The Lion Triumphant (48 page)

The afternoon was passing. Soon it would be night.

Night! I said to myself. Of course they are waiting for the night.

Oh, God, I prayed, what is happening to me? What has gone wrong with my life? Why was I not content with it? I had Jake, who wanted me and loved me in his fashion—as I loved him in mine. I had my beloved children. What more could I ask?

And now I was going to lose everything I treasured. Someone was trying to kill me.

Dusk fell. No sound from outside. Nothing. Let someone come this way, I prayed. Linnet will be worried. I was to have been with her and Damask. They will come to look for me. Oh, God, let the door open and Linnet come for me.

I went to the door and beat on it with my fists. To my amazement it moved. I pushed. It was open and I was out in the fresh air.

I ran to the house.

Linnet cried out when she saw me. “Mother, what has happened? We have been so worried! Where have you been?”

We were in each other’s arms.

“I was locked in the hut,” I said.

“In the hut? Mother. You mean that old place… What were you doing there?”

I said: “I went in … and then the door was locked.”

“Who locked it?”

“I don’t know.”

“They have gone out searching for you. I sent two parties of men out. We had been so anxious. But you are exhausted, dearest Mother. I’m going to get you to bed. I’m going to bring you something warming to drink.”

What a ministering angel she was! How I loved her! How could I die when I had my beloved daughter Linnet?

I could not sleep. Nor did I wish to drink the hot herb drink she had brought for me. It stood on a table by my bed.

“Try to rest,” she said.

“I want to talk. Who could have locked me in the hut?”

Linnet stroked my hair; she was looking at me in a strange way as though she did not recognize me.

“Mother dear,” she said, “you were not locked in. The door was unlocked all the time.”

“What nonsense! It was locked. I couldn’t open it. And then suddenly it was open.”

“Perhaps it was jammed.”

“It couldn’t have been. I pushed and pushed and then it opened so easily. Someone unlocked it.”

“It doesn’t matter now. You must have thought it was locked. The key was there all the time.”

“Where was the key?”

“It was hanging on a hook inside the hut.”

“But it wasn’t. Someone locked me in and put the key back afterwards.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Linnet soothingly.

I was so tired that I thought it didn’t matter either. I was so exhausted and so glad to be back with Linnet sitting beside me.

It was only when I awoke later that I realized how much it did matter.

They were watching me. I saw their looks. My daughter, Edwina, Manuela, Romilly, the servants … everyone.

Something was happening to me. I had changed. I imagined that a shrouded figure was in my room. I had spent hours in the hut thinking I was locked in when the door was open and the key was on the hook all the time.

Devils were beginning to possess me, which meant that I was being robbed of my reason. This was what they believed, but I knew that some evil threatened me, that someone was trying to rob me of my reason—or to make it appear that I had lost it—before killing me. It did not seem impossible that my husband wished to be rid of me so that he might marry a young woman who could give him sons. Death was stalking me and with Death was a companion, Madness.

No one could ever have called me a weak woman. I had always been able to defend myself and I was going to defend myself now. I was not mad. I was certain that I had been locked in that hut and that the door had been suddenly opened and that the key had been put back after I had left. Someone had been lurking in the bushes outside the hut. The door had stealthily been unlocked and when I had run out and gone to the house the key had been replaced.

That was how it must have happened. That was how I knew it had happened.

And I was going to prove it.

Strangely enough that incident in the hut had given me strength. I was going to throw off this lethargy which I knew now was the result of the evil herbs with which my food and drink had been laced.

I was going to fight this with all my strength and I was confident that I could win.

Oh, Romilly Girling, I assured myself, you will find you have a strong adversary in me. I shall not step aside so that you can marry my husband. And, Jake, you have not won the last battle yet.

Linnet had left now. “I will sleep,” I said. But I never felt less like sleep.

I picked up the drink by my bed and smelled it.

How could a drink brought to me by my loving daughter have become contaminated?

Still, I did not drink it. I left it there at my bedside.

I must think of a plan. I would watch what I ate. I must be alert. I must be ready at any hour of the night. The next time the shrouded visitor came to my room it should not escape. I was going to catch it, drag off the shroud and find out who it was who was playing these tricks on me.

I would stay in my room for a few days. I would feign illness. I would have food sent to me which I would not eat. I would preserve part of it and take it to the apothecary and when I had proof from him that my food was being laced with poison I would lay my evidence before … before … before whom? Before Jake! What if my suspicions were correct and he was my would-be-murderer? How he would laugh. Before Linnet? Could I say to her: “Someone is trying to kill me. Help me find who it is.” How could I? No matter. I would wait and see what I would do. In the meantime I would collect my evidence.

I took a piece of beef from the kitchen and with it a good cob loaf. These I concealed in my bedroom. I took also a flagon of muscadel wine with nuts, apples and marchpane.

Once I had pretended to have the sweat. I must have been rather good at pretense. I now feigned to a lethargy which I was far from feeling. I took my secret meals and ate nothing which came to my room, although I took several samples of what was brought to take to the apothecary.

My spirits were rising. I was at last taking an action which I felt suited my nature. I was going into the offensive.

I did not take even Linnet into my confidence, although I was on the point of doing so many times.

I wanted to be ready when my shrouded visitor appeared. And I was.

I had pretended to be very sleepy all day. I had become aware that most of the food which came up to me was laced with poppy juice, so the object was to dull me into a mood when my wits would desert me. Then instinct warned me some plan was about to be put into operation.

I was right. It was three o’clock in the morning of the third day when I was awakened by a presence in my room.

The bedclothes were being gently drawn from the bed.

I opened my eyes. Standing at the foot of the bed was the figure I had seen before—shrouded in gray. Over the head was a hood which covered the face; there were slits for the eyes to see through.

I lay still waiting. The figure moved not toward me but to the door. It stood there and I was ready to leap out of bed—tense waiting. As soon as it moved I would be after it. I would tear off that concealing cover. I would find out who was hiding beneath it.

And suddenly there came to my mind: What if it were indeed a ghost? What if the ghost of Isabella had come to haunt me? What part did I play in her sudden death? Was it murder? And if it was, was not I the motive for that murder?

And why should I think of Isabella at such a moment? How could I say except that there was something about that shrouded figure which had brought her to my mind?

Ghost or not I was going to find out. The figure moved backward. Then I saw a hand emerge. The finger was beckoning me.

I was about to leap out of my bed when my instincts warned me. If there was a murderer concealed behind that shroud it was the same person who had been dosing my food. I had feigned a lassitude I did not feel. I must behave like a person who was under the influence of poppy juice.

I rose slowly from my bed.

The hand disappeared; the figure had moved out into the corridor.

I went out. The figure was a few yards away. The finger beckoned me again.

Trying to act like a sleepwalker, I followed.

The figure had disappeared around a bend. I hurried after it. I came to rest at the top of the great staircase which led into the hall.

There was no sign of the shrouded figure.

I stood at the top of the staircase; and then I knew. Someone was behind me, hands stretched out, waiting to hurl me down those stairs.

I turned and grappled.

I heard someone shout: “I’m coming,” and there was my daughter Linnet. She seized the shroud. The three of us were huddled together for a moment. I felt myself lifted off my feet. Then suddenly there was a wild scream. I found myself clinging to a piece of gray cloth as a figure went crashing to the foot of the staircase.

Linnet and I did not speak. We ran down the staircase to that crumpled figure, which lay face downward. I lifted the hood and the mask that fitted over the face.

“’Tis Manuela,” I said.

She did not die until three days afterward. Poor tragic Manuela!

She was conscious and lucid for a while before death overtook her. I was at her bedside and she was aware that I was there. She had little time left, she said, and much to say.

To think that this Spanish woman should have lived in my household for so many years and I know so little of her! How strange that she should be so devoted to Roberto and yet plan to kill his mother.

It was vengeance. Just retribution, she called it.

“As soon as I saw the ruby cross I knew that I would kill you,” she said. “Before that I just wanted to make you suffer.”

“But you did not attempt to kill me until last night,” I reminded her. “You gave me small doses of poison and tried to rob me of my reason.”

“That was what happened to Isabella. She was ill; she was robbed of her reason; and then one day she was thrown down the staircase.”

Her story was told jerkily, far from lucidly and not at one sitting. I had to piece it together to make a coherent whole. She was very weak, but she wished to tell it. It was a kind of confession. She wanted extreme unction, and I was determined that she should have it if I could manage it. It would mean running some risk, but I had known of Catholic families in the neighborhood and I would ask if a priest might come to ease Manuela’s last hours.

He would have to come in secret, but I would defy Jake, if necessary, to bring her this last consolation.

I learned that Manuela was a half sister of Isabella—her mother having been a serving girl in the mansion which was Isabella’s home. Manuela had been given a place in that mansion as soon as she was old enough to take it and had been sent to Tenerife when Isabella went there to marry Don Felipe.

She had been present when Jake had stormed the mansion; she had successfully hidden herself from the marauders. She had assisted at the birth of Carlos and had loved the boy. It was only when he came to England and threw off all his Spanish ways that she turned to Roberto.

But the gist of her story was Edmundo. She had loved him and they were to have been married. She had greatly admired the ruby cross which Isabella wore frequently. She had even taken it once and worn it when she went to meet Edmundo in the garden—a sin for which she had done penance.

Edmundo had said: “I would I could give you a cross like that.”

Perhaps someone had heard him. In any case the cross was missing and Edmundo confessed that he had strangled Isabella, then thrown her down the stairs. He had done it, he admitted, because he had stolen the cross and been discovered in the act by Isabella, who had threatened to have him arrested for robbery.

Manuela had accepted this because she knew he loved her and the cross was missing—until she had seen me wearing it. She believed then that it had been in my possession ever since, that Don Felipe had given it to me and that therefore I must have known that Edmundo had not stolen it and only admitted to doing so under torture which few men could stand out against.

It seemed clear to her that Edmundo had killed Isabella on orders from his master. A servant belonged to his master and if certain deeds were demanded of him he performed them, but any sin incurred was not on his conscience.

When Edmundo was arrested Don Felipe should have saved him, but he had not done so. He did not want anyone to know that Edmundo had killed Isabella on orders from him. The situation was fraught with danger because Don Felipe wished to marry me and there were rumors in circulation that I was a witch and a heretic. Therefore, Don Felipe dared not make any move to save Edmundo because by doing so he could turn suspicion on himself and I was involved. The ruby cross provided a good reason why Edmundo should have committed the murder and so Don Felipe was content for this to be the accepted version of the affair, although the cross all the time was in his possession, while poor Edmundo, tortured until he admitted that he had stolen it, was condemned to death.

When Manuela saw me wearing the cross she believed that I had had it all those years. It had not occurred to her that it was one of the valuable objects which Jake had stolen when he raided the Hacienda, that it had been in
his
possession ever since and he had only recently given it to me.

She had always hated me. She had blamed me for what happened. But for me, she was sure that it never would. In her view, I was, therefore, responsible for Isabella’s death. It was she who had aroused Pilar’s venom against me; it was she who had made the image of Isabella and put it in my drawer. She had taken it to Pilar and it was to have been used as evidence that I was a witch.

And then because she knew that there had been suspicion in my mind, she had sought to make it grow. She wanted me to suspect my husband was planning to murder me. She had put the image among Jake’s clothes and waited for me to find it. Her revenge was slow and painstaking. She was in no hurry. She had infinite patience. All she wanted was my uneasiness—until she saw me wear the cross.