything that went on in Trelawny. And despised most of it. She and Mamma hated each other – Belle didn’t know why – although Mamma still took Belle to visit her once a year, as it didn’t do to fall out with family.

It was precisely
because
Great-Aunt May hated Mamma that Belle thought she might safely ask her advice. Great-Aunt May would sooner take poison than give Mamma the time of day.

It took some inventiveness to see her alone, but on Tuesday morning Mamma took Dodo to call on Mrs Herapath, who lived round the corner from Duke Street, and Belle managed to get away.

‘So, miss,’ said Great-Aunt May in a voice like cracked ice.

Belle perched on the edge of her chair and forced a smile. Her heart was thudding. She could feel the sweat trickling between her shoulder blades. She’d always been frightened of Great-Aunt May. And she wasn’t alone. Most people in Trelawny were frightened of Great-Aunt May.

As always, the old lady sat absolutely straight on an upright mahogany chair, with her gloved talons atop her malacca cane. Her face was shrunken and bloodless after a lifetime spent indoors, but her eyes were little blue pits rimmed with red. Despite the heat, she wore a high-necked gown of stiff grey moiré, and long kid gloves the colour of flint. Great-Aunt May always wore gloves. According to legend, she’d donned them at the age of eighteen, in disgust at the world after her only London Season, and had never taken them off. Shortly afterwards, Mr Traherne’s father, Addison Traherne, had asked her to marry him. She had been outraged, for he was descended from a blacksmith. She’d hated the Trahernes ever since.

‘So, miss,’ she said again. ‘What brings you to me?’

Belle swallowed. ‘How are you, Great-Aunt May?’

The old lady treated that with the contempt it deserved. Clearly she had no intention of making this easy for Belle.

Belle drew a deep breath, and launched into a halting account of the bathing party at Salt River, although she didn’t mention any names.

Great-Aunt May listened in unnerving silence. ‘So,’ she said at last. ‘It appears that you have a
beau
.’

Belle jumped. She wasn’t sure if ‘beau’ meant what she thought it did, but she didn’t dare ask.

‘A
beau
,’ repeated Great-Aunt May with grim relish. ‘At the age of thirteen. How extraordinarily vulgar.’