Wild Wood (55 page)

Without hesitation, Margaretta held the boy up in her arms.

I took the child and sat him on the saddle before me. He stared at Bèrnard, big-eyed. “Aviss, stay here with your mother. You must lead the guard until I return. Do you understand?”

The boy gazed down at Margaretta. And nodded.

Returned to her arms, the expression on that solemn little face was transformed. He smiled at me, and I saw how like my mother her grandson was. And it seemed to me I was, at last, a happy man.

Holding the ax above my head, I called out, “
À Dieudonné, à moi, à moi!”

“
À Percy, à Percy”
came the reply.

In memory, I feel her eyes on my back still as I wheeled the stallion and took him home, a destrier for the last time. My days of fighting were done.

55

A
LICIA KNOCKS.
“May we come in?”

Janet sees them first. Her terrified expression makes Jesse look around.

Jesse gets off the bed. “Actually, I was hoping my mother could rest.”

Helen’s standing in Alicia’s shadow. “Perhaps we should all go downstairs and—”

“No.” Forlorn, but definite. Janet sits higher against the pillows. “I need to show you something.”

“Janet.” Helen puts a lot of force into that one word.

“No, Helen. I have not come all this way to lie.”

Three pairs of eyes are trained on Helen Brandon’s face.

In a firm voice Janet says, “I want my handbag.”

Jesse capitulates. She goes to a chair beside the window and picks up the bag—it’s big and black and weighs more than she expected.

“Come in, Alicia. You too, Helen.” Janet doesn’t say
Let’s get this over with.
But that’s what she means.

The bag is clicked open and Janet takes out a large envelope;
she puts on reading glasses and looks at Helen. “Is there anything you want to say first?”

Helen Brandon’s complexion is gray-white. She hesitates, then shakes her head.

Janet smoothes the flap of the envelope open, and the others watch as she takes out a sheaf of paper; it’s folded in three and tied with faded pink ribbon. But the bow is knotted tight, and it’s a silent minute before Janet can work it loose. She unfolds the stiff paper and there’s a heading: “Deed of Confidentiality.” Written in black-letter copperplate, the words pop off the paper as if they’ve been waiting to be seen again.

There’s a moment of paralysis.

Alicia asks politely, “And that is what, exactly?”

“I signed this on August tenth, 1956.” Janet leafs through to the back page. She points to her own signature—the letters round and careful. “We—both of us—agreed to all the terms offered by the earl. Your father.” She’s looking at Helen.

“Terms?” Alicia has her voice under control. She sounds only faintly curious.

Another name is written beside Janet’s. The second signature is a scrawl, but Helen clears her throat. “Yes. Janet’s right. We both signed.”

“A little more information might be useful.” Alicia sounds calm. But she hears the thump of her heart like a drum in her head.

Janet offers the document and Alicia takes it. “It’s all in here.” But her eyes are on her daughter.

In the corner of the room is a lady’s writing desk, a piece of fussy Victoriana with a sloping lid. A pampered daughter might, long ago, have used it to write thank-you letters after a ball.

Alicia goes to the desk, and it seems natural she’ll take the only chair. Jesse stands behind her shoulder as they begin to read.

Janet and Helen watch the girls. Janet is flushed, her hands gripped together on the counterpane. Helen’s expression is impassive.
After a time she sits in the window seat, staring at the empty sky.

Scanning the text in silence, Alicia pauses before she turns each page waiting for Jesse to nod. A clock with a delicate tick marks the seconds, and the minutes, as more than twenty pages are carefully read and turned. Finally, they reach the signature page, and Alicia turns the deed facedown. She stares from Janet to Helen. “How much of this is true?”

“All of it.” Helen has her back to the room.

Janet nods.

Alicia gets up and instantly sits down again. She captures her hands between her knees to stop their shaking.

Jesse taps the document. “Alicia’s father, the earl . . .”

Janet speaks in a rush. “Yes.”

“It says that Rory, that you . . .” Alicia’s staring at Jesse. Shock is taking over.

Helen talks so quietly, Jesse steps closer. “I did not want you to find out this way, Alicia, please believe me. When Janet arrived this afternoon, I tried to stop her from coming here. I knew what this would mean, and . . .” Finally, Helen turns.

Alicia holds up a hand. She says reasonably, “I think that’s likely to be a self-serving lie, Helen. I believe you just wanted to cover your back, go on sitting on the truth as you’ve done for all these years. This situation has suited you well.”

Helen half stands. “Your father rapes me, I get pregnant with Rory, I work here as a
servant
, and you call that doing well?” Her face is scarlet. She’s trembling with distress. Or rage.

“Rape?” Alicia’s face washes white.

Jesse puts a hand on Alicia’s shoulder. “But this deed gives you the Hunt, Helen. I don’t understand.”

Alicia interrupts, “And whatever you say, whatever accusations you want to hurl at my father—who cannot defend himself—I’d call this document evidence of some kind of blackmail.” Alicia’s face is very cold. “Tell me the truth.”

The other woman swallows. Faced with Alicia’s glacial rage, she falters. “I had nothing. No one. I had to protect myself. And Rory.”

Jesse says quietly, “This deed seems to say that we are all related. Is that right? Alicia and me and Rory? That we share a father? Alicia’s father?”

Janet rushes in: “Yes. You’re half siblings.”

The silence is like a void opening in the floor. The words are said. They’re all too frightened to move.

When Helen speaks, her voice grates in her throat. “Oh, he had form, your father. First me, because I was there and he thought it was his right.” She takes a deep breath. “Just a kid, that’s all I was, in service for the first time. And I didn’t know how to stop him. Or who to tell. Who was going to believe me?” Her eyes brim, and her voice crumbles to nothing.

Alicia says calmly, “But in the deed, it sets out that the estate agrees to pay Rory’s school fees. I would not describe that as abuse. I’d say it was a reward. Just what kind of services were you offering, Helen?” The cut is surgical and precise.

Helen says fiercely, “Your father wanted me to go to Holly House; he wanted Rory adopted. His own son. Your
brother
. Dr. Nicholls would have arranged it, like he did with her.” She gestures at Jesse. “Oh, yes, they were all in it that time, him and the nuns and your dear mother, Alicia. The sainted Elizabeth.” The name spits from her mouth.

Jesse is rigid. “That’s cruel. And shocking.”

Helen turns on her. “Shocking. Yes, it is. And it was. But it could have been us, my son and me. The nuns did that then—just took the baby from your arms straight after the birth; bound your breasts to suppress the milk. But her mother intervened. And Rory was born in the cottage we lived in. Oh, yes. He was born on Hundredfield, just like you, Alicia. Only you had all the privileges, all the comforts.” Her face works. “And every day we had to look at each other. Every day. Rory was your father’s
son.
We were dirt to him.
Dirt
.” The words die on the air.

“Perhaps Lady Elizabeth wanted him to see what he’d done. Wanted him to face it.” Janet’s voice wobbles.

Helen is bitter. “Didn’t stop him, though, did it? He did it again.”

“But what happened with Eva?
Why
was I adopted out if Rory wasn’t?”

“Rory wasn’t what?” Rory’s at the door. “Hello, Mum. Didn’t know you were here.” He looks from face to face, and his expression changes.

“You need to read this.” Alicia hands him the document. Then she strides from the room.

56

A
S SHE
walks down the stairs, Alicia swallows, hard. She will not give in. She will not allow any of them to see how she feels.

But she stops with a gasp and clutches the banister as if the oak can stop the shakes. And the pain.

Above, on the walls, her ancestors look down, impassive.

Through tears, Alicia stares from a general to an admiral, to a colonel in the uniform he wore at Waterloo, all gold and scarlet. And there’s her father—more scarlet and gold—a lieutenant in the Scots Guards, so handsome, so young. “Got anything to say, Dad?”

That painted face does not change. It never will.

Outrage. Fury. Love. Loss. How can she tell the difference?

Alicia looks down. The staircase seems steeper than the flank of a mountain. But she will walk those stairs, she has to go outside; she wants to know if the world looks different.

Rory puts the deed back on the desk. “So, are you going to tell me about this, Mum, or shall I ask Janet?” His eyes have no expression.

“I did what was best. Justice. For us both.” She was angry only so few minutes before, but now Helen sounds crushed.

Rory folds the document into its accustomed creases. “So, it’s true. That’s why you didn’t have photos of my dad. He was there all the time.” A big man in a small chair, he gets up from the fragile desk and hands the deed to Janet. He can’t look at Jesse. Not yet.

And she can’t look at him. She clears her throat. Says nothing.

“How did you do it? Get him to acknowledge us both. Blackmail?” Now he flicks a glance at Jesse. His sister.

Janet clutches the deed to her chest. “Yes.” Her face is flushed.

“Don’t you dare, Janet Marley. I got you the child you wanted. And a new life. Without me she wouldn’t be standing here today.” Helen’s voice is low, but Janet flinches. The tone is savage.

She.
Even now, Helen won’t say her name. But Jesse is not about to play this game. “So, what did you do, Helen?”

Helen Brandon’s staring at her son. “I said, after Eva died, that I’d go to the papers. The
Mirror
, the
Sun
—I didn’t care. I knew one of the scandal sheets would buy what I had to sell. An earl’s illegitimate child, born from rape, is a scandal—though there was no way I could prove it, not after all that time.” She looks away from Rory. “But
two
bastards, and a young girl dying at the birth of the second—supervised by a disgraced doctor—before her body
disappears
? That would have been a bomb going off at Hundredfield.” This time Helen is defiant. “Lady Elizabeth had had enough. She made your father agree to what I asked.”

“What do you mean ‘disgraced’?” Jesse sits on the end of the bed, her face sheet-white.

“Why do you think he practices in Newton Prior? Dr. Nicholls had—what shall we call it?—a difficulty, in Edinburgh.”

Rape. Child of rape
. The words clamor in Rory’s head but he shuts them away. “Alistair was disbarred.” He flicks a glance at Jesse. “Negligence was proved against him when a young woman died during a difficult delivery in Edinburgh—he’d been drinking. Guilt made him a full-blown alcoholic, but he fought his way
back and was reregistered. He’s been an exemplary doctor all these years.” Rory turns on Helen. “And he’s your friend, Mum, he’s been so good to us.”

Helen closes her eyes. She cannot escape the severity in his voice. “He did what he did because Elizabeth asked him to. Eva died, he was her doctor; maybe that brought it all back. Perhaps he thought he could atone for what had happened before, but he agreed that a duplicate birth certificate would name Janet as the mother, and not Eva. He thought the child would have a better future in Australia.”

“You can use my name anytime you like, Helen.” But Jesse does not allow her voice to rise.

The interruption is ignored. “Janet was to register the birth when she got to Australia. You didn’t need a passport for an infant in those days. No one checked. We were so trusting.” Helen’s eyes are bleak.

Janet’s rocking on the edge of the bed. “I knew it was wrong. I always knew it. Sweet Jesus, dear God . . .” The plea is incoherent.

Rory asks, “But how did she get it—the duplicate?”

Helen shrugs. “There’s two laws in this country, always have been. The rich always get what they want.”

Jesse hesitates before she grips her mother’s hand. “But don’t you have to register a birth in person?”

“Who’s going to question a nice young woman at a Registry Office with a baby in her arms?” Janet sounds wretched. “That’s what I did. New migrant, new country, husband in tow. Many apologies for the slipup as we left Scotland . . .” She wipes her eyes and whispers, “They were very kind in Sydney. They said you were a lovely baby, that you looked just like me.” She takes a deep breath. “They hoped we would all enjoy living in Australia.”

Jesse says slowly, “And when I found the duplicate, and the British passport office questioned it because of the registration date . . .”