The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (35 page)

With luck, no-one would see her leave. Jocelyn had gone off to Kingston early that morning; Great-Aunt May was taking her afternoon rest; Clemency’s spinal irritation had kept her in bed in a fog of laudanum; and Sinclair had gone to town on business of his own. Sophie was fast asleep in the gallery. Yesterday’s trip to town with Jocelyn had been an enormous success, but since then she’d become silent and withdrawn, and was clearly worn out. Madeleine had given her one of Dr Pritchard’s new sleeping powders, and told Rebecca to sit with her until she returned.

By the time the house was finally quiet, it was four in the afternoon. Madeleine calculated that it would take her about an hour to ride to Eden. That should leave her with just enough time to say her piece to Cameron, and make it back before Sinclair returned.

She told Jessie to run to the stables and have Doshey saddle her horse, but to wait for her in the stable-yard, rather than coming round to the front of the house. Then she went to her room and changed into her riding habit. She was astonished that she could act so calmly, when inside she felt hollow with apprehension.

Nearly a week had gone by since the ball at Parnassus, and with every day that passed she felt worse about deceiving him. She had tried to tell herself that he deserved to be lied to. Hadn’t he written that note to Cousin Lettice? Hadn’t he washed his hands of Ainsley’s children? Hadn’t he?

It didn’t work. He had been honest with her, and she must be honest with him. She must tell him who she was. Then he could make of it what he would, and she could put it all behind her, and begin again.

She finished pinning on her hat, and grabbed her dust-coat and riding-crop from the bed. She cast a last glance round the room. From the oxblood hangings, a baleful Monroe serpent met her eye.

When I next see you, she told it silently, someone else will know the truth. She wasn’t sure if that made her feel better or worse.

She slipped out through the back of the house and took the walkway past the cook-house to the stables, attracting curious glances from the helpers, which she ignored.

Doshey was waiting in the stable-yard with Kestrel, the little grey mare which Jocelyn had given her when he’d taught her to ride. The groom was shaking his head. ‘You better hurry wid dat ride, Miss Maddy. Rain go come in a hour or so.’

He was right. The air was hot and heavy, the eastern sky thickening to a dirty grey as she put Kestrel into a trot along the track that led south, along the muddy little stream they called the Green River. The track was narrow and uneven, but sheltered from prying eyes by giant bamboo. Not even Great-Aunt May would see her leave.

After a mile or so, the track emerged into the open cane-pieces of Bellevue, on the south-eastern borders of the estate. On any other day she would have enjoyed the ride: the wind in her face; the young cane shivering in the breeze; the mare’s smooth-running power beneath her. This afternoon she scarcely noticed. She kept wondering what Cameron would say when she told him. What he would think of her.

After half an hour she saw the ancient guango tree which marked the turning into the Eden road, and reined in sharply. She had the strangest feeling that so long as she remained on Fever Hill land, she could still turn back; but that once she was out on the Eden road, her path would be set.

She glanced back over her shoulder. Then she put Kestrel forward again.

But as she was nearing the guango tree, a figure stepped away from the trunk and moved out into the road. It stood there unmoving, waiting for her.

She was still too far away to make out his face. He looked like a field-hand, in dungarees and tattered straw hat – and yet something about him was sharply familiar. More than a boy but not quite a man, the thin face was wary and unsmiling as he watched her approach.

Her stomach turned over. No, she thought. It can’t be.

‘Hello, Madlin,’ said Ben.

She’s not pleased to see him like Sophie, he can tell. She’s horrified. Or maybe scared. Maybe she thinks he’s after money; that he wants paying, for not telling no-one about them photos.

He should of stayed hid. She’s a grand lady now, with a feather in her hat and her glossy white horse. What’s she want with him?

And she’s in a hurry, too, like she’s off somewheres important. Out of breath, horse in a lather; quick look up the road, quick frown at the sky. Ben Kelly’s just in the way.

He’d hoped that maybe she’d be a little bit glad to see him. Course, she’s got no reason to be. Just like he’s got no reason to be seeing her, neither. In fact he’s got every reason
not
to be seeing her, what with her being married to the parson and all. But he couldn’t stay hid and let her ride past. Not Madeleine.

He watches her bring her horse about, and jump down. ‘
Ben
,’ she says in that low voice of hers. ‘God.
Ben
.’

Without thinking, he takes the bridle from her and calms the horse down a bit, and ties it to a tree root. Makes a pig’s ear of that, and all. Fingers shaking so much he can’t hardly tie a knot. It’s like he’s got the jitters or something.

‘Ben,’ she says again. ‘What are you
doing
here?’

He chucks his hat under the tree where the horse can’t get at it, and shoves his hands in his pockets and shrugs. ‘Sophie didn’t tell you nothing, then.’

‘Sophie? What do you mean?’

‘Saw her in Falmouth, didn’t I? Outside the courthouse.’ He tries to grin. ‘Ben Kelly sitting on a bench outside a courthouse. Fancy that.’

She don’t smile back.

‘Anyway,’ he goes, ‘what was Sophie doing there in the first place? I never thought to ask her, and all.’ He knows he’s talking too quick, but he can’t stop hisself. He feels like he’s got to keep talking, it don’t matter what about, or he’s going to crack wide open.

She’s watching him with her big dark eyes, and maybe she guesses why he’s rabbiting on, cos she goes along with it for a bit. ‘She was waiting for Jocelyn,’ she says. ‘He was at a magistrates’ meeting. But tell me about—’

‘Jocelyn. That the old bloke? The one she calls Uncle Jocelyn?’

She nods.

‘Is he your grandpa, then?’

She shoots a glance over her shoulder, like she thinks there might be someone watching her or something. ‘Yes,’ she goes. ‘My father was his son. Ainsley Monroe.’

He spits. Scuffs dust over it with his foot. ‘Only that grandpa of yours don’t know that yet. I’ll bet.’

‘Nobody knows.’

‘Not even Sophie?’

She shakes her head.

Behind them the horse is kicking up a fuss, like a hornet’s got at it or something, so he goes over and talks to it to calm it down.

A rumble of thunder up ahead. They’re in for a storm. He watches her looking up at the sky. She wants to be off. It gives him a turn to see how much. Cos he don’t want her to go. He
really
don’t. It’s like he’s a nipper again, and scared of the dark; scared of being left all alone. Sod it, what’s wrong with him? She’s not his big sister or nothing, she’s just some toff who went and married the parson.

‘Ben?’ she goes. ‘Where’s Robbie?’

He opens his mouth to fob her off, but no sound comes out. Nothing. Sod all. Just opens and shuts his mouth like a bloody fish.

‘Ben? What’s the matter? What happened? Where’s Robbie?’

He backs away from her and trips on this tree root and sits down hard. The horse puts down its head and gives him a sniff, and he just sits there gaping like a fish.

She gets down on her knees beside him in the dust. She don’t seem to care about her posh riding-frock and her shiny riding-boots, and that. And up close, she’s not the grand lady no more, she’s just Madeleine.

He takes this big gulp of air to steady hisself, and then he tells her everything. Funny, that. Right up until he starts, he don’t know that he’s going to do it. But she’s Madeleine, she’s a big sister – not
his
big sister, but
a
big sister – so out it all comes.

He tells her how the parson paid this bloke to follow him and Robbie back to Shelton Street, to see where they lived, and then called the bluebottles and fingered them for a click: a big one, with silver plate and all. When he gets to the bit about Robbie getting killed, he can’t look at her no more. He just looks at this tree root, all knobby and twisted, with these little brown ants running up and down, and he hears his voice telling her what happened, and it’s like it’s not Ben Kelly talking, but somebody else.

And then he’s past Robbie, and out the other side to the docks and the
Marianne
and that. But even then he can’t stop, it’s like he’s a train or something, chugging along. He tells her about the gun and the bullets and the plan. The only thing he don’t tell about is that little darkie that was Sophie’s mate and died, in case it gets Sophie into trouble.

When he gets to the end he’s shivering like it’s the middle of winter, even though it’s stinking hot. She tries to put her hand on his shoulder but he twitches away. If she touches him he’ll crack into pieces. That’s what it feels like. Like he’ll smash into little pieces in the dust.

Gently, like she’s talking to a baby, she says, ‘Oh, Ben. I’m so terribly sorry.’

He spits. ‘Well,’ he goes. ‘Way of the world.’

There’s a silence. High above them a john crow does a circle in the sky, then pushes off. The horse puts down its head to cough.

‘Ben,’ she goes, and this time she sounds different. More grown-up. ‘The gun. Show me the gun.’

He don’t even think about refusing. Gets up and goes to the tree and finds the special place, and takes it out. Unwraps it and lays it between them in the dust.

She looks at it without touching. ‘Do you know how to use this?’

He nods. He’s got the bullets now. Even done a bit of target practice down by the river. That pigeon, it just dropped down dead out of that guinep tree. No squawk, no nothing. Just dropped down dead.

‘You can’t, Ben,’ she says in her low voice. ‘You can’t do this.’

‘Yes I can. I—’

‘No. No. Listen to me. I’m not thinking about Sinclair, God forgive me for that. I’m thinking of you. You’d be caught, Ben. They’d hang you for it.’

He tries to shrug. ‘Who cares?’

She fixes him with her dark eyes. ‘Robbie,’ she goes. ‘Robbie cares.’

He jerks back like she’s hit him in the face. ‘Robbie’s dead,’ he snarls.

‘But what if he weren’t? What if it were the other way round, Ben? What if you were the one who’d fallen from that roof, and he was the one who’d survived?’

‘What you on about?’

‘What if Robbie had lived, Ben, and found his way out here? Would you want him to stay alive and make something of his life? Or would you want him to get himself hanged?’

Ben don’t answer. He can’t, can he? He’s got something stuck in his throat. Great big lump of something, like a bit of crust, stuck in his throat. ‘R-Robbie’, he blurts out, ‘would of never
got
out here. Not on his own. Silly little b-bugger.’

She puts her hand on his back and smoothes it up and down, and he wants to tell her to lay off, but he can’t. He can’t say nothing on account of that lump.

And all of a sudden it comes so strong upon him that he can’t hold it back no more. Right up from deep inside him it comes, and cracks him wide open. It’s like a butcher’s taken a chopper to his chest and split him right down the wishbone, and out come these great big jerky hee-hawing sobs, over and over, till his ribs ache something awful, and his throat’s all sore, and he can’t stop for nothing, he just can’t, and it
hurts
, ah fuck but it hurts.

Madeleine wrapped the revolver in her scarf and stowed it gingerly in her saddlebag. She had no idea what she was going to do with it; give it to Cameron, perhaps. All she knew was that it was imperative to get the thing away from Ben. His strange, half-baked, suicidal notion of murder would only get him killed.

He had finally stopped those terrible wrenching sobs, and was sitting hunched on the ground, clasping his knees, and still shaking, his long black eyelashes still spiky with tears. He looked thin and young and utterly spent: his face pale beneath its tan, his eyes a watery emerald.

She could understand how he had fastened on Sinclair as someone to blame. He’d needed to make sense of his brother’s death, and couldn’t bring himself to accept it for what it really was: a terrible accident. But this bizarre notion of ‘paying back the parson’ could get him killed or deported, or thrown into prison at the very least. She wondered if she’d managed to talk him out of it.

Hunched amid the tree roots, he looked so alone, and so completely out of his depth. How could she ride off and leave him?

But she could hardly ask Jocelyn to give him a job at Fever Hill. That would be the worst possible thing for him, given his strange delusion about Sinclair.

She had tried to give him money, but been snarlingly rejected. He was doing all right, he told her. This country was easy pickings. Plenty to click. Even the odd job here and there. He was in clover, he was.

She didn’t believe a word of it. He looked as if he hadn’t eaten for weeks. And what was worse, he looked as if he didn’t care.

A flurry of wind stirred the Spanish moss in the guango tree. She glanced up at the sky. The rain was approaching fast. If she didn’t go soon, it would be too late, and she’d have to turn back.

‘Here,’ she said. She knelt beside him and took her card-case from her pocket and wrote a few words on the back of one of her cards. ‘This is the address of a good friend of mine in Falmouth. Mrs Olivia Herapath. Go and see her as soon as you can. She’ll find you a job. I’ll send her a line, so that she’ll know to expect you.’

He wiped his nose on the back of his hand, and took the card and scowled at it.

‘She knows everyone,’ Madeleine said. ‘She’ll find you a job. Perhaps something in a stable, where you can work with horses.’ The inadequacy of that made her flush with shame. But she couldn’t think of anything more to do.

She watched him read the card to himself, his lips silently moving.