The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (2 page)

Before her the carriageway swept through the great iron gates and disappeared into the shadows beneath the trees. To her right the gatehouse loomed. Frost filmed its blind marble windows. Icicles waited to fall from the roof. In the pediment a marble crow hitched its wings to fly away, while a marble snake writhed in its claws.

Madeleine was vaguely aware of some story in the Bible about a snake, and that the snake was not the hero. She wasn’t sure if there was a crow in it as well. Her mother often said they must make a start on the Bible, but they never did. ‘I’m sorry, Maddy,’ she had said only the week before, ‘I’m too ignorant and undisciplined to make a good teacher.’ Madeleine strongly disagreed. Her mother knew singing, photography and tropical plants and animals; and she could tell stories about magic trees and dapper little talking spiders, in the sing-song language of Jamaica that she called
patois
.

There was a thud behind her. She spun round. A big black crow was watching her from a swaying branch. It fixed her with bright, unfriendly eyes.

‘Go away,’ she told it.

The crow gave a croak and flew off into the trees. Snow drifted down from the branch. The stillness returned.

It was just a crow, she told herself. But she didn’t like the fact that it had understood what she said.

Through the gates, the woods were dark and haunted: warning her not to enter the Forbidden Kingdom. She groped for Mister Parrot in her pocket, and slipped off her mitten and gave his fuzzy felt wing a reassuring squeeze.

The Forbidden Kingdom was not, of course, its real name; that was Strathnaw. The Forbidden Kingdom was merely what her mother called it when she was angry – because Papa had said that they must never visit it on any account. ‘Then why on earth
take
a house two hours away from the wretched place?’ Mama would blaze at him during one of their rows.

‘Because it’s secluded and within our means—’

‘Nonsense. It’s because you miss them, and you want to retain some sort of link, however tentative—’

‘Rose, no.’

‘Tell the truth! You miss them. Heaven knows, I understand. What I don’t understand is why you won’t allow us to make an approach, not even for Maddy’s sake. She’s ten years old, and she’s never seen the place where you—’

‘There would be no point.’

‘Of course there’s a point!’

And so it would go on, while Madeleine listened on the landing until Hannah poked her head round the kitchen door and shooed her back to bed.

The last row had been a fortnight ago, just before Papa went back to his regiment. He had lost his temper and stormed from the house – but returned much later with an armful of hothouse lilies. Her mother had thrown them back at him (‘Damn you, I’m not an invalid!’), then burst into tears. Madeleine had crouched against the banister, picking at the varnish and wondering what to do. Her mother never cried.

Dr Baines said it was just the usual ‘morbid despondency of a lady near her time’, and prescribed warm milk (which her mother detested), and a little phial of cocaine drops for her sore gums.

It didn’t help. Recently, her mother’s ‘second bustle’ – the one in front – had grown so big that her back ached constantly. And she’d become fretful and despondent, which wasn’t like her. She spent her days waiting for the post, but was vexed and unsatisfied when it arrived, even if it brought a letter from Papa. Hannah went about her work with a mouth pulled as tight as a drawstring, and muttered about giving in her notice.

In the end, Madeleine realized that it was down to her. She couldn’t let her mother go on being so unhappy. She must go to the Forbidden Kingdom and talk to whoever lived there, and then perhaps they could all go to Jamaica, just as Papa was always promising they would, at some future time that never seemed to come.

For herself, Madeleine would much rather stay at Cairngowrie House, for she loved her lonely stretch of beach with its seals and its fulmars and its green-eyed cormorants. But she knew that her parents longed to go back to the land where they were born. Besides, she wouldn’t mind seeing a real parrot and a breadfruit tree.

A harsh croak brought her back to the present. The crow was watching her from the gatehouse roof.
Better turn aside now,
it said,
or there’ll be trouble
.

She wished she could do exactly that. She didn’t want to enter the Forbidden Kingdom. She wanted to be back at Cairngowrie House. She wanted her father. She wanted the scratch of his whiskers, and his spicy smell of moustache wax and Turkish tobacco.

And yet, she reflected, he is the reason that you are here. It isn’t fair of him to say ‘I forbid it’, and then go off to the army for months. He is always leaving us. It isn’t fair.

She took a deep breath of the freezing air, and walked through the gates into the Forbidden Kingdom.

Beneath the trees there was a horrible waiting stillness. The snow crunched beneath her boots like broken glass, and her breath sounded rasping and loud. She forced herself to walk slowly, to show the crow that she was unafraid. But it wasn’t fooled. It followed her from branch to branch, its harsh laughter echoing through the wood.

She walked for what seemed like hours. Then abruptly the trees were left behind.

She had reached the edge of a vast snowbound park. From where she stood the carriageway swept down past a wide frozen lake, then up a long white hill where a line of marble knights guarded the approach to a huge stone mansion.

Madeleine hated it on sight. Columns barred its front like a great stone cage, and its copper-coloured windows threw back the glare of the sun.

That, she thought, is where the crows go to roost. She pictured them blackening it at dusk in their thousands, then rising to blot out the dawn in a great dark flood.

The crow swept past her and perched on the helmet of the nearest knight.
Last chance
, it croaked.
You’d better turn back now while you still can.

The blood was loud in her ears; the sense of wrongdoing so strong that she caught her breath.

If her mother were here, she would make a game of this. ‘How would you photograph that house, Maddy? How would you show the way it makes you feel?’

The thought of her mother was a kernel of heat. The previous day, they had taken photographs with the new Instantograph, and Madeleine had modelled her mother’s green plush evening mantle. Then she’d tried on the hideous stockinette ‘abdominal binder’ which Dr Baines had insisted her mother must wear instead of stays. As Madeleine had pranced around the drawing-room with a cushion for her second bustle, her mother had mimicked the doctor’s rolling Scots tones – ‘sup
poort
without
pray
ssure’ – and they’d laughed till it hurt.

Halfway up the hill, one of the statues moved.

Madeleine’s heart jerked.

It was a knight on an enormous charger. His cloak of draped grey marble was dusted with snow across the shoulders. His mount’s long white mane glittered with frost. He was the guardian of the Forbidden Kingdom, come to spirit her away.

With a croak the crow flew off into the forest.
Told you not to go any further!
Then the charger tossed its head and snorted steam, and the statue resolved into an officer on a big grey horse.

Shakily, Madeleine breathed out. Nothing to be afraid of, she told herself. But her heart kept up its jerky rhythm.

The officer hadn’t seen her yet. She watched him jump down from the saddle and pick up his mount’s near front hoof. The horse arched its neck to watch, while the officer took a scraper from his pocket and removed a stone, then set down the hoof and jumped back into the saddle. Then he turned his head and saw her.

She put her hand in her pocket and gripped Mister Parrot.

‘Who are you?’ the officer called out sharply. His voice carried through the freezing air. ‘This is a private estate. What are you doing here?’

When she did not reply, he put his horse forward and cantered down to her. He only reined in when he was practically upon her. His spurs were at the level of her eyes, and so close that she could see the fine engravings on the cold blue steel.

His horse put down its nose to investigate her, and she took in a blast of its hot, musky breath. It was enormous, its hooves the size of dessert plates. She had to remind herself of what her mother had once told her: that horses do not care to tread upon children.

She craned her neck to look up at the officer. He had thick fair hair, with darker brows and moustache, and no laughter lines. His eyes were light grey and startling in his sunburned face. Madeleine had never seen a gentleman with sunburn. She had thought only farmers and fishermen got that.

She wondered why he had no laughter lines, and whether he was unhappy, and what he would look like if he smiled. He reminded her of someone. But of whom?

Then she had it. He had the same strong features as the warriors in her
Illustrated Adventures of Ancient Greece
. But she couldn’t tell if he was a hero or a villain. He looked as if he might be either: as if he might be capable of great violence or great tenderness in equal measure, and you would never know which was coming next. But curiously, that didn’t make her afraid. She felt nervous and uncertain, but most of all she wanted him to like her. She wanted him to smile at her, and be pleased to see her.

All this flashed through her mind as she stood in the snow looking up at him, while he contemplated her with cool grey eyes which held none of the indulgence that grown-ups usually assume on meeting a child.

He had asked her what she was doing in the park. She wasn’t sure how to reply. She said, ‘I know I’m not supposed to be here.’

‘Then why are you?’ he said. He didn’t seem angry; but nor did he make any attempt to soften his tone.

She pointed at the mansion on the hill. ‘I need to see the people who live over there.’

‘They are from home. They generally are.’

She was appalled. It had never occurred to her that there might be no-one at home.

‘How did you get here?’ he said with a slight frown.

‘I came with Mr Ritchie,’ she replied. ‘He’s my friend, he’s the carter in Stranraer. He’s gone on to Kildrochet with a parcel, but he’ll be back in an hour to collect me.’ She omitted to mention that she hadn’t told her mother where she was going; that in fact she’d said that she was going to Stranraer to see the boats.

‘Then you had better return to the gates,’ said the officer, ‘and wait for your Mr Ritchie there.’

She swallowed. She couldn’t face going all the way back through the dark woods on her own.

The officer glanced from her to the trees. He sighed. ‘It might be quicker’, he said reluctantly, ‘if you rode my horse.’

‘Thank you very much,’ she said politely.

He dismounted, lifted her beneath the arms, and swung her into the saddle. Then he drew the reins over the horse’s head so that he could lead, and started for the trees.

She was dizzyingly high up, and her legs were much too short to reach the stirrups. As the great horse ambled along, she had to clutch handfuls of mane to keep from sliding off. But the officer did not look round to check if she was all right. She liked him for that. It made her feel grown-up. And she liked the way his long grey cloak whispered over the snow.

It is dashing, she thought. Yes. He is a dashing officer.

She longed for him to turn round and be impressed with her riding. When he did not, she decided to start a conversation. She told him that her father was a soldier too, but that his leave had been cut short, and he’d been ordered to Africa. ‘To the Sudan,’ she said. ‘That’s a desert below Egypt.’

He nodded, but did not turn round.

‘Papa’, she said to his back, ‘is a major in the 65th York and Lancasters. To which regiment do you belong, sir?’

‘The Borderers,’ he said, still without turning round.

‘Mm,’ she said brightly, for want of more informed comment.

The crow appeared and began to follow them. From the safety of the horse’s broad back, Madeleine gave it a cool glance.

‘My mother’, she went on doggedly, ‘generally stays at home with me. She used to go for long walks, but Dr Baines has forbidden them because of my sister-or-brother. She takes extremely good photographs, and she
detests
Scotland, for she can never get warm. But she pretends to like it for my sake. I was born here, you see, so it’s different for me.’

By now she was desperate for him to respond. And she was dismayed when the gatehouse rose into sight.

As they emerged from the trees, the sun came out from behind a cloud and the crow took off with an indignant squawk. Madeleine laughed with delight, and at last the officer turned and looked up at her. He didn’t smile, but she could tell that he was smiling inside – for his eyes were no longer cold, but warm and vividly alive, like a restless sea with the sun on it.

He swung her out of the saddle and set her on the ground, and she thanked him for the ride. The horse put down its nose to be stroked.

Flushed with the sense that the officer might at last be beginning to like her, Madeleine decided to ask him home for tea. Apart from Dr Baines, they never had any visitors at Cairngowrie House, so it would make a welcome change. She would ask him to tea, and he would make friends with her mother, and she herself would ride the great horse skilfully down to the beach to meet the seals.

‘I ought to introduce myself,’ she said as she extended her hand. ‘My name is Madeleine Falkirk. My parents are Major and Mrs Falkirk of Cairngowrie House. I thought you might care to come to tea.’

The officer had been passing the reins back over his mount’s head, but when she said her name he stopped. ‘What did you say?’ he said quietly.

She had a sudden terrible sense that the sun had gone in. ‘M-Madeleine Falkirk,’ she faltered. ‘I thought you might like to . . .’ Her voice trailed off.

The horse nudged the officer’s shoulder, but he did not seem to notice. His face was rigid with shock. ‘My God,’ he murmured. ‘How could they do it? To send a
child
.’