Heritage of Shame Read online

  ‘Rasputin! I might have known. That man is evil personified, the devil incarnate!’ The lids closing momentarily over brilliant eyes, Sir Corbett Foley breathed deeply before raising them, then asked, ‘Whilst in Russia did you hear of that man?’

  ‘Not in the villages, but at the house in Krymsk among the servants. I often heard the name whispered. It seemed everyone was almost too afraid to speak it.’

  Unconsciously reaching for the Malacca cane he rested a forefinger on the silver knob. ‘As well they might,’ he said quietly, ‘that man’s evil told him many things.’

  She could understand the servants being superstitious, that was a trait she had met wherever her father had taken them; but Mikhail and his son…?

  ‘Mikhail said nothing more?’

  Her thoughts interrupted, Anne paused. Why so many questions? Why was this man as agitated as his Russian friend had been? What was so important about that package?

  ‘Only that I take extreme care,’ she answered. ‘Andrei too, at the harbour in Anapa, he repeated the instruction several times and then as I stepped onto the gangplank he said something very strange. He said, “Hide it well for with that package goes the peace of nations.”’

  ‘Ahhh.’ As his fingers tightened about the cane he breathed expressively. ‘Andrei knew well the man Rasputin. He holds the poor Tsarina in his grasp. She believes he can cure her son of the haemophilia which plagues him, so Rasputin manipulates her and through her the Tsar. Mikhail told me in his letters of how the man had demanded the piece now in that drawer. It had been kept locked away during much of the reign of Nicholas’s father who was convinced that its having some sort of special power was not all legend. Then with his sudden and unexpected death following its exhibition in the Winter Palace others had felt the same way. But Nicholas and Alexandra were not given to superstition, so the piece remained on public view and one disaster followed another. The day of their coronation fourteen hundred peasants were trampled to death in the rush to see the royal pair, a few years later hundreds more were gunned down outside the Winter Palace as starving people demanded food; the air of Russia became tainted with revolution and Bolshevism, which was submerged only when war broke out with Japan. Yet, after all of that, Rasputin was allowed to wear that – that thing and God alone knows what mischief he has worked with it.’

  How could people believe a piece of jewellery – for that is what it had to be – could be responsible in any way for the things just spoken of? Anne watched the man opposite glance at the cabinet with its inconspicuous drawer. This was 1914 not the Middle Ages, people just did not believe such things any more; yet Mikhail Yusupov had and so it seemed had Andrei, now it was obvious Sir Corbett Foley held that same belief.

  ‘But surely all of those happenings can be no more than coincidence.’ Anne put the thought into words.

  Switching his glance back to a face which still showed traces of all that the girl had suffered, he smiled regretfully. ‘War is never a product of coincidence, Miss Corby; always behind it is a devious hand and a mind controlled by a lust for power; like my friend Yusupov I believe Rasputin is that mind and there are men only too ready to be influenced.’

  ‘But he no longer has that—’

  ‘Amulet.’ He supplied the word. ‘No, Rasputin no longer has that. Though, like a flood, once evil begins it cannot be stopped but must run its course. The hounds of war are straining at the leash. I fear time is running out for the peace of nations!’

  *

  It was incredible, too unreal to be believed. Yet it had happened. Anne walked slowly along darkening streets, her mind going over the hour spent at Bentley Grange. She had not looked at that amulet, had not touched it yet had seen the effect of it. Three sensible, down to earth men, none, so far as she could tell, driven to flights of fancy, yet each held that amulet to possess an unnatural power; but how could it? It was only stone and metal, the work of some jeweller.

  Satan works in many ways.

  A phrase her father had often used returned to her mind. Maybe that could not be disputed, but a piece of metal set with stones… that was carrying belief too far! But that need not concern her, she had kept her word and given the amulet into the keeping of Sir Corbett Foley, now she could forget the past altogether.

  Nearby a handbell sounded its authoritative ring, snapping her back to the moment. Across the narrow road a woman dressed in dun coloured dress and calico bonnet tied beneath her chin stared for a long moment then was gone, the heavy door of a low roofed building thudding closed behind her, the scrape of bolts telling it was locked for the night.

  Her throat tightening, Anne continued to stare at the jumble of several buildings abutting each other in a medley of shapes and size. The workhouse! A shudder worked along her spine as she looked at the small-paned windows, one tiny line of glass showing between heavy cotton crocheted curtains, giving them the appearance of half closed eyes. A ray of the dying sun glinted through the smoke blackened air which was a perpetual shroud hanging over the town and for a moment the glass of one window gleamed dully, then it was empty and dead. Like that woman’s eyes! Anne touched a hand to her mouth. They had been empty, staring at her with a hopelessness which screamed; a soul destroyed, God forgotten hopelessness!

  It had shown on the tired face. Weariness of life no longer wanting to be lived. This was the life her son would know. A sob rising in her throat she pressed her hand harder against her mouth. That first time of holding the tiny body in her arms she had been filled with such sweet pain, a feeling so intense she had almost cried out. She would never leave him, those had been the words whispered against the tiny nuzzling head, words of love and longing, words which in the fierceness of emotion she had meant, then in the dark hours of night had realised she could not. It had lain like lead in her heart, the weight of it stifling her soul, but with the coming of dawn she had known it had to be. Unity had tried to argue otherwise, but Unity Hurley had not been a small child holding on to her mother’s skirts as they tramped endlessly, exchanging desert and wilderness for jungle and fever; true, the terrain of England did not hold such terrors but the hardship of sleeping under hedges, of never being sure of finding something to eat… that was a life no newly born child could survive. She was his mother, she had the right to love… but her son had the right to live.

  Sobs stifled behind her hand she began to run. Her steps echoing, she turned along Church Street, her breath grabbed in painful snatches as she reached the darkness surrounding St Lawrence church. She had to rest, get her breath. Leaning against the ancient lych gate, its carved wood catching the first beams of a rising moon, she dragged several long, smoke tasting draughts of air deep into her lungs.

  It was for the best – best for her son! Looking back the way she had come she saw the tall chimneys of that awful building rising black and dominant against the slate grey sky of evening. She must always remember that, but memory would not ease the guilt of leaving him… nor would it mend the heartbreak. Tears blurring the chimneys, she straightened.

  ‘What’s your hurry, girl? Stay with me a while.’

  It whispered low and threatening from the shadows cast by the lych gate. Her hands automatically grasping her skirts, Anne lifted them to run but too late. Her cries were stopped by the gag of a strong hand and she felt herself snatched back on her heels, being dragged deeper into the all concealing darkness that was the shadow of the church.

  10

  ‘I knew if I waited long enough…’

  Soft as the hiss of a poised snake the words penetrated the chaos of Anne’s screaming senses.

  ‘Now be a sensible girl, don’t struggle ’cos it will only cause you hurt, and don’t cry out for if you do it will only make things worse for yourself.’

  It was a warning, simple but blinding in its clarity. She had been grabbed and dragged into the darkness of the churchyard, hidden from sight of passers-by on the street and it could only be for one reason… to satisfy a man’s lust.

>   ‘I mean what I say… stay quiet or it’ll be the worse for you.’

  The hand covering her mouth slid away and as it did a scream of sheer terror was already tearing from Anne’s throat.

  ‘I said not to cry out!’

  A slap so hard it jerked her head sideways on her neck emphasised the words as Anne was swung forward then slammed hard back against the stone wall of the church.

  ‘Please!’ The word jerked out on the breath knocked from her. ‘Please… I – I have no money.’

  ‘Money!’ A laugh low and hoarse touched the quiet of the evening. ‘Who said anything about money… it’s not your purse I’m after. I plucked you off the street for a different purpose altogether.’

  Visions of a heavily built, thick bearded man bearing her to the ground rose before Anne’s eyes and despite herself she screamed again.

  ‘I warned you—’

  ‘Fair’s fair.’ Harsh and angry, the voice whipped the darkness and Anne felt her attacker snatched away from her. ‘You warned the girl, now let me warn you, we see men like you as vermin in this town and they find themselves treated as such, so it would be good to your health if—’

  Beyond the tall yew trees standing sentinel like about the darkened churchyard the moon sprinkled a drift of pale light through the branches.

  ‘—You!’

  Anne’s rescuer broke off his warning as the face of the man he had grasped was illuminated as if by a myriad tiny flickering candles.

  ‘Up to your old tricks again, eh Mather!’

  She wanted to run, to get away from this place, but rigid with shock, Anne’s limbs refused to move. Trembling, she listened to the rage throbbing like quiet thunder in the voice of the man throwing the object of his anger against the wall as if it were a rag doll.

  ‘Such a brave man—’ the voice thickened with disgust ‘—take on any man, won’t you, Mather… so long as he be more than sixty and less than sixteen… and women! They hold no problems for you, since to tell who it is waylays them in the dark means fathers and brothers most like lose their livelihood. Well, I carry no fear of you or of anything your mother can do, so run off home and tell her it was Abel Preston kicked your dirty arse!’

  ‘You… you’ll… regret this.’

  Shook from him by the bounce of his body against the wall, the sentence was fragmented but the threat running through it was unbroken.

  ‘No.’ It came on a laugh of pure contempt. ‘I’ll regret this if I don’t give it to you.’

  As if loath to witness the act the moon hid behind a gauzy veil of cloud but even in the ensuing shadow Anne was aware of an arm drawing backwards, heard the strike of a fist on flesh, saw the figure of a man sprawl his length on the ground, and as he scrambled to regain his feet a boot kicked at his backside sending him, still half bent, scuttling into the darkness.

  ‘He won’t bother you again, miss, not unless he wants every bone in his worthless body broken, and Quenton Mather’s not a man to take risks… of any sort!’

  ‘Quenton!’ Anne felt her insides tremble with old fear. ‘Are you saying the man who – who – are you saying he was Quenton Mather?’

  ‘No other, though I doubt you’ll get very far should you lay a complaint against him. Money talks as loud in Darlaston as it does anywhere and Clara Mather has enough to smooth her son’s path, she has done it time and enough before tonight. But I suggest you get along home, a churchyard isn’t the happiest place to be even in daytime.’

  But Anne had not heard for the drums beating in her head. Her own cousin! The son of her father’s sister… ‘Quenton!’

  The name, though trembling almost inaudibly on her lips, was caught by the figure beginning to walk away. ‘You know him?’ Abel Preston turned.

  Memories she had thought long dead surged into Anne’s mind and the old fear grew, grasping her throat. She knew him, knew the cruelties he was capable of, the spite he had so often vented on a young child.

  ‘Has he done this before… has he? By Christ, I should have killed the reptile and to hell with what his mother could do!’

  ‘He – he has not attacked me before.’ At least not with the intention he seemed to hold tonight. Anne kept the last to herself.

  ‘But you know him… you spoke his name.’

  To deny it would lead to altercation and that might well prove the key which would release the tears locked in her throat.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I know him, Quenton Mather is my cousin.’

  For a moment it seemed the man had not heard for he simply stood staring at her in the uncertain light. Then with the tone of someone presented with a thing he thought gone for ever, his answer rocked by the blow of complete and total surprise, he faltered, ‘Anne… you are Anne Corby?’

  She nodded at the boy smiling from the past and to the man stood watching now.

  ‘Yes, Abel,’ she replied quietly, ‘I am Anne Corby.’

  *

  ‘You fool!’ Clara Mather’s voice throbbed with anger. ‘Why did you have to play your game here in Darlaston, you have the money to follow it in any town.’

  ‘I didn’t expect… I didn’t think—’

  Clara’s usually cold eyes blazed the fire of wrath. ‘No, you didn’t think, but then you never do. You are like your father, incapable of thinking of anything other than getting the bloomers off a woman… any woman!’

  Poor father. Quenton hid his own anger. To think you were the woman he got to shed her bloomers, what a tragedy for him. No wonder he died young, killed by regret no doubt.

  Making no attempt to hide the disparagement of his thoughts Quenton answered snidely, ‘Such accusations show your true mind, Mother. You are full of ill nature… and you profess so often to do only what is best for me. How wrong you are on both counts, you do what is best for Clara Mather… and I am no rapist.’

  ‘Then why force a girl into the churchyard?’

  ‘To do what you have tried to do and failed. Ever since you told me Anne Corby had returned I have watched for her and tonight I saw her standing outside the workhouse in Victoria Road.’

  The workhouse! Clara’s nerves jarred. The girl was young and able bodied so they would not take her in, but the child…? She had not seen into that drawer clearly but there had been no sound; could it already have been disposed of, placed like many another on the doorstep of that institution and left? Was that the reason the girl was standing there? If so, the chance of getting to it was as good as gone.

  ‘When she walked towards Church Street I followed,’ Quenton went on. ‘I jumped over the wall and ran to the lych gate, waiting for her to pass. I was going to warn her not to remain in Darlaston.’

  ‘And now Abel Preston is witness to what you have done!’ Clara scorched. ‘He saw you with her and has brain enough to guess what you were about should she go missing, and he is one who won’t hesitate to shout it out loud. To get rid of the girl now will be like announcing it from a platform!’

  ‘Get rid of her!’ Quenton winced but pain from his bleeding mouth was the only cause.

  ‘You want the Glebe Works, don’t you!’ Clara’s rage flared again. ‘You want to be its owner? Well, you won’t be, not truly, not so long as Jacob Corby’s daughter or Jacob Corby’s grandchild is alive to claim it.’

  ‘And you, Mother, don’t let’s forget you!’ Quenton stared at the waspish face. ‘Yes, I would like to become master of Glebe Metalworks but that will not happen whether your brother’s heirs live or not, you enjoy that position far too much to give it up even for me; but so long as I continue to live as I do then I have no quarrel with that, you can be iron master for as long as it pleases you and I will play along. As for murder?’ He paused. ‘Agreed, so long as I am not called upon to do the deed.’

  Like father like son! Virulent and wild as heath fire, Clara’s thoughts blazed unchecked as she watched him go from the room. Content to sit back while she did all the work.

  As for murder? Agreed, so long as I am not cal
led upon to do the deed.

  The words stilled the fever of her brain. The son would not kill… but the mother would!

  *

  ‘I saw that woman’s face outside the workhouse, saw the despair, the hopeless empty look in her eyes… I can’t do it, I can’t leave him there.’

  A prayer of thanks swelling her heart Unity Hurley watched the young woman scoop her child from the drawer and hold him against her breast, tears streaming down her face.

  ‘She had looked so desolate, so empty, it seemed her very soul was dead. I can’t let that happen to him!’ Anne kissed the tiny face.

  ‘Thank God you’ve realised afore it were too late.’ Busying herself with the covered milk jug the older woman hid the mist that had risen in her eyes. ‘Children belong of their mother no matter what, your own parents had sense enough to know that and took you along of them, hard though it were for you.’

  ‘But I was not an infant and neither were my parents totally destitute. They could feed and clothe me for the first years of our travelling. I haven’t the means to do that for my baby… Oh Unity, what do I do? Leaving him will break my heart but keeping him means he is likely to starve.’

  ‘You don’t need to leave him nor be he like to starve.’ Unity looked up from stirring a spoonful of honey into the warm milk. ‘Laban and me, we’ve talked of this, we want you to live here in this house. It won’t be no charity,’ she said seeing the quick look dart from the girl’s eyes, ‘not if you take a share of the work of the place and p’raps take and fetch stitching Laban sets for me, for the time saved means another piece stitched to say nothing of the walk saved my legs.’

  To live in this house, with the couple who had been so kind to her, a place where her child would be cared for. Anne’s hand trembled against the downy cheek. He would be cared for, this woman had already demonstrated the fact, but would he be safe? Her aunt must by now know of his birth, and Quenton… he knew she was still in Darlaston and both of them wanted her father’s legacy… But would they harm an innocent child in order to keep it? The vicious malignancy she had seen that day so clearly displayed in Clara’s eyes returned vividly to Anne’s mind and with it the answer to the question: yes, they would.