Fortune's Soldier Page 6

  But despite the outward calm his thoughts raced. Last night he had had the dream again; the first time since Sam Clopper’s disappearance two years before. He had been once more on that fever-laden battlefield; had heard the dying soldier — himself — whistle and croak his last words to the exhausted girl who sat beside him; had heard Sutton Place called accursed. But was it?

  John Joseph moved uncomfortably where he lay. There had been so much tragedy over the centuries — deaths, madness, even incarceration in the case of poor sad Melior Mary — that the legend of the curse of Queen Edith upon the Lord of the Manor seemed real enough. And now he was eighteen and had left school and was himself at the immediate mercy of the house.

  ‘Do you believe Sutton Place to be bewitched, Father?’ he had said the night before, when they were alone after dining.

  ‘Don’t know. Funny place. Started life. No debts. Ruined now. Must let it. Take tenants. Only hope.’

  ‘But what of me, Sir? Where’s my future to be? Am I just to be a glorified estate manager?’

  Mr Webbe Weston had looked glum.

  ‘Suppose so. Terrible prospect. Poor boy.’

  John Joseph had tossed down a glass of port in one.

  ‘The British Army is hopeless. They’ll never let a Catholic rise through the ranks. Perhaps I should go abroad.’

  Mr Webbe Weston had made a clucking sound, shaking his head from side to side.

  ‘Professions no good?’

  ‘No, Sir. I’ve always wanted a military life — though I believe it might kill me in the end,’ he had added in a softer voice.

  Mr Webbe Weston had not heard him.

  ‘Fine life. Yes. Man. Fresh air. Earning respect. Well done.’

  John Joseph had poured himself another glass from the ruby decanter.

  ‘So the house has found another way to topple the Lord of the Manor,’ he had said reflectively.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You, Father. It has ruined you, taken all your money, driven you out.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But I am still the heir to the wretched place, damn it.’

  ‘Of course. Always have been.’

  John Joseph had given up. ‘Perhaps I am being foolish.’

  But he had thought that his cousins Helen and Jackdaw would have understood. Not that he had seen anything of them since that fateful Christmas long ago.

  The flute playing seemed to be growing louder and John Joseph’s eyes flicked open, his pupils turning to black pinpoints in the heart of his arctic and indigo irises. Coming towards him was a motley figure, which in the distance was difficult to assess as regarded age or sex. It wore a big red hat pulled well down over its face and had a cloak that swept to the ground as it moved. The flute was at its lips and it seemed the very personification of a pied piper.

  John Joseph stared in astonishment but the figure remained apparently unaware of his gaping and approached so near that he was able to see that it was not, after all, a patchwork player but a nut-brown maid who strolled along so rakishly. Her merry eyes, bright as two hazelnuts, shone in a tanned little face that was as streaked with dirt as John Joseph’s was clean, and her small brown hands worked over the flute as fast as two scampering mice.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, catching his eye. ‘I am Cloverella. And you must be Master John Joseph.’

  He couldn’t believe that she was real and sat where he was, dumbfounded — all thoughts of manners and leaping to his feet totally vanished from his head.

  ‘Did I startle you? I’m sorry for that. The fact is you won’t have seen me around here before because I’m new.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ was all he could manage, in a voice which sounded to him like that of a piping boy soprano.

  She sat down beside him and he glimpsed two dirty feet and a pair of sunbrowned legs.

  ‘Yes. I’m old man Blanchard’s bastard girl. I walked all the way from Wiltshire to find him when my mother died. I wouldn’t let the mean old bugger see me starve. Would you have done?’

  ‘Er, no.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. But when I got here he told me that the big house was in rack and ruin and there’d be no work for the likes of me. But I told him I’m no gill-flirt. I don’t need wages, just a place to put my bones at night. Want a puff?’

  She produced a clay pipe from the depths of her garments and fell to smoking it at great speed.

  ‘No thank you.’

  ‘Don’t say much, do you!’

  John Joseph sat up straight, putting on his riding jacket. ‘I would like to remind you, Miss Blanchard, that you are speaking to your employer’s son.’

  She roared with laughter and he saw the flash of goodly shaped white teeth in the midst of all the dirt.

  ‘Bugger me! You’re all puffed up with fury. I’ll be on my way then.’ She stood up and gave a quick burst at the flute. ‘Good day to you, Sir. No offence.’

  And she was off, walking briskly along the river bank and playing away to her heart’s content. John Joseph stared for a moment at her departing back before jumping to his feet and pursuing her.

  ‘Miss Blanchard! Miss Blanchard!’

  ‘Cloverella to you.’

  ‘Cloverella —’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Stay and talk to me. You’re the liveliest company I’ve had in an age.’

  ‘That I’ll reckon to be true. All right, I will. Want a swim? I haven’t washed in a week and I feel a bit mucky. Do I look it?’

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  ‘Then here goes.’

  She threw her hat into a hawthorn bush and John Joseph was surprised to see a tumble of wild black curls fall about her shoulders.

  ‘You’ve got beautiful hair,’ he said.

  ‘So I’ve been told. Do you swim naked?’

  ‘Good Lord, no.’

  ‘Well I do. It’s the only way I know of washing. Begging your pardon but there it is.’

  The cloak went flying, followed by a tattered skirt and blouse. As he might have suspected she had no concern with underwear and stood before him small, brown and nude.

  ‘I’ve never seen a woman with nothing on.’

  ‘Well you have now. Don’t stare. Didn’t your teachers tell you it was rude?’

  And with that she jumped into the river feet first.

  John Joseph stood gawping on the bank as she surfaced and stood up.

  ‘It’s shallow here. Come on. I won’t harm you.’

  Rather reluctantly he removed his jacket, shirt and trousers till he stood in his hose and undergarments, then he dived in. Cloverella’s peals of laughter filled the day.

  ‘Oh, Mr John Joseph,’ she said. ‘You do look funny.’

  They swam for ten minutes in silence. But, finally, even those hot summer waters grew chill and Cloverella stepped out on to the bank, drying herself with her skirt. ‘I reckon that was a good swim,’ she said. ‘Do I look a bit cleaner?’

  She stood with her back to John Joseph, laughing to herself in the sunshine, knowing that he could not take his eyes from the novelty of female nakedness so casually displayed before him.

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘Not sure? Do you want me to turn around?’

  ‘If you do by God I’ll tumble you to the ground, you wanton.’

  ‘Oh ho ho! There’s fiery talk from the Master’s virgin son.’

  She spun on her heel and grinned up at him saucily. She must have known that she was utterly desirable to stand like that, her hands behind her back, her face raised to his, her eyes twinkling all the naughtiness in the world.

  ‘Virgin I might be but I can do my best, Miss Blanchard.’

  ‘I’m sure you could, Mr Webbe Weston.’

  ‘Do you want me to prove it?’

  ‘Why not? A fine young man like you could do a lot worse than learn the ways of the world from a girl like me.’

  ‘Then show me what to do.’

  ‘Well, first you kiss me —’ her lips were like her name,
warm and sweet-tasting ‘— and then you put your arms round me like this.’ Her skin was glowing and soft as honey against his fingers.

  ‘Oh Cloverella. I’m as hard as you are smooth. There — feel for yourself.’

  ‘Oh, John Joseph — what a lovely man you are!’

  He laughed delightedly — and it was incredible to feel her slipping and sliding down beneath him so that she was lying in the grass of the river bank. He had never known anything quite so joyful, then, as the stripping off of his few remaining clothes and her cries of delight as she saw him for the first time.

  He knelt down beside her. ‘I hope I won’t disappoint you.’

  ‘If you do this time there will be other occasions when you do not.’

  ‘Many other occasions?’

  ‘That’s for you to say — you’re the Master’s son, after all.’

  He could speak no further. All he wanted was to sink his shaft within her and forget everything — Sutton Place, his father’s debts, all — in the completely carnal pleasure of her unrestrained lovemaking. He had never known such delight as the first springing of his seed within a woman’s body. And yet, even then, even in that moment when the unrelenting ache in his groin was transformed into a hot fountain of delight, purity and wickedness, he thought of the girl of whom he dreamed — and of the times of rapture that they would one day share together.

  *

  ‘Quite remarkable, General Wardlaw. It really is quite remarkable.’

  ‘Oh really? Well I can only say I am gratified. Extremely so. Well done, John. Well done.’

  The General stood with his back to the light thrown from the senior tutor’s study window staring, rather nonplussed, into the face of Jackdaw’s principal teacher.

  ‘Yes, Sir, you should be proud of him. I can honestly say that I have never had a pupil of fourteen as advanced as he. Of course he already had a fluent command of Spanish when he came to Winchester, but now he has added French, German and Italian to that. He is also starting the study of Russian next term. He is a credit to the school.’

  ‘I never realized this about him.’

  ‘It is a natural gift, General. A natural gift.’

  They spoke about Jackdaw as if he were not present and he eventually felt obliged to say, ‘Thank you, Sirs’, to attract the attention of at least one of them. They turned together and chorused, ‘Proud of you, lad,’ for all the world as if they had practised speaking in unison.

  Jackdaw bowed gravely and for the first time in his life the General felt a stirring of a different emotion when he looked at the son whom he had secretly always labelled as ‘lame’.

  ‘Well, John, I must say it was a good decision of mine to send you to Winchester. I thought the school would bring out the best in you.’

  ‘The gift of languages has always been there, General,’ said the tutor smoothly. ‘It would have come out whichever school the boy attended.’

  ‘Nonetheless, Winchester has changed him. He used to be full of nonsense, Dr Fiske. Daydreaming, that sort of thing. I’ll be honest with you. Two years ago I was very worried about him.’

  ‘In what way pray?’

  ‘He had stuffed his head full of — mysteries, as he called them.’

  Dr Fiske looked blank and it was Jackdaw who put in, ‘I had premonitions, Sir. My father considered it unhealthy.’

  The tutor nodded and put his fingertips together without passing comment.

  ‘Anyway, I trust that is all over now,’ said the General briskly. ‘Too many other things to think about now, eh John? French, German, and Italian — and all in this short time.’

  He looked at Jackdaw narrowly; noticing again the sheen of black hair, the jewel-bright eyes.

  ‘You grow more and more like your mother,’ he said.

  ‘She was unable to come today.’ It was half a question, half a statement from the tutor.

  ‘She is slightly indisposed, that is all.’ He saw Jackdaw frown and added, ‘A slight chill. Nothing to concern yourself with. Well, I must take my leave of you. Keep up the good work, my boy.’

  After he had gone Jackdaw remained in silence, looking at his teacher.

  ‘Tell me of your premonitions,’ said the older man eventually.

  ‘I’d rather not, Sir.’

  ‘Are they very personal to you?’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  How could he even speak of something he did not understand himself, even to this man of whom he was fond; the man who had moulded him into an astounding student of languages.

  ‘May I go now, Sir?’

  ‘Yes, Wardlaw. You are dismissed.’

  He bowed again, that odd solemn bow of his, and went to his dormitory. For once it was empty — every boy in the school engaged with parents and teachers.

  Jackdaw sat down on his bed and took from the depths of his jacket’s most cavernous pocket the old green marble which had, just once, transported him into a world in which a laughing family of children had played naked in the river. He had never seen her — the foxfire girl — since. Nor had he even dreamed of her. It was as if she had, after that incredible happening, gone from him for good.

  He wondered if he had stopped himself from being clear sighted. If that last frightening vision of a coffin lid closing had been too much to stand and his mind had rebelled. He had seen it in the shine of a copper pan hanging in Sutton Place’s kitchen on the night of Sam Clopper’s disappearance, and had known then that Sam was dead. But when the people from the estate had dragged the river and beaten the forest Jackdaw had been unable to help them; his ancient power gone away, apparently by his own command.

  Now, almost out of habit, he raised the glass sphere to his eye. Immediately, as if to answer all the questions he had just been asking himself, Helen was there — and he could see in a single glance that she was battling for her life. Her white face lay on its lace pillow, cold and clammy with an evil sweat, her breathing shallow and laboured. A doctor hung over her anxiously — his ear to her heart — holding her thin and childlike wrist in his fingers and then shaking his head.

  Jackdaw sprang to his feet, knowing at once what he must do.

  ‘Stop General Wardlaw’s carriage,’ he shouted to a startled fellow pupil coming through the door. ‘Go on man, run. Can’t you see I’m bloody lame?’

  But for all that he was not far behind the boy as the General’s horses reared in the traces and pulled to a halt.

  ‘What the devil’s going on?’ Wardlaw seemed to have retreated behind his whiskers in his annoyance.

  ‘It’s Mother, Sir — she’s dying.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s dying.’

  Without further explanation his son put his good foot on to the wheel and heaved himself within.

  ‘Has there been a message to the school?’

  ‘Yes,’ answered Jackdaw tersely. ‘Yes, there has.’ He turned on his father a glaring fierce look that had a hint of danger at its heart. ‘Now drive on, Sir. At once, Sir.’

  ‘But ...’

  ‘Say nothing. We are leaving for Hastings.’

  And with that Jackdaw leant abruptly across his father — as if he cared not a damn for him nor the protesting sounds that were coming from his lips — and shouted in the coachman’s ear, ‘Make haste. Mrs Wardlaw is within hours of her death.’

  In the face of such remorseless determination his father could do nothing but sit in impotent silence as they sped off into the summer evening.

  4

  That night the sea and the sky were all one, merged into a bowl of sapphire with nothing to light them but the star of Venus arm in arm with a crescent moon. Beneath, the waves did not stir, warmed into a summer daze by the heat of the newly dead day. There was nothing to awaken them, nothing to disturb their eternal tranquillity but man, the great despoiler, himself.

  And as Jackdaw’s carriage rounded the bend of the lantern-lit sweep that led to his house beneath the cliffs, his head turned for a moment to God’s eter
nal message, spelled out so simply by the chant of the sea, the chorus of the universe.

  But this night he could not be part of it, did not care for the huge incomprehensible signal that was being so relentlessly voiced by the whole vast concept. For he was as sure as he had breath that Helen’s identical twin had come for her; that Melanie had tired of being alone in the shadows and had come forth, laughing and teasing, to take her other self with her. In fact he almost saw her as he stepped through the front door, a swish of argent taffeta upon the top stair before he looked again and saw it was not there.

  As Jackdaw went in, Helen’s room was full of the scent of hyacinths and everywhere was a rushing and rustling of darting cold currents.

  ‘Melanie?’ said Jackdaw.

  She did not answer him but the pendants of the glass chandeliers tinkled together like laughter.

  ‘Melanie, you can’t have her. This is a wicked trick you’re playing.’

  There was no response save for the guttering of the candle that stood by Helen’s bed and a shifting of the bed cover. A cold invisible hand was laid upon his arm and a voice as light as a leaf seemed to say, ‘But she and I are one.’

  ‘You do not share the same soul, Melanie,’ he answered softly.

  The curtains swished and blew outwards and Jackdaw felt a touch of panic. The spirit of his aunt was determined to have that of his mother for its companion. As if she had heard something Helen gave a tiny sigh and her eyelids slowly flicked open. Jackdaw caught her up into his arms and said in an urgent tone, ‘Mother, please. If you can hear me at all just say these two words — “Melanie, begone.” Say them, I implore you.’

  She stared at him lifelessly.

  ‘Just say them if you want to live. Here, I’ll help you sit up. Just whisper them, mouth them, anything.’

  Helen leant against him. ‘Melanie ... be ... gone.’

  The sound was an agonized, barely audible rasp and after she had finished speaking she collapsed unconscious once more.

  But the room had gone cold as midnight. There was no sound except that of rustling taffeta and just for a second Jackdaw caught a glimpse of swirling silver. Then the bedroom door flung open of its own volition and a second or two later he heard the front door hurl open — and then close. Melanie had left the house for ever.