Whispering (7 page)

‘Whereas you feel free to pull the wool over the eyes of a mere Protestant!' She saw she had made him angry, and knew it for a mistake. She needed to know about their plans for her. ‘Forgive me. It was the shock. I have thought of Mr Craddock only as a cousin. And he is not a well man, father.'

‘I know. The falling sickness. Here on some wild goose chase for a cure from that American charlatan, Miss Emerson. That is why your father and I thought it best to offer you an alternative. I hope you see what a great deal of thought we have put into your unfortunate position.'

‘I do indeed, father. I promise you, I am doing my very best to be grateful. And who is the alternative you have to offer?'

‘Frank Ware. You must have met him, I should think, as a child. He was finishing at Eton when the French invaded the first time. His parents got out on the last boat, and I am afraid
their affairs were not luckily handled for them in their absence. Some say that old Mr Ware died of the shock when he got back and found just how bad things were. His wife sent for young Frank from Cambridge. He's no fool, that young man. He saw how bad things were and set his mind to practical ways of improving them. There would be no difficulty about your continuing to practise your faith, and bringing up the children in it. And Ware would be happy to join his name with yours.'

‘You mean you have talked to him about it?' Now she could not help letting her fury show.

‘Of course. What did you imagine? So long as the young man likes you well enough, and I can see no problem about that. Mind you, if you had arrived on the best of terms with your cousin, Mr Craddock, we might have been prepared to think again. But it does not seem as if that is the case.'

‘No. I do not propose to marry, father. Or rather, I look upon myself as already married.'

‘Absurd.' And then. ‘You can't mean – no, impossible.'

‘In the eyes of God,' she said bleakly, and knew she had made him angry again.

‘Childish nonsense. Put it out of your mind, Caterina, and listen to the last alternative I am authorised to put before you. If indeed you do not feel yourself fit to marry, and I would respect you for such feelings, there is, naturally, another path open to you: the veil. Your father is prepared to dower your entry into the convent of the Little Sisters of St Seraphina, here in Porto.'

‘The silent order! Never.'

‘These are your choices, daughter. If you have been deluding yourself with the idea that your father considers leaving his fortune to you as a single woman, to play ducks and drakes with as you please, I beg you to put it out of your mind once and for all.'

‘Thank you, father,' she said. ‘You have made things very clear to me. The past may be forgotten, as you say, but it is not forgiven. I will think hard about what you have said to me. And now, if you will excuse me, I find myself a little fatigued by my journey.'

One evening with Father Pedro and Senhor Gomez was quite enough for Jeremy Craddock. The two girls stayed almost totally silent throughout the frugal meal. Jeremy did not blame Harriet for seeming overwhelmed by the company, but he was surprised by Caterina's unaccustomed silence. She did not come to his help when her father and the priest joined in baiting him about the inadequate support they felt the British government was giving to Portugal. Too little, they called it, and too late. He was quietly fuming when they turned to Wellington and dismissed him as a do-nothing Indian general who had retired, they said, to sulk behind the lines of Torres Vedras, leaving the town of Coimbra to its fate. But he held his tongue, and promised himself to find lodgings and move out next day.

To his relief, Gomez did not appear at breakfast and Caterina seemed to have emerged from the cloud that had surrounded her the night before. She enquired kindly about his health, and told him she had found out where the Emersons lived. ‘You'll never find it by yourself, cousin. They live in one of the alleys below the cathedral, not the town's most elegant district. I'll send a servant to show you the way; he speaks a little English.'

When he thanked her and went on to say that he hoped to find himself somewhere to lodge, she smiled at last. ‘I don't blame you, cousin,' she told him. ‘I only wish I could do likewise. I am afraid it won't be easy, though, here in Porto. Now I know how things go on in England I can see why the British are so rude about our
estalagems
– our inns. Porto holds nothing to compare with that splendid inn at Falmouth! Oh, what a happy, hopeful time that was.'

‘Indeed it was.' Jeremy suddenly felt immensely sorry for Caterina, condemned to the company of her dour father and his attendant priest, with only Harriet for support. Just the same: ‘I am glad you have Miss Brown with you,' he told her.

‘And so am I! I owe a great debt to you and Mother Agnes and your concern with the proprieties.'

Something in her tone made him anxious for her. ‘Cousin Caterina, if things do not go right for you here, if you ever felt the need of my help, you would ask for it, would not you? I'm your mother's kin, after all. I have been thinking about her since I saw her sitting room yesterday. It must have been so strange for her, coming to live here.'

‘Do you know,' she told him, ‘I have been thinking of her too. And, thank you, cousin, I'll remember your kindness.'

Jeremy enjoyed the morning walk through the teeming city. They crossed a large, noisy, open marketplace where black-clad country women shouted their diverse wares. The piles of eggs, scrawny, cackling hens and lavish heaps of fruit and vegetables made him wonder about the difficulty the English troops were said to be having in feeding themselves off the countryside. He must come back here on his own. But first he must get to work. They had left the market now and were climbing a narrow, ill-paved street of what looked like a better class of shop.

‘Rua são Antonio,' said his guide, confirming this. ‘And that is Santa Caterina, where the
fidalgo
ladies order their clothes. But we go this way. The cathedral is up there –' Pointing to another tangle of alleyways thronged with people and overhung with grimy-looking washing.

‘I can't see it.' Jeremy stood aside as two sedan chairs confronted each other in the narrow road, followed by a torrent of oaths from the porters.

‘Of course not. There are no long views in Porto. It is built too close. That is why you need a guide,
senhor
.' He turned into a narrow alley slanting downhill, and Jeremy, who had always prided himself on his sense of direction, knew he was totally lost.

‘This is the house.' The man rapped at a door set in a tiled wall. ‘I will wait, of course, and see the
senhor
back.'

‘Thank you.' Jeremy had given up hope of being independent for a while.

The door swung open on to a dark stairway, lit from somewhere far above. A handsome young black woman greeted Jeremy in lilting, fluent English and led the way upstairs.

Two steep and noisome flights up, she flung open a door and ushered him into a blaze of light. Dazzled for a moment, he remembered to put his hand to his brow, as if in pain, then advanced into the surprising room. Brilliantly whitewashed, it was hung with coloured shawls of green and blue and azure to give the impression of some fantastic under-sea cave. The light came from a balconied window, where a woman was standing, looking out.

‘Mr Craddock.' She came to him out of the light, like a revelation. ‘I am so very glad to see you.' She held out a slim hand and he held it for a long moment, gazing at her.

‘But you are young!' She was not only much younger than he was expecting, she was beautiful, with the frail, pale elegance of a wood nymph, a water sprite. Pale golden hair hung unfashionably to frame the ivory face with its huge grey eyes.

She was smiling at him with pale coral lips. ‘Is that so terrible, Mr Craddock?'

‘It is a great surprise. I had imagined –' He paused. What had he imagined?

‘A crone? A sybil with three teeth and tangled grey hair? I am sorry to disappoint you, Mr Craddock, and in fact I have to return the compliment. We had thought you an older man, my
brother and I, from what Senhor Gomez said. So what's to do? You see, I much prefer to work entirely alone with my patients; it is a very personal business, as I am sure you will understand. But I am afraid we may start tongues wagging here in gossipy Porto if we do so. My brother suggests he sits with us and pretends to be made of stone, but the trouble is he is something of a cynic where my gift is concerned. I am afraid I could not hope to succeed with him present, however quiet he kept.'

‘No, I can quite understand that. But, Miss Emerson, how can I let you … It is you the talk would harm …' Should he suggest that Caterina or Harriet might act as chaperone? But to have either of them there, listening, would make things impossibly difficult.

‘Oh, talk!' She shrugged it off. ‘A gift like mine is bound to draw talk, Mr Craddock. I am afraid I have got used to it. We plan to go back to the United States soon, my brother and I, and the Atlantic is a wide ocean. I doubt Portuguese tattle will follow me there. Or Anglo-Portuguese for that matter. So come, sit down here.' She gestured to a small and surprisingly comfortable-looking sofa. ‘Now tell me what your trouble is.' She herself had sat down at a little writing table, and Jeremy was sorry. He had very much hoped that she would sit beside him. What in the world was happening to him?

‘Miss Emerson,' he sat on the edge of the sofa, ‘before we begin, should we not – forgive me – should we not discuss terms?'

‘Terms?' She made it sound as vulgar as he felt. ‘Forgive me, Mr Craddock, my brother is not here at the moment, or he would have explained to you. Mine is a gift from God. It is not a question of terms, but one of healing. What you arrange with my brother is no concern of mine. Now, sit at your ease, Mr Craddock, and tell me about yourself.'

It was dangerously easy to talk to her. She had pen and paper beside her, but did not write, just sat quite still, the small, firm chin cupped in those siren's hands, holding him in the focus of amber-flecked grey eyes.

He stumbled through his prepared brief as well as he could, feeling ashamed of himself as he did so. How could he deceive this ethereal creature? And, more to the point, would he be able to?

Rachel Emerson listened in sympathetic silence as he told her about the childhood fall, the long spell of unconsciousness, and the increasingly frequent seizures that followed. ‘It has made it impossible for me to serve in the army, as I wished,' he ended his tale, ‘and of course marriage must be out of the question.' Now why had he said that? It was not in his brief.

‘I see.' What did she see? She rose and for a moment he thought she had seen through his story and was about to order him to leave. But instead she moved across the room to stand behind him. ‘No, no, don't get up. I am not a woman now, Mr Craddock, but a healer.' He felt her slim, strong hands at the back of his neck.

‘Ah, yes,' she said. ‘An absolute nest of vipers. Take off your jacket, Mr Craddock, and your cravat, please, while I close the shutters. You find the light trying, do you not? It is always better to work in twilight. Close your eyes, if you please, and think of some happy place where you have been. In your childhood, perhaps?'

‘Mine was not a happy childhood.' He had shrugged himself out of the well-fitted jacket, glad that he had never risen to the services of a valet, and gladder still that he had put on a clean shirt that morning.

‘I am sorry.' She had closed the shutters now and the room was more like a deep-sea cave than ever. ‘But there must have been some happy times, some happy places.' She was behind him again, her hands finding tensions at the back of his neck that he had not known existed. They moved gently upwards and through the close-cropped hair to his temples. ‘No, no,' she said. ‘Don't think about your hair, Mr Craddock, think of that happy place, be quiet there.'

He had indeed been wishing he had washed his hair that morning and was deeply disconcerted. How long was he going to be able to keep up his pretence with this sorceress? A happy place? He found himself thinking of something Caterina had
said that morning about their happy time at Falmouth. It was true. It had been happy, that carefree walk along the cliffs, with the larks singing above. It had been a halcyon moment, the three of them easy together, good companions.

‘That is better,' said the soothing voice from behind him. ‘Keep your thoughts there, keep them calm, keep them gentle. Then I think I will be able to help you.' Her hands were quite still now, and, to his amazement, he began to feel something communicate itself from them to him, a warmth, a tingling … He had studied Dr Mesmer's theories of animal magnetism and electrical currents for the purposes of this charade, and had dismissed the whole thing as charlatan's rubbish. So what was happening to him now?

‘Don't fight it, Mr Craddock.' Her voice seemed to come from far away. ‘I cannot help you if you fight me. And you do need help, though maybe not the help you thought you needed.' The gentle fingers moved down over his forehead and eyes. ‘Calm now, quiet now, you might even sleep a little. Think of that faraway, happy place, rest there.'

He was nowhere now, or everywhere … There was no time, no place, only a rhythm that might be the waves of the sea or the beating of his heart … It went on for five minutes? For half an hour? An eternity?

‘That's very good, Mr Craddock.' The hands lifted from his forehead and he opened his eyes slowly to the underwater dimness of the room. ‘I'll leave you for a moment. When you feel able, open the shutters for me, would you?'

I would do anything for you. But he did not say it. He sat for a few moments after she left him, trying to recapture that deep quiet, to understand what it had meant, what had happened to him. He had seen something, understood something, but what was it? At last, he rose a little unsteadily to his feet and moved over to throw back the shutters and look down at the dazzling view of the river below, with its active tangle of small shipping, and, on the far side of the river, the
Anthea
, reloading now. She would sail for England soon and he must send a report by her, but what would he say?