The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (151 page)

Shaking off the thought, Traherne drew his revolver and put his horse forward. ‘I won’t let you bring me down,’ he told Isabelle Lawe under his breath.

Again the lightning flared. And now, beneath the leafless tree, a woman was standing, watching him.

Traherne cried out in alarm.

She was a black woman in a cheap print dress hitched up to her knees. Her head was tied about with a white kerchief, and she was standing completely still, quite unmoved by the chaos around her. Not a fold of her skirt stirred in the raging wind.

Traherne’s throat closed. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t
be
. Grace McFarlane was dead . . .

His horse reared.

The guango tree creaked and groaned.

Then the hurricane hit.

Chapter Forty

They’d been trapped in Mamma’s darkroom for nearly twelve hours, and thirst was becoming a problem. A gap at the bottom of the door let in a sliver of light and a breath of air, but it wasn’t enough to dispel the fug of sweat, mud and horse. And the door wouldn’t budge. Something had fallen across it on the other side: something too heavy for Belle and Papa to shift.

After the endless assault of the hurricane, the stillness was deafening. At first all they could hear was the drip, drip of water, and the rustle of wind in the coconut palms. Then the whistling frogs started up; then the crac-cracs and the croaker lizards. Now the morning was alive with chirruping, twittering and cooing. Sugarbirds and bluequits; wild canaries and jabbering crows; and in the hills, the echoing hammer of a woodpecker.

‘Someone will come soon,’ said Papa. ‘They’re probably still digging themselves out of the cellar.’

Unless, thought Belle, they’re trapped, like us. She knew her father had thought of that too, but didn’t want to frighten her.

‘Here.’ He put the vacuum flask into her hands. It was the last of the coffee: cold and bitter and refreshing. Many times as they’d sat side by side in the gloom, they’d blessed Mamma’s habit of keeping refreshments at hand when she was working.

Belle took a mouthful, then handed back the flask. ‘You have some too.’

‘Finish it,’ said Papa.

She screwed the top on for later, and leaned back against the wall. From the other side of the darkroom, the horse whiffled and shifted his hooves.

‘What will we do if no-one comes?’ she said.

‘Eat the horse,’ said Papa.

She blinked. Then she felt him shaking with laughter. ‘Darling Belle,’ he chuckled, ‘you’ve always had such a sense of the dramatic. Have faith. Someone will come. And if they don’t, we’ll find a way to get out.’

She heard him reaching into his pocket. Then a match flared. ‘I think,’ he said, getting stiffly to his feet, ‘it’s time we had some more light.’

Gratefully, Belle watched him light the kerosene lamp on Mamma’s work table. He was making things better, just as he used to do when she was five years old, and had padded into his study after a nightmare.

Once the lamp was lit, he sat down again, and together they watched the steady glow illuminate the photographs pegged to the walls. The twins prowling through guinea grass, brandishing sugar-cane spears. Sophie seated on the folded roots of a silk-cotton tree, absorbed in a book. Ben leaning over a fence to talk to a mare. Papa down on one knee, frowning as he disentangled a mastiff puppy from its lead. And Belle herself, laughing with Mrs Herapath on the verandah.

Her throat tightened. She hadn’t even known that Mamma had had her camera with her that day. ‘She’s very good, isn’t she?’ she said, to mask her emotion.

‘So are you,’ said Papa.

She turned to him in surprise.

‘The other day, Sophie showed me some of your work. You’ve inherited your mother’s talent. You both have a knack for revealing the truth.’ His lip curled. ‘That is, when it suits you.’

Belle clasped her hands about her knees. She felt a sense of enormous peace, and yet at the same time of utter exhaustion.

If they got out of this alive, Mamma would tell him about Cornelius Traherne. Belle tried to imagine how he would feel; what he would do. It was too huge. She couldn’t manage it. Besides, what mattered was that now, as they sat here together, they understood each other.

Turning to him, she noticed suddenly how tired he was looking. The lines at the sides of his mouth were deeply etched, and when he moved, he did it awkwardly, as if his back was giving him pain.

She put her hand on his arm. ‘Are you all right?’

He opened his mouth to reply, but then there was a knock at the door.

‘Hello?’ called a voice. ‘Anyone in there?’

Belle leapt to her feet. ‘Ben?
Ben!
’

‘Belle? Are you all right? Is your father in there too?’

‘Together with a very smelly horse,’ called Papa.

A bark of laughter. ‘Hang on. We’ll soon have you out of there.’

His voice faded as he turned away to speak to someone else. Then they heard a grinding of wood and a scrape of stone. A horse squealed, eliciting a deafening answering whinny from the gelding. Then the slit of daylight widened and the door broke open to let in a blinding glare – and Ben.

He was covered in red mud, and his eyepatch was askew. ‘Crikey,’ he said. ‘Look at you two.’

Belle threw herself into his arms.

‘Made a bit of a mess of things in here, haven’t you?’ he said when she’d released him. ‘Cameron, you’re going to have some explaining to do to your wife.’

Papa made his way to the door and grasped Ben’s hand. ‘What about the others?’ he said. ‘Did you get to the cellars?’

‘We’re liberating them right now,’ said Ben with a grin. ‘All safe and sound, even the dogs. No need to worry.’ Then the grin faded, and he touched Papa’s arm. ‘The house wasn’t so lucky, I’m afraid.’

Papa met his eyes. ‘How bad?’

Ben hesitated. ‘It took the brunt. Although the stables and outhouses are untouched. That’s hurricanes for you. The old guango tree came down, too. Killed a horse, and—’ He broke off, and Belle sensed that there was something else he wasn’t telling them. ‘Well,’ he added, ‘like I said, it killed a horse.’

Papa pushed past him and Belle followed him, blinking into the daylight.

They reeled back.

The entire upper floor of the house was gone. The beautiful high-ceilinged rooms with their golden panelling; the airy fretwork eaves; even the wide verandah with its flower-entangled balustrade. All had been carried away into the forest. What remained was the undercroft where they stood, the bulletwood skeleton of the upper floor – and the double sweep of the white marble steps, showing through a wreck of toppled tree-ferns and fallen sweetwoods.

Papa sat down heavily on a tree trunk, and his shoulders sagged. He rubbed his face, and Belle was alarmed to see how his hand shook.

She met Ben’s eyes, then glanced quickly away.

Ben muttered something about the cellars, and took himself off.

Belle went to stand beside her father, and tentatively touched his shoulder. ‘We’ll rebuild,’ she said shakily. ‘It – it was a ruin before, when you found it. You made it beautiful. We’ll do it again.’

He nodded and forced a smile, but she could tell that he was only doing it for her benefit. She wished Mamma was here. Mamma would know what to say.

At that moment, someone came round the side of the house, picking his way through the debris. As he emerged from the shadow of a fallen coconut palm, he saw her and came to a halt. ‘Hello, Belle,’ said Adam.

Belle sat down heavily beside her father.

Like Ben’s, his clothes were caked in red mud. There was a cut on his hand that was bleeding freely, although he didn’t seem to have noticed, and a ragged new scar that started at his left temple and disappeared into the dark stubble at his jaw. His eyes were red with fatigue, and he wasn’t smiling – but she could tell that he wanted to smile.

‘You,’ she said numbly.

Adam hesitated. He glanced at Papa. Then he took a step forward and awkwardly held out his hand. ‘Adam Palairet, sir,’ he said, sounding bizarrely as if he was introducing himself at a cricket match. ‘We met a few years ago? But I don’t suppose you—’

‘I know who you are,’ Papa said stiffly. To Belle’s astonishment, he ignored Adam’s outstretched hand. ‘My sister-in-law told me all about you. You’re the young man who sent back my daughter’s letter without a reply.’

Adam went very still.

Belle winced.

Papa did nothing to break the silence.

At last Adam spoke. ‘There was, um, a reason for that.’

‘Really,’ said Papa, visibly unimpressed.

Belle knew that she ought to say something, but her mind had gone blank. She was exhausted and filthy, and she’d just lost her home. And now here was Adam –
Adam
– and Papa was bristling at him like a mastiff who’s just scented an intruder. Suddenly all she wanted to do was burst into tears.

‘I think,’ she said, ‘we need to go and find Mamma.’

Chapter Forty-One

Only four people attended the funeral of Cornelius Traherne. His estate manager; his attorney; Adam Palairet (in his capacity as guardian to Cornelius’s grandson); and Olivia Herapath – who reported the proceedings to everyone else.

Her account had very little to do with Traherne, whom she’d always cordially disliked, and everything to do with Parnassus. The estate had taken the full force of the hurricane, and as Traherne had diversified into coffee instead of keeping to the more storm-resistant cane, most of it now lay in ruins, including the great house itself.

‘The question is,’ said Mrs Herapath as she held court in her drawing room the following morning, ‘
who will take it on
? There’s the elder son out in Australia, but Cornelius cut him off years ago; and poor Davina succumbed to the ’flu; besides, she only had daughters; which of course leaves little Max Clyne. As if the poor child didn’t have too much money already! Do you know, I happened to bump into that extraordinary guardian of his this morning, and he told me that he’s inclined to appoint a manager, and take him back to Scotland until he’s of age. I must say, that seems sensible . . .’

If the Traherne funeral attracted only four mourners, it was a different matter the following Monday, when the whole of Trelawny turned out as a mark of respect. Shops closed early, and landowners gave their workers a half-day off. On the roads from the Cockpits steady trickles of people made their way down from the hamlets of Disappointment and Turnaround.

By half past three, the Fever Hill Road from Falmouth to the gatehouses was lined with people waiting in silence to watch the hearse go by. Some were there out of respect, and many more out of a kind of superstitious dread; but afterwards all agreed that as they watched the black horses drawing the carriage through the red dust – and later as they thronged the slopes of Fever Hill to see the new tomb sealed at the Monroe Burying-place – they experienced something else, too. A sense that a part of old Trelawny had gone for ever, with the passing of Great-Aunt May.

As a child she had survived the Christmas Rebellion, when fifty-two great houses had gone up in flames. Afterwards she had sat beside her terrible old father and watched the appalling reprisals that he’d visited on his slaves. She’d witnessed the emancipation and the breaking up of many of the great estates. She’d lived through hurricanes, earthquakes, cane-fires, cholera and influenza.

She’d despised pleasure and enthusiasm, as well as the poor, the sick, and the less than beautiful. Her hatred of the Trahernes had corroded her soul. But she’d punished herself far more harshly than she’d ever managed to harm anyone else, and for all her faults, she had been a living link with the past.

Now she was gone, having died as she had lived: alone and undaunted in her shadowy drawing room. It was said that when they found her, she was sitting bolt upright, supported by her corseting. In death, as in life, Great-Aunt May did not lean back in her chair.

Once her death became known, a rumour swiftly spread that she would make an unquiet ghost. Soon it was an open secret that Master Kelly had asked Evie Walker to do what was needed to stop the old lady from walking.

‘But Great-Aunt May can’t walk any more, can she?’ Lachlan asked his mother after the funeral refreshments had been consumed and the crowds had finally dispersed.

‘She is dead, isn’t she?’ asked Douglas doubtfully.

‘It’s just an expression,’ said their mother, rolling her eyes at Belle. ‘Now off you go and ask Hannah to draw you a bath.’ The family was staying at Fever Hill for the time being, Ben’s great house having narrowly escaped the worst of the hurricane. Mamma watched the twins race each other to the back verandah, then turned to Belle. ‘Let’s take a turn about the lawns,’ she suggested.

Belle hesitated. ‘I was going for a drive with Papa. There’s something I want him to help me with.’

‘I know,’ said Mamma, ‘but this won’t take long.’

She sounded nervous, and Belle guessed what was coming. It was five days since the hurricane – five days since Mamma had opened the sky-blue envelope – and apart from a long look and a press of the hand, they hadn’t acknowledged it at all.

There had been so much to do. Great swaths of Trelawny had been devastated – provision grounds swept away, the village of Salt Wash reduced to ruins – although, amazingly, there had been very little loss of life. The whole parish had been working from dawn till dusk to distribute emergency rations, and re-establish water and power.

A perfect excuse, thought Belle as she glanced at her mother, to avoid painful conversations. And she should know, for she’d been avoiding Adam. After that first appearance at Eden, he’d stayed in Falmouth with Max to help in the relief operation. But from the way he’d looked at her, she knew that he’d been told about Traherne. She couldn’t face him. Not yet. It was still too raw.

Besides, she didn’t even know what to feel about Traherne.

She knew that she ought to feel
something
now that he was dead. Relief, perhaps. Or a sense of vindication. But she could not. Perhaps, she reflected as she walked across the lawn, that was because the sense of release had come
before
his death, when she’d given the photograph to Mamma. By the time he’d died, he had become irrelevant.