The Love Child (15 page)

How quickly everything could change! I had been so happy. I had dreamed of our going to France together, living there so blissfully happy, and coming back later…

husband and wife.

I should never know peace again. I had lost my dear one. My life was finished. There could never be any happiness for me again.

I could not eat. I could sleep only fitfully and then I was haunted by nightmares.

In these I was at the scaffold. I saw the executioner with that beautiful, well-loved head in his hands-a head without a body. The voice echoed through my dreams: “Behold the head of a traitor.”

He was no traitor. He was just a good, kind man … the man I loved.

I thought: My life is finished. I shall never be happy again.

Harriet was wonderful to me. She looked after me through those weeks. She would not allow me to return home.

Gradually I learned what had happened and it did not relieve my misery to know that I was responsible for his capture.

It was Harriet who broke it to me. “You’ll have to know how they were led to him,”

she said. “Now you mustn’t blame yourself in any way. You gave him the greatest happiness any one person can give another. I know that. You loved him and he loved you. So you must

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not fret. You will grow out of this. One does. You remember the ring he gave you.

. . plighting your troth?”

“The ring!” I cried. “Yes, the ring. It will be there beneath the court cupboard.

I shall treasure it forever.”

“You will never see it again, my child.”

“What do you mean, Harriet?”

“It was not behind the cupboard.”

“Then it was found! But it couldn’t have been. I searched everywhere.”

“Your mother has told me what happened. She took a dress from the cupboard and gave it to Chastity to lengthen or alter in some way. Chastity was to take it home with her. She went into the kitchen to have a word with her mother. The dress was over her arm, I imagine. There was a ring caught up in the lace.”

I felt sick with misery. Why had I not examined the dress! Why had I been so foolish, so careless as to have deluded myself into thinking the ring had fallen behind the cupboard!

“Jasper was in the kitchen at the time,” went on Harriet.

“Oh, no, no no!” I cried.

“Alas, yes. He seized the ring. He thinks all such baubles sinful. He examined it, saw the crest and the name inside. Then it was remembered that food had disappeared from the pantry … and conclusions were drawn. He told no one in the house what he intended to do. He took the ring to London and went to see Titus Gates.”

“I hate Jasper,” I cried. “I hate his black, bigoted soul.”

“He said he was doing his duty. Of course you can guess what happened. You were under suspicion immediately. Your parents did not know about it then because Jasper had acted without telling anyone. Oates’s men wanted to know where you had gone and that led them here. They have been asking questions in the neighbourhood. They discovered that a young actor calling himself John Frisby was here. The description fitted Jocelyn.”

“Did they come here, Harriet?”

“They did not because I had friends who did not wish to involve me. So they took him after he had left, and there have been no inquiries about our involvement. I daresay your father had something to do with it, too. You are only a child so they would not be harsh with you … particularly when you have a father who is so friendly with the King. So, dear Priscilla, this tragedy has struck you. You have lost your first lover but you must learn that life goes on. You are so young. You do not yet really know what it means to love.”

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“I do, Harriet. Oh, I do.”

She took my hands and looked at me searchingly. “My poor child,” was all she said.

Then she put her arms about me gently, as though I were a baby.

“You know you have me always, Priscilla,” she said.

“Yes, I know it.”

“Now you must not fret.”

“I shall never forget that it was my carelessness which brought them to him.”

“He should never have given you the ring in the first place. He brought it on himself.

It was too obvious a form of identification. But it is done. Dear Priscilla, in time you will have to go home. They will expect it.”

“I know, Harriet. I wish I could stay with you.”

“You must come back soon.”

“At home… they know…”

“They know, of course, that he gave you the ring.”

“My father will be very angry.”

“He has had his adventures. He has done what he wanted to. And so have you. As for helping the fugitive, you were not the only one, were you? Leigh, Edwin, myself…

we were all involved.”

“Oh, Harriet, you are so good!”

She laughed. “You might find a number of people to disagree with you on that point.

A good woman is a compliment rarely applied to me. But I know how to live, how to enjoy life. I don’t want trouble for myself, nor for others. Perhaps that is rather a good way of living -so I may be good after all.”

I clung to her, for into my misery had crept a new emotion: a dread of going home.

But I realized I had to face it.

I would soon be fifteen years old and I had already had a lover. Was that so unusual?

He would have been my husband had he lived.

I shall never marry now, I thought. I have been married all but ceremonially to the one I loved and whom I shall love forever.

Christabel was with me a great deal. She seemed to have grown more fond of me in my misfortune. Perhaps those hard days at the rectory and Edwin’s lack of purpose seemed less tragic now that she could compare her lot with mine.

On the day before we were due to leave for Eversleigh, I went down to the gardens and walked round. There was a faint mist in the air which reminded me of that other day.

One of the gardeners was digging, and as I approached he leaned on his spade and looked in my direction.

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“Good day to you, Mistress Priscilla,” he said.

I returned his greeting.

“You be leaving us I hear, mistress.”

“Yes,” I said.

” ‘Twere a sad matter,” he went on. “There’s many of us here as would like to see that Titus Gates get a taste of his own medicine, that we would. Oh, yes, ‘twere a terrible business. If only the mist hadn’t come up so bad you’d a been back that day and your gentleman would have been over the seas afore they got here. Why did you go out, mistress, when I warned you?”

“Warned me? Warned me of what?”

“I’ve lived in these parts all my life and that’s nigh on fifty years. I can tell what the weather’s going to be … and never wrong … well once or twice maybe.

I said there’ll be heavy mist long before nightfall. Unless the wind comes up sudden … which it can do, winds being something you can’t count on. Given no wind, though, that mist will be in from the sea and Eyot will be wrapped up in it. ‘Don’t you go out today, mistress,’ I said.”

“You didn’t tell me. I didn’t see you on that day.”

“No. ‘Twas the other one. She were going, weren’t she? There was to be the three.

Mary said she’d make a hamper for three.”

So he had told Christabel!

“Yes, I see that we shouldn’t have gone,” I said. “Good day to you, Jem.”

“Good day to you, mistress. And I’ll look to see you again hi happier times.”

I went into the house. I wondered why Christabel had not told me that she had been warned about the mist. How very strange.

Of course she had a raging headache. Perhaps it had made her forget. Hardly that, though, when the headache was the reason why she had decided not to come. Surely the thought of our going must have reminded her.

It seemed strange, so I sought her out at once and asked her.

She flushed painfully and her mouth moved with emotion.

“I have suffered such remorse,” she said. “I did see Jem and he did mention the mist.

My head was throbbing. I only remembered it when you didn’t come back. I feel responsible …”

“It’s no use worrying now,” I said. “It’s over and done. He is dead. He is lost to me forever.”

“But if you had not gone to the island he would have got away in time.”

“Yes. If I had not lost the ring … If I had not taken it hi the 99

first place … So many ifs, Christabel. But what is the use of all this remorse?

It’s over. There is no going back. I have lost him forever.”

My father was away when I returned to Eversleigh Court. I think my mother was relieved.

She was anxious and sympathetic, I knew, but at the same tune deeply shocked that I could have become so involved in such a dangerous situation without her knowledge.

The very first day she sought an opportunity to be alone with me and she wanted to hear everything that had happened. I was so distressed that I found it difficult to talk at first.

I could only keep saying: “I loved him. I loved him. And now they have killed him.”

She took me into her embrace as she used to when I was very young, but I did not feel comforted, only impatient. It was almost as though she thought it was a matter of “kiss and make better” as it had been when I had fallen and scratched myself.

“Dearest Cilia,” she murmured, “you are young … so young.”

I wanted to shake myself free of her. I wanted to say: I am not young. I am grown up. Some people are, you know, at fifteen-and I am nearly that. I have loved. I have lived. And I am not a child anymore.

She went on talking. “It seemed very romantic. He was very goodlooking, I believe.

And the way he came here. … He had no right to come.”

“He was looking for Edwin. Edwin was his friend.”

“Edwin should not have tried to hide him.”

“What should he have done? Given him up to that brute Titus Gates?”

She was silent, stroking my hair.

“You know your father is most put out. You know his feelings.”

“He has never shown me much of his feelings,” I said. “All he showed me was indifference.”

“My dear child …”

I cried: “It’s no use talking to you. You don’t understand. Jocelyn came here. We helped him. We’re not ashamed of it. We’d to it again … all of us. He and I fell in love. We planned to marry.”

“Oh, my darling! But it’s all over now. We must try to make you forget.”

“Do you think I shall ever forget!”

“Yes, my dearest, you will. I know how it feels now.”

“You do not know and I wish you would stop talking about it. I 100

have nothing to say to you. You don’t understand hi the least. Harriet…”

“Harriet, of course, understood perfectly.”

“Harriet was wonderful to me.”

“And kept him there and sent for you! It’s what one would expect of Harriet. She is completely without thought for others.”

“I don’t agree.”

“Oh, she fascinates you as she does everyone else. I know that.”

“Harriet has been kind to me. I shall never forget what she has done for me. Please, Mother, leave me alone. I want to be by myself.”

The reproachful look she gave me touched me deeply and I threw myself into her arms.

She did not say anything. She just held me and it was as it had always been between us.

Carl was very upset by what had happened. It was his first experience of real grief and I loved him for it. He just looked at me blankly and said: “They can’t have done that to Jocelyn!”

I turned away and he came and took my hand and pressed it.

“I wish I’d been there,” he said. “I wouldn’t have let it happen. You ought to have told me he was with Aunt Harriet.”

“There was nothing you could have done, Carl, nothing.”

“I hate Titus Gates.”

“So do countless others.”

Oddly enough Carl comforted me more than my mother had been able to.

My father returned and he was very cool towards me. He hardly addressed me at all during the first evening. During the next day I went into the gardens and he followed me there.

“A nice mess you got yourself into,” he said.

I looked at him defiantly. “In what way?” I asked.

“Don’t be silly. You know what I’m talking about. This romantic adventure of yours.

Fools … the whole lot of you. You particularly. Taking an incriminating ring and then leaving it for others to find.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” I retorted.

“One would have to be half-witted not to. A pretty young man comes along and you think it would be great fun to hide him and feed him and accept a ring from him with his crest and name on it. And he is suspected of taking part in a plot against the King’s life.”

“You know very well that there was no plot. You know it was fabricated by this friend of yours … this Titus Oates.”

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He seized me by the wrist and I cried out in pain. His grip was like iron.

“He is no friend of mine,” he said. “I despise the man. But I have the sense not to entertain those against whom he brings accusations. Who can say who will be the next? And, by God, we might have been! You could have put the whole family into danger.

It has not been easy extricating you, I can tell you. All this trouble because of a silly girl’s prank.”

“It was no prank.” I jerked myself free. “And I would do it again.”

“I shall have something to say to the others when I see them. If they want to risk their lives that’s their own affair, but they should not have involved a foolish girl who could bring trouble tumbling about our ears with great risk to our necks, I might tell you.”

“So you blame me for everything?”

“If you had taken his ring you should at least have kept it hidden.”

“It was an accident.”

He laughed. “I’m sure it was. Now a word in your ear. If you attempt any more of these follies don’t rely on me to get you out of them.”

“I’m surprised that you bothered.”

“It was necessary to save us all.”

I turned away and ran into the house. I shut myself in my room. I had never felt so unhappy in all my life. If only he had given me one word of tenderness. If only he had been concerned for me! But he had made me feel that had I alone been involved he would not have taken the trouble to save me.