The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (31 page)

Madeleine said, ‘Someone told me that it’s because Cameron is doing rather well with his estate, and that Cornelius likes to hedge his bets.’

‘Doing rather well, is he?’ said Jocelyn, his face studiedly blank.

‘That’s what I heard.’

Sinclair’s gloved hands tightened on his cane. ‘You should not believe everything you hear.’

She made no reply. It gave her a quiet satisfaction to repeat what Cameron had said, and to add a little positive twist of her own.

A moment later, her spirits plunged. What was the point? A petty rebellion that could never come to anything. What on earth was the point?

She turned her head and watched the dark cane-fields whipping past. She felt exhausted and fragile; hollowed out by that conversation in the parterre.

He had been so painfully honest. Too honest. What right had he to tell her such things, simply because she asked? Why hadn’t he lied? She did. She lied to him every time she saw him. It was simple. All you have to do is withhold the truth.

She felt Sinclair’s breath on her cheek. ‘Your colour is rather high,’ he said. ‘Parnassus has always been prone to putrid airs. I trust that you have not taken a fever.’

‘I’m just tired,’ she said without turning her head.

‘Ah. Tired. To be sure.’

With a spurt of irritation she wondered what he meant. Why could he never say what he meant?

When they had reached the house and said their goodnights, and attained the relative privacy of their room, Sinclair sent Jessie and his man away. He folded his arms across his chest, and paced up and down. ‘I was right,’ he said. ‘You have over-taxed yourself. I can tell.’

Madeleine unbuttoned her gloves and drew them off and laid them on top of the bureau. ‘I don’t feel at all unwell,’ she replied.

Another lie. Her face felt stiff, her eyes hot and scratchy. She wanted to go to sleep and never wake up.

‘You have over-taxed yourself,’ he repeated. ‘You need rest, or you will bring on a brain fever.’

She met his gaze, and wondered where this was leading. If anyone were feverish, it was he. His face was clammy and pale, and his eyes had an unhealthy shine. He seemed agitated and unable to keep still.

‘It would be best’, he said, ‘if you were to stay on the property for the next few months. Yes. Very quietly. To regain your strength.’

She moved past him into the dressing-room and sat down at her dressing-table, and began letting down her hair. She withdrew each pin and set it beside the others in the little lacquer tray. ‘As you wish,’ she said.

In the looking-glass she saw him blink. Perhaps she had surprised him. ‘No more visits to town,’ he said.

‘Very well.’

‘And you must make your excuses to Mrs Herapath.’

‘I shall write to her forthwith.’

No doubt he was longing for her to protest, so that he could explain in elaborate detail why he felt this new measure to be his duty. But for once their wishes were the same. She would miss her outings to Falmouth, and she would miss Mrs Herapath’s intolerant wit, but it was time to make a clean break. No more driving about the countryside pretending she was free. No more talks in the moonlight. She was not free. Trying to pretend otherwise only hurt. A clean break. That’s what you need.

She took off her dancing slippers and began to unfasten her bodice, and asked Sinclair if he was coming to bed.

In the looking-glass she saw him take a deep breath, as if he couldn’t get enough air. ‘Later,’ he said. ‘I need to take a turn about the lawns. Yes. I need a turn about the lawns.’

What I need, thought Madeleine, is chloral.

No thinking. No dreaming. Just sleep.

On the river bank something rustled in the ginger lilies, and Abigail growled. She gave a low warning cough, and trotted down to investigate.

A flurry of barks and crashing through undergrowth, and she returned, wet and smelling of the river, to lean against Cameron’s calf.

He drew her silky ear between his fingers. ‘What was that,’ he said, ‘a mongoose?’

She answered with an indignant cough.

They were sitting on the steps which led down into the garden: Cameron in shirtsleeves and riding-breeches, with a bottle of Scotch at his elbow. It would be dawn soon, and he would regret the Scotch, but he didn’t care. He didn’t care about much any more.

No. That wasn’t true. He
wanted
not to care. He wanted it to be croptime again, so that he could work round the clock and not think about anything except rum yields and striking points and how many hogsheads per acre.

He had driven home at a furious pace, and the horse had been lathered and trembling when they swung into the yard. Cameron had untacked it himself and rubbed it down. He should have woken his groom, for Moses would fret about that in the morning, and require assurances that he wouldn’t be sacked. But Cameron had needed to be on his own.

Still in his evening coat, he had flung himself onto his camp bed, and fallen immediately into a fitful sleep – and the dream had come. The black sand sugaring the wide blue eyes. The prison ceiling bearing down on him. The child in the distance, crying for help.

He’d woken with a shout that had brought Abigail clattering across the tiles. Further sleep had been impossible.

Again the ginger lilies rustled, and again Abigail barked.

‘All right, girl,’ he told her. ‘Settle down.’

He took another pull at the bottle, and felt the whisky’s clean, cauterizing burn.

He wished there were some kind of draught he could take that would wash away the last twelve hours from his mind. Everything. The way she had smiled at him. Her face as she’d admitted that she was shocked. And most of all, his brother’s pale, feverish features as he’d slandered her.
She is not as innocent as she seems.

In the instant after he’d said it, Cameron had wanted to grab him by the hair and beat out his brains on the carriage wheel. It wasn’t a fleeting impulse: he had seen himself do it. Hammering that narrow head again and again onto the iron-rimmed wheel until it split open like an egg.

He set down the bottle and put his elbows on his knees and studied his palms.

How could you think it, even for a moment? Your own brother. You played together as boys. You shared a cabin on those interminable trips to England. You protected him from bullies, and he resented you, and you pretended not to notice. Your own brother.

He got to his feet, and the bottle overturned. Whisky leaked out onto the steps. Abigail put down her head and sniffed, then tentatively lapped.

Cameron pushed her away. ‘Not for you, Abby. And not for me either.’ He stooped for the bottle and lobbed it as hard as he could into the bushes.

To the devil with everything, he thought.

Sinclair knelt in the darkness of the hothouse, gasping and shuddering with relief.

In the distance a mule brayed. The dumb-cane trembled in the pre-dawn breeze.

He leaned back against the mossy wall and shut his eyes. He felt light and clean and calm again. He felt immensely powerful.

He turned his head and gazed at the faint grey rectangle of the doorway, at the dumb-cane on the threshold. Not devilish as he had supposed, but beneficent. Keeping him from harm.

He had been wrong about it, as he had been wrong about so many things. But at last he understood. What he had just done was not self-pollution. It was self-
purification
. God does indeed have a special Eye for what is done in the dark – and God had seen this and permitted it,
for God approved
.
It was keeping him pure.

What a difference an hour makes, he thought, shutting his eyes again.

In the carriage he had been in torment. The thought of them together. Taking their pleasure. Laughing at him. He had felt the pressure building inside him until he’d wanted to scream.

Then in the dressing-room, watching her take down her hair. That knowing way in which she’d uncoiled it and laid it over one shoulder: a dark, monstrous serpent, leading him on.

He had read once of a medieval belief that a woman’s womb is a separate creature: a toxic presence to be feared and confined. How well the ancients had understood. He had only to look at her to sense the poison cradled within.

And to think that there had been a time when he had wanted her. Thank God that was all in the past. Thank God he had been shown the way.

He flexed his shoulders, luxuriating in his new-found ease. He drew a deep, calm breath, and opened his eyes. And met the gleam of another’s in the gloom.

A child was crouching in the furthest corner of the cell. It was a pickney: a small boy pickney, very dark, and huddled into a ball. The creature was not moving; not even blinking. The whites of its eyes glistened with fright.

For a long, appalled moment they stared at one another.

It was in here all the time
, thought Sinclair, his heart hammering in his chest as the implications came crashing in on him.
It had crouched in that corner and seen everything
–
everything
– while he, in his ferocious need, had stumbled in and fallen to his knees, oblivious of all but the fire in his loins.

Dear God, he thought. What do I do now?

Through the doorway the sounds of a new day wafted in. The rattle of a woodpecker. The crickets gathering force.

With his back against the wall, Sinclair got slowly to his feet.

The pickney watched, but didn’t move. It seemed to be holding its breath.

Keeping his eyes on it, Sinclair brushed the dirt off his knees and straightened his linen. Then he backed out of the cell.

Still the pickney watched, but didn’t move.

Sinclair paused in the doorway.

The pickney watched with huge, unblinking eyes.

Sinclair took a step back, and beneath his heel he felt the dumb-cane snap. He took another step, and grasped the heavy bulletwood door, and swung it shut.

After a moment he put his ear to the door and listened. No sound from within. He pictured the pickney crouching in the darkness. Silent. Obedient to its fate. Sinclair liked that. It confirmed that he had done the right thing.

The sun was nearly up, and the darkness was beginning to drain from the dell. Vapour rose from the long grass. Ground doves cooed.

He drew a deep breath. The air had never tasted so clean and pure. A new dawn.

Nothing to fret about, he told himself. Have faith. God will not allow you to come to harm.

He looked about him and found a lump of cut-stone, and wedged it under the door.

As she watched Sinclair wading away through the long grass, Sophie swayed on her crutches and nearly fell.

Her heart was still thudding from the fright of seeing him emerge from the hothouse. What had he been doing inside?

She had been so sure that everyone was asleep before she’d ventured out. She had lain awake and listened to them returning from the ball. The snort of the horses, the rattle of harness. The murmur of the helpers, and the slap of their slippers across the floors. The creak of the stairs and the closing of doors.

She had pretended to be asleep when Maddy came out to check on her, and drew aside the mosquito curtain to feel her cheek, and dropped a kiss on her forehead. And she could have sworn that they were all in bed and fast asleep, even Clemency and the cat, by the time she had let herself out of the gallery and hobbled down the steps, heart thumping wildly.

To her dismay, Remus and Cleo had not come bounding across the lawns to keep her company. And it had taken for ever to find the path. Several times she had stumbled, and once she had nearly cried out when something slithered across her slipper.

The hothouse was a well of darkness when she reached it, and she hung back beneath an ironwood tree, one hand clutching the creepers for support, the other gripping Grace’s charm about her neck.

That was when she’d seen the duppy emerge from the doorway.
A duppy
. Leaving its lair to come and get her.

Then the duppy had turned, and resolved into Sinclair. The relief was like a wave of warm water washing over her.

But something was wrong with him. His face was pale and glistening, his eyes vacant. What had he seen in there?
Why had he shut the door?

There could be only one answer. He had seen a duppy. Perhaps a whole nest of duppies. That was why he’d looked so terrified as he’d closed the door and wedged it shut.

And now she was all alone with a nest of duppies not ten feet away.

She peered through the gloom at Sinclair’s fast-retreating form. She opened her mouth to call him back. Then shut it again. Sinclair didn’t like her. Even if he heard her cry, he wouldn’t turn back. He would just go on to the house, and tell on her to Maddy.

There was nothing for it but to hobble all the way back to the house as quickly as she could, and hope that Sinclair had shut the door securely enough to stop the duppies getting out.

As she started off, she blinked back tears. Once again she had tried to recover her shadow, and once again she had failed. Perhaps after all it was time to ask Victory for help.

Chapter Twenty-One

Tuesday 23rd July – Teatime

Victory has run away, and has been gone for three days. At first Grace was vexed, but on the second day she asked Great-Aunt May to have the helpers make a search. Great-Aunt May said No, that pickney is always wandering off and will surely return when he is hungry. Sinclair agreed with Great-Aunt May, and so did Uncle Jocelyn, but Maddy said But surely we must do all we can, what if it were Sophie?

After that Uncle Jocelyn sent a field-gang to search Clairmont Hill and Pinchgut and Caledon. They even dragged the pond below the Old Works. But they didn’t find anything.

Nobody talks about Victory, but there is a horrid feeling in the house. I asked Evie if she knows where he went, but she said no, and this time she was telling the truth. And the night before last, Clemency heard her baby crying in Hell, but much louder than before. Clemency said it is a bad sign, but Maddy was vexed, and told her to keep her fancies to herself, did she want Grace to hear?