The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (23 page)

‘I was not rude,’ said Madeleine, giving the reins an admonishing snap. They were still a few miles from the gates of Fever Hill, on the section of road which giant bamboo had turned into an airless, mosquito-ridden tunnel. Above their heads the great canes creaked and shifted like a ship on a stormy sea.

In the green light Sophie’s face looked sallow and peevish. ‘Does that mean that I can go to Eden and see the parrots?’

‘Of course not. We’re not going anywhere near Eden.’

‘Why not?’

‘You know perfectly well. Uncle Jocelyn would never countenance it. He and Mr Lawe haven’t spoken since – well, not for years.’

‘I bet they would, though,’ said Sophie, ‘if they only met just once.’

That was an uncanny echo of Mrs Herapath, and it occurred to Madeleine that the older woman had probably chosen that particular day to invite them to tea in order to engineer a meeting. It would be just like her. It would appeal to her sense of drama.

‘You
were
rude,’ said Sophie.

‘In what way?’

‘You didn’t smile, you hardly said a thing, and you
refused
to shake hands.’

‘I didn’t refuse. I forgot.’

‘Just because he went to prison. It’s not fair.’

‘That has nothing to do with it.’

‘He didn’t think so.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I could tell. Anyone could. You practically cut him dead. I bet he thinks it’s because he was a convict.’

‘Oh, do be quiet, Sophie, and let me drive!’

They emerged from the bamboo, and the cane-pieces opened out all around. After an uncomfortable silence that lasted nearly twenty minutes, the gatehouses loomed into sight.

Like most of the estate buildings, they were of the golden local cut-stone, and covered in creepers and strangler fig. As they passed, Madeleine caught the baleful glare of the Monroe serpent between the leaves. Another reminder of Strathnaw. As if she needed one.

In retrospect it struck her as extraordinary that in all the years since that encounter in the snow, she had never once asked herself who the officer might actually be. It was as if he couldn’t possibly have a name like an ordinary man. He was simply the ‘officer in the snow’: a statue who had come to life, and been kind to her for a while, and then turned against her and ridden away.

It was impossible to think of him as Sinclair’s brother, the infamous Cameron Lawe. The author of that brusque, unfeeling little note in Lettice’s prayer book.

And he lived at
Eden
, of all places. What had possessed him to go and live there?

That doesn’t matter, she told herself firmly. What matters is that he didn’t recognize you.

And he didn’t, did he?

She found herself going over everything he had said, every nuance and expression. The more she thought about it, the more she wondered. That final look had been so searching.

Oh God, she thought. Don’t let him have recognized me.

Chapter Sixteen

She didn’t tell Sinclair of her encounter with his brother, but by the time she had settled Sophie in the gallery, and taken a bath and dressed for dinner, he already knew.

The ice beneath her feet had begun to crack, and the fracture lines spread with alarming speed. Dinner was eaten in uneasy silence, and Jocelyn withdrew to his library when it was over. Clemency looked frightened, Sinclair treated Madeleine with impenetrable courtesy, and May surveyed the proceedings with icy calm.

After dinner Madeleine asked Sinclair what was wrong. Nothing was wrong. What could conceivably be wrong?

She gave up, and went to say goodnight to Sophie. She found her wide-eyed and anxious, convinced that it was all her fault. It turned out that Sinclair had questioned her while Madeleine was taking her bath.

That night she slept in the gallery. The north wind howled through the house, and behind her in the bedroom she heard Sinclair pacing the boards. Around midnight he came to the door, and she felt him watching her. She pretended to be asleep, and after an uneasy silence he returned to bed.

The next morning she waited for the inevitable dressing down, but it never came.

A day passed. And another, and another. Cameron Lawe was due at the Burying-place that afternoon. The house crackled with tension, but nothing was said. Madeleine stayed in the gallery with Sophie, forcing herself to concentrate on the gazetteer she was reading, and trying not to think about what Cameron Lawe might or might not have remembered about his brother’s new wife.

The following day she made another attempt to clear things up with Sinclair. If she could only make him understand that she’d scarcely spoken two words to Cameron Lawe, then surely this ludicrous farrago would be at an end. He cut her short and walked away. Where his brother was concerned, it seemed that only he was permitted to open a conversation.

Two nights later, they made a fifth attempt to conceive a son. It was a disaster.

‘I can’t! I can’t!’ gasped Sinclair, collapsing beside her.

They lay side by side, staring into the darkness, while outside the young owls hooted and the crickets rang in their night song.

‘It’s this confounded heat,’ he muttered. ‘It saps my vitality.’

‘Yes,’ said Madeleine. ‘The heat is very trying.’

‘Ever since we arrived I have been out of sorts. The over-seasoned food. That filthy Negro charm.’

Madeleine turned to look at him. ‘It was only a bird’s egg. I’m not sure what it could have—’

‘You never try to understand. Your only response is to contradict and to ridicule.’

He got up and went to the looking-glass. His reflection was pale and drawn, and when he passed his hands over his throat he left faint red marks. ‘This is your fault,’ he said without turning round.

She made no reply.

‘I should have known it would turn out like this,’ he said. ‘You are just like him.’

‘Like whom?’

But she already knew. These days, his brother was never far from his thoughts. It was as if her encounter at Mrs Herapath’s had reawakened all his boyhood fears.

‘You are coarse,’ he said, still regarding his reflection in the looking-glass. ‘You have no life of the spirit.’

She sat up and pushed her hair behind her ears. ‘So this is my fault. Because I spoke to your brother. Once. A week ago.’

He raised a hand for silence.

‘Sinclair—’

‘We will
not
speak of it again.’

‘I think we must.’

‘No! You will do me the courtesy of obeying. In this if in nothing else.’

The following day, it was as if their talk had never happened, except that the atmosphere of unspoken censure was even worse than before. Great-Aunt May looked quietly pleased, Clemency retired to her bed with a sick headache, and Jocelyn affected not to notice anything amiss. Clearly he was reluctant to interfere.

At last the rains came. Every afternoon, great silver downpours rattled the slates, pounded the lawns, and made the carriageway run red. In the humid shadows of the great house, Madeleine and Sinclair circled each other with a cold courtesy that set her teeth on edge.

Four interminable weeks dragged by. Four weeks of silences and denials, and little pained smiles. Eventually she could stand it no longer. She must have it out with him or go insane.

She chose a teatime when Jocelyn was in his library and Sophie was asleep, but Clemency and May would both be present. She needed witnesses. That might make it harder for Sinclair to evade her as he had always done before. It might also help to keep her temper in check.

The weather was blustery, so tea was laid in the drawing-room, a dim mahogany chamber dominated by a Winterhalter portrait of the eighteen-year-old May in presentation dress. On a sofa beneath it sat the present-day version: nearly sixty years older but no less narrow and uncompromising, in a savagely tight gown of rigid dark-grey moiré, and the ever-present grey kid gloves. Clemency, an insubstantial shadow in white muslin, sat on her right, and Sinclair on her left. They reminded Madeleine of a woodcut she had once seen of the Spanish Inquisition.

‘I’m not sure what crime I’m supposed to have committed,’ she said as she stirred her tea, ‘but I really do think that this has gone on for long enough, and that I should be given a chance to lodge a defence.’

Clemency froze with her cup halfway to her lips, her extraordinary young-old face a mask of fright.

May serenely finished pouring, and handed Sinclair his tea.

He nodded his thanks to her, then gave Madeleine one of his meaningless little smiles. ‘There is no question of a
defence
,’ he said.

‘Good,’ said Madeleine. ‘Then we are agreed that I’ve committed no crime.’

Clemency threw her a horrified look and shook her head. May’s gaze slid from Sinclair to Madeleine, and back again.

‘You know,’ said Madeleine, ‘I didn’t
intend
to speak to your brother. At first I didn’t even know who he was. It was a chance encounter. And one which I’ve no desire to repeat.’

In fact, that was a lie. Today was Cameron Lawe’s day for visiting the graves, and all morning she had been wondering whether to go and confront him. She knew it would be the height of folly, but over the weeks the suspicion had grown that he had seen something in her face which had jogged his memory. She kept picturing him alone up there at Eden, with all the time in the world to think and to remember. One way or another, she needed to know.

Sinclair put his cup to his lips, then replaced it in the saucer and set it on the side table. ‘My brother’, he said, ‘is not a respectable man.
That
is the reason for my objection.’

‘I thought he’d served his sentence,’ said Madeleine. ‘I thought it was our Christian duty to forgive.’

‘Thank you for reminding me of my duty,’ said Sinclair. ‘And it might interest you to learn that we
have
forgiven him. That we pray daily for him to mend his ways. Sadly, that has not come to pass. Therein lies my objection to your conduct.’

‘I don’t understand. You mean he’s done something else?’

‘Of course you do not understand. That is why I had hoped that you would trust my judgement in this matter.’

‘Can’t you just tell me what he did?’

He hesitated. Then he turned to May and Clemency. ‘My apologies for trespassing on a matter of some indelicacy.’

May inclined her head. Clemency looked up from her teacup in bemusement.

Sinclair turned back to Madeleine. ‘Something happens to the white man when he cohabits with the Negress.’

She was startled. ‘What do you mean?’

‘If you will permit me to continue?’

She folded her hands in her lap and waited.

‘The nature of the white man’, he went on, ‘becomes coarsened by such an association. Animalized by the imbruted cravings of the creature with whom he has thrown in his lot.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Madeleine, ‘but this sounds a little trumped up. Are you asking me to believe that you object to my having talked to your brother for five minutes because he has a black mistress? As I understand it from Mrs Herapath, that rules out conversation with three-quarters of the planters on the Northside.’

Sinclair pressed his red lips together. ‘The wife of a man of God’, he said quietly, ‘can never be too vigilant when it comes to her character. I had hoped that you might understand that.’

‘Of course I do. But a few words on a verandah don’t—’

‘You were seen with a compromised individual. You
contaminated
yourself. I see nothing “trumped up” in that.’

His cobalt gaze locked with hers, and she read in it the coded meaning.
And remember how especially vulnerable you are to contamination, by virtue of your birth.

‘Contamination’, she said between her teeth, ‘is too strong a word.’

He gave a merry laugh. ‘I had not appreciated that you were so learned in doctrinal matters! I had believed that
I
was the Doctor of Divinity with the cure of souls.’

She felt herself growing hot.

‘You did wrongly,’ he said. ‘You injured yourself, and you injured me. Moreover, you—’

‘This is ridiculous, I didn’t
injure
—’

‘Moreover,’ he went on, raising his voice to drown out hers, ‘you injured your sister.’

‘Sophie? Oh now really, I can’t agree with that!’

‘Which matters not at all, since you are not her legal guardian.’

Alarmed, she met his gaze. His blue eyes were glittering. He was enjoying himself.

She glanced down at her hands, tightly clenched in her lap. She saw now that she hadn’t
done
anything wrong, and that he knew it as well as she. It wasn’t about that. It was about control. It was about ramming home the fact that he was the husband, and she the wife – and, as he was fond of pointing out, ‘when Man and Woman ride the same horse, Woman must always ride behind’. Until he had her public acknowledgement of that, he would never let up. He would go on and on until she was as mad as Clemency.

‘Well then,’ she said, struggling to keep her voice steady. ‘Let’s bring this war of attrition to an end, shall we? I apologize. Wholly and without reservation. There. Is that better?’

May folded her ringless fingers in her lap. Clemency laughed her noiseless little laugh and clapped her hands.

Sinclair gave Madeleine a considering look. ‘
Thank
you,’ he said. ‘Henceforth we will speak no more of this. I would simply ask that in the future you exercise greater discretion.’

She couldn’t trust herself to speak.

He rose, and turned to his aunt. ‘I shall be writing in my study for the rest of the afternoon. It would be a
great
indulgence if I were not disturbed.’

After he had gone, Clemency gave Madeleine her propitiating smile. ‘
There
, now! Saying sorry wasn’t so very difficult, was it?’

Madeleine did not reply. Her hands were still clenched in her lap. In the dim brown light they looked yellow and sere and prematurely aged.

She heard a stiff rustle of silk as Great-Aunt May rose to her feet. ‘Sinclair’, she remarked, ‘has the most perfect respect for the proprieties of any being I know. One might go so far as to call it a reverence. Others would do well to emulate him.’