The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (8 page)

The baby stopped crying and scowled at her.

With her arms tightly clasped about her middle, Cousin Lettice began to pace up and down. Her mouth was a rigid line. The stippling on her cheeks had coalesced into an angry flush. ‘God is
just
,’ she muttered to herself. ‘God
is
just.’ She shook her head.

Then she came to a sudden halt, and turned on Madeleine. ‘You’, she said accusingly, ‘were born with a terrible burden. The infant carries it too.’

Madeleine cast the baby a doubtful glance. How could it carry anything when it couldn’t even stand up?

‘You’, said Cousin Lettice, ‘carry a
taint
. You get it from your mother. Your mother was
wicked
. All the Durrants are wicked.’ A fleck of spittle had appeared at the corner of her mouth, and Madeleine watched it stretch with each word she took, and re-form into a ball when she paused for breath. ‘Your mother’, Cousin Lettice went on, ‘enticed your father away from his lawful wife. Your mother was
degenerate
. And so are you. Do you know what it means, to be degenerate?’

Madeleine shook her head.

‘It means that your blood is tainted.’

Madeleine wondered what tainted meant. She pictured little grey blotches floating in scarlet, like the dust devils she sometimes found beneath the bed.

Cousin Lettice’s voice was coming at her in waves: now louder, now receding. ‘It
means
’, she went on, ‘that the wickedness becomes worse with each succeeding generation. Depravity. Insanity. Disease. It is all there. In the blood.’ She drew herself up. ‘But
God
’, she went on with quiet ferocity, ‘has delivered you to me. It will be my duty to teach you the life of penitence and obscurity for which you are destined. For God is
just
.’ She paused for breath. The fleck of spittle was still there. Madeleine wondered if it was a permanent fixture. ‘Henceforth,’ declared Cousin Lettice, ‘you will live with us. You will take the name of Fynn.’

Madeleine was confused. ‘But my name is Falkirk. Madeleine Falkirk.’

‘No. Falkirk is a false name.’

‘But—’

‘Do not interrupt. Your parents were never married. We will never speak of that again. And
particularly
not when we are in public or in company. Do you understand?’

Madeleine shook her head.

‘Falkirk’, said Cousin Lettice with distaste, ‘is merely the name which your father in his wickedness assumed in order to deceive decent, honourable people. You have no name. Henceforth, for the sake of decency, you will be Fynn.’

Madeleine looked from Cousin Lettice to the baby, and back again. She said, ‘Miss Lettice, I don’t believe Papa will like it if I change my name.’

That brought Cousin Lettice to a halt. She studied Madeleine as if she were a wild animal who might prove difficult to subdue. ‘Of course,’ she muttered. ‘She has not been told.’

Madeleine put her hand on the cot. The baby turned its head and stared at her severely.

‘Your father has been killed in battle,’ said Cousin Lettice. ‘It is a visitation on him. We will never speak of him again.’

Madeleine let go of the cot and sat down heavily on the floor.

Chapter Six

Cameron is riding slowly over the battlefield, picking off the stragglers.

He feels the heat of the sun on his shoulders and smells the bitterness of smoke. He tastes the clinging sweetness of death at the back of his throat. He sees the gutted horses and the sodden scarlet tunics, the fluttering Arab robes and the dead children clutching their bone-crushing sticks.

He doesn’t experience any of it. It’s happening to someone else. All he really feels, deep inside, is the fierce sick joy of having killed and come through alive.

It’s nearly noon, and soon it will be too hot to carry on. His horse picks its way across the bodies and between the jagged black rocks that jut from the sand like dragons’ teeth. Around him, the red men move slowly in the blistering sun. Black vultures patiently wait. Greasy black smoke rises from burning flesh.

Some distance ahead, he sees Ainsley leading a small recovery detail. Thank God, he thinks, with a great surge of relief. He’s come through it too. Thank God.

Behind him a shout, and he turns to see one of the men bayoneting a wounded tribesman. These Arabs like to fox dead, then rise up and make a last-ditch stand. They like to have company on the way down to Paradise.

When he turns to go on, Ainsley is in trouble. A trio of Dervishes has risen from the dead and butchered his detail to a man, and Ainsley is surrounded. His horse is on its haunches, screaming, its hind leg shattered, but his spur is caught in the stirrup and he can’t jump free. He has lost his helmet, and his bright hair is vivid against the smoke as he struggles to right himself, and draws his revolver and drops one of the Arabs. The other two circle behind him to make the kill.

Cameron sees it happening as if through water. He hauls his horse to a halt and levels his revolver, and takes aim into the glare of the sun. He shoots one of the Arabs through the head, and fires again and drops the other with a shot in the throat. ‘All right now,’ he mutters, ‘it’s all right now.’ His revolver is shaking in his hand, and as he spurs his horse on, he at last understands that the anger of the night before has no meaning; that he would rather be killed himself than watch Ainsley die.

But as he closes the distance between them he sees Ainsley’s horse stumble on its shattered leg and struggle to right itself. Ainsley is still fighting to untangle his spur from the stirrup as the horse goes crashing down onto the rocks, with him beneath.

Cameron jumps off his horse and runs to where Ainsley is lying, and drops to his knees in the stinking black sand.

Ainsley lies on his back, his blue eyes wide and astonished. His lips move, but no sound comes. Cameron sees the matted pulp at the back of the head, and the white gleam of bone, and the bright blood pumping out onto the rock and pouring down into the sand. Already the sand is turning to paste beneath him: hot, soft black paste, and a copper-sweet stink, and that brilliant red arterial spurt.

Cameron looks down into the blue eyes and watches the dullness come, like the bloom on a grape.

A small wind tosses a handful of sand across the waxy features, and Cameron tries to brush it away, but it’s impossible. The black sand keeps coming, gently sifting into mouth and nostrils, silently sugaring the staring eyes.

Someone is shaking him by the shoulder. ‘Captain Lawe. Captain Lawe. Sir. Wake up.’

Cameron woke up.

It was dark in the zeriba, for the moon had not yet risen. So cold that his breath steamed. The tears were hot on his cheeks.

‘Wake up, sir,’ said the orderly. ‘The colonel wishes to see you in his tent.’

Cameron lay on his back blinking at the stars. He thought, it wasn’t a dream. He is dead. He is dead. And now it’s too late to make anything right, ever again.

He kicked his way out of his blanket-bag and got to his feet and straightened his uniform. Then he followed the orderly through the sleeping camp. He felt heavy and stiff but strangely fragile, as if one touch would shatter him to pieces. He looked about him at the complicated paraphernalia of war, and thought, how do men live with the knowledge that what they love can be destroyed in an instant?

The lamps were bright in the colonel’s tent, and he blinked as he went in. The colonel sat on a canvas stool before a small field desk covered with a tidy litter of papers. An officer whom Cameron didn’t know sat beside him with a notebook on his lap and a silver propelling pencil at the ready. He had the clean, unbroken fingernails of a staff officer, but his eyes were pink and inflamed. Perhaps, thought Cameron, he’s never seen a battlefield before. Perhaps he’s not used to the smell.

He had a vague sense that he was in some sort of trouble. The colonel, a spare, lugubrious man with an extravagantly hooked nose, was studying him in silence, tapping his pencil on the desk.

What have I done now, he thought from a great distance. He was suddenly extremely thirsty. There was a flask of water on the field desk, with a tumbler upended over the top to keep out the flies. He wished someone would offer him a drink.

The colonel cleared his throat. Cameron swayed, and tried to assume an expression of respectful attention.

‘A report has reached me’, said the colonel, ‘that the day before yesterday you disregarded a direct order of your CO. Your CO, the late Major Falkirk.’

Cameron struggled to follow him. The day before yesterday? Yesterday. The late Major Falkirk.

The colonel’s voice came at him in waves. ‘. . . for reasons which pass understanding, Major Falkirk let that go unpunished.’ A pause. ‘I take it that it was a personal matter. Some kind of – bad blood between you?’

Behind his back Cameron flexed his injured palm, and the new scab cracked. Bad blood. Odd way of putting it. The truth is, there was no blood between us, either good or bad. And yet we always felt like brothers.
We used to be like brothers
, Ainsley had said.
But as far as you’re concerned, none of that ever happened. Did it, Cameron?

Oh, you’re wrong, he wanted to reply. I never stopped thinking of you as a brother. I know that now. Why didn’t I tell you when I still had the chance?

He dragged himself back to the present. He squared his shoulders. ‘Yes sir,’ he said. ‘Bad blood.’

Again the colonel tapped the desk with his pencil. The staff officer looked up doubtfully from his notebook, as if wondering how to take that down. ‘You see,’ said the colonel, ‘I shouldn’t normally trouble myself with what was clearly a matter for Major Falkirk to resolve.’ He frowned. ‘However,’ he went on, ‘it is my unenviable duty to investigate a second report. A report of an extremely grave and utterly repellent nature.’

The staff officer bent his head and scribbled furiously.

‘Yesterday,’ the colonel went on with his eyes on Cameron, ‘shortly after Major Falkirk fell, you were seen – you were seen, to put it baldly, despoiling the body.’

Again Cameron swayed. He hadn’t thought of that. He hadn’t thought.

‘You were seen’, the colonel continued, ‘systematically rifling the pockets, then extracting a piece of paper from the breast of the major’s tunic.’ He paused. ‘Well? What have you to say? Do you deny it?’

Cameron watched the staff officer finish writing with a flourish. ‘No, sir,’ he said. ‘I don’t.’

The staff officer looked up and blinked.

The colonel’s narrow face was incredulous. ‘Are you telling me that these reports are true?’

‘Yes sir.’

There was silence in the tent. Outside, the night wind threw sand against the canvas. A horse coughed. An Egyptian hissed at his camels to be still.

The colonel looked so shocked that Cameron almost felt sorry for him.

‘This paper,’ the colonel said at last, ‘this paper which you were seen to – remove. Where is it now?’

‘I burnt it, sir.’

The staff officer met his eyes and quickly glanced away.

‘You burnt it,’ repeated the colonel. This time when he tapped the desk he did it slowly, as if tapping out a dirge. ‘What was it? A promissory note? Gambling pledge? Letter from a woman?’

‘I’d rather not say, sir. It’s a private matter.’

‘Not any more,’ snapped the colonel. ‘Not when it results in one of my officers publicly desecrating the body of a brother in arms – his own CO, God damn it. Not when it leads him to defy the colonel of his regiment. Not when . . .’

Cameron stopped listening. He was back on the battlefield, kneeling by Ainsley’s body with Clemency’s letter in his hand. The paper was yellow with age, and soft from much folding and unfolding. How many times had Ainsley read it over the years?
She at least has forgiven me. She wrote to me. I keep her letter with me always.

If the letter were found, the truth would come out. Ainsley would be exposed as a scoundrel who had deserted his wife, disgraced his name, and deceived his brother officers for years. The careful fiction which his father had worked so hard to construct would be in ruins, and the scandal would break.

But if the letter disappeared, then the world would honour Alasdair Falkirk, a good soldier and a pure-hearted man who gave his life for his country. And Jocelyn would know a measure of peace.

‘Captain Lawe. Are you listening to me?’

Cameron studied him for a moment. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

‘Because I wish there to be no mistake about this. No misapprehension as to the gravity of your position. I am giving you an order. I expect you to carry it out. You shall provide me – now – with a complete explanation of your conduct in this affair.’

The staff officer raised his head and waited, his pencil poised.

‘Captain Lawe,’ said the colonel, ‘I’m waiting. Tell me the truth.’

Cameron licked his dry, cracked lips. The truth, he thought. Why should I tell you the truth? To justify myself? To prove that I’m not the scoundrel you think I am – and to hell with Ainsley and Jocelyn and the whole damn lot? He said, ‘Sir, I can’t tell you anything.’

The colonel leaned forward. ‘Can’t or won’t?’

‘Won’t, sir.’

‘Captain Lawe. I’m ordering you. Explain yourself at once.’

Cameron met the colonel’s eyes. ‘No,’ he said.

An hour after Cousin Lettice and Cousin Septimus arrived at Cairngowrie House, Madeleine was put to bed in the nursery and told to stay there for the rest of the day.

She lay beneath the blankets, drifting in and out of sleep. She didn’t think about her parents at all, not at all. They were outside the shell, and she was inside, where it was safe. She was going to stay inside for ever and ever.

Beside her in the cot the baby slept and woke and cried and punched the air, and sometimes Cousin Lettice came in to see to it, and once Madeleine saw that she carried Dr Philpott in the pocket of her gown. But mostly Madeleine just slept inside the shell.