Heritage of Shame Page 19

  ‘I wish to see the child!’

  Strident and demanding, the voice floated into the living room which was gloomier still now the candles beside the coffin were extinguished.

  ‘I am its great aunt come to pay my respects… I will see the child.’

  Glancing quickly at Laban, Abel stepped past Joseph Bishop standing hesitantly at the open door. Clara Mather, breathing heavily, glared from behind the wispy veil.

  ‘The coffin has been closed, the lid is already fastened down.’ Abel kept his answer discreetly low.

  ‘Then open it!’

  The demand was directed at Unity, completely ignoring the fact it was Abel who had spoken to her.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Mather, that can’t be done but if you wish your flowers to be placed in the hearse—’

  ‘My flowers will be placed on the coffin… that is where they belong!’ Clara’s reply hurled itself now at Abel, her anger at being confronted by a workman, his trousers and jacket obviously worn from labour, was clear on her features despite the veil.

  ‘Anne, dear child—’

  ‘I told you,’ Unity stepped forward, blocking Clara’s way, ‘I told you there were no welcome for you in this house that day you called and there be no welcome now; you’ll please me by leaving.’

  ‘Don’t you dare speak to me like that—’

  ‘Please, Mrs Mather, I’m sure a scene is the last thing you would want with so many people listening.’ Quiet and diplomatic, Abel smiled at the woman whose gloved fingers moved constantly, gripping and releasing the stalks of the pansies. ‘Perhaps you would care to follow along with me.’

  ‘Follow with you, follow with a common work hand. Get out of my way!’

  ‘This be the funeral of a child!’ White with anger, Unity hissed her words between clenched teeth. ‘And unless you wants it to be your’n as well you’ll leave my house; for if not, though I be called to answer before the Throne this very day, I swear I’ll wring your scraggy neck!’

  The very tenor of it halted Clara in her tracks. Unity Hurley was not a woman to push too far. But the purpose was served, the group stood out in the street had heard the exchange, they would be the judge of who was right and who in the wrong.

  ‘There’ll be a reckoning,’ she murmured too low to be heard by any ears cocked from outside, ‘and you, Unity Hurley, will foot the bill!’ Then, raising her voice so it reached her avid listeners, each word deliberately broken, she said, ‘You, Anne, the child of my brother, my own kin, turned your back on me, refused to live beneath your own father’s roof, turned instead to strangers; now – now you refuse to allow me to say goodbye to his grandchild. But one day—’ she turned a loathing glance to the girl standing dumbfounded by the outburst ‘—one day Anne Corby will find the truth of what her’s done!’

  Stepping onto the footpath running flush with the front of the house Clara paused, dramatically kissing the flowers she held, then, handing them to a watching neighbour, stalked away, the dark veil hiding her smile.

  Clara Mather had no more wanted to pay her respects than her wanted to try flying off the church steeple. Her nerves quivering, Unity nodded to Joseph Bishop, waiting for her cue.

  ‘Come on.’ She took Anne’s hand in hers. ‘It has to be done but have no fears, I’ll not leave your side.’

  She wanted to hide, to hide where no one would ever find her again. Where was the darkness, the black void which had sucked her down, carried her into oblivion when the wolves dragged her mother from that sleigh? Why did it not come, why did it not release her from this torment?

  But the darkness did not come, there was no relief for Anne Corby, for the girl who had turned from her own child.

  It was her fault, hers the crime but his the punishment; he and not she had been taken from the earth.

  Thoughts like razors slashed at her heart as Anne watched Laban take up the small white box adorned now with a wreath of white rosebuds, then slowly followed behind as Joseph Bishop, flat cap held across his chest, led them from the house.

  Daylight harsh after days and nights of candlelit rooms, Anne blinked in confusion. Why were women grouped on the footpath, shawls pulled low over their faces, sobs following the movement of hands tracing the cross on brow and chest? And four young girls, each in white dress and ribbons, a purple sash tied about the waist, why were they stood a few feet from the door? She had only seen one funeral, one conducted rapidly and grudgingly in a freezing Russian graveyard. There had been no flowers then, no one had paid respects to a man shoved hurriedly into a rough box and even more hurriedly laid in the ground; there had been no group of sobbing shrouded women and bare headed men following Jacob Corby to his final rest.

  Drawing level with the children Laban gently set the tiny coffin in their hands and, with head bowed, followed the several yards to where a handcart stood waiting, garlanded with posies of buttercups, clover and blue forget-me-not which each child in the street had gathered and woven.

  Reaching it, Laban again took the tiny box reverently, setting it like a beautiful white pearl on its blue and gold bed, then, the girls taking their places two on each side of the cart, stepped to Anne’s side as Joseph Bishop took up the handles, and to the tearful whispered blessings of the onlookers led the pitiful little group down the street.

  19

  He had been unable to hold her.

  Abel Preston stared at silver etched patterns of moon beams filter like pale gold rain through the leafy branches of sycamore trees dotting the waste ground of the Leys bordering Alma Street.

  He had stood in that churchyard longing to go to her side, to put his arms about her, be with her in her grief. But that right had not been his. He was not family nor did he stand in that special place Unity and Laban shared in her affections; to Anne Corby he was no more than an acquaintance and as such he had stayed in the background, stood apart from the three grouped together beside the dark opening in the earth. But his heart had not stayed apart, it had gone out to the weeping girl, and the love contained within it willed to comfort her even though she had no knowledge of its existence.

  ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…’

  Bathed in the golden aura of moon filled sky Abel’s heart twisted as in his mind he heard the words followed by a cry of torment, saw the girl he knew he loved drop to the ground, reaching down into the dark opening, reaching for her child.

  That moment had taken every vestige of his willpower, each atom of strength to remain where he was while every fibre strained to go to her. Then the sad little ceremony had ended. He had taken her hand, held it for a brief moment between his own and she had smiled her thanks for his being there; but her eyes had held only emptiness, a vacuum of loneliness where life and love should have sparkled, an emptiness echoed in his own heart. His loneliness was from a different cause but it cut as deep; he had found his love but it was one he could not have, Anne Corby was of a different world to his. True, she had not yet redeemed her place in it but sooner or later she would and there would be no room there for Abel Preston.

  *

  Unity had been in to say goodnight and now the house, warmed again by fire in the grate, lay wrapped in silence, but Anne lay wide eyed, staring at the pictures in her mind. The priest had met them at the lych gate. Dressed in a long cassock, a white cambric surplice deeply edged with lace reaching three quarters its length, he had waited, Bible in hand, whilst Laban again lifted the tiny white coffin and handed it to the children who, following behind the priest, carried it to the door of the church to be taken once more by Laban.

  So much kindness. Every child in Church Street had picked a posy helping to create a bed of flowers for her son to rest in, and every woman had stood at her door to say goodbye. While men the little procession had passed on its way to the church had removed their hats and bowed their heads, women shoppers crossed foreheads and breasts in tribute to the tiny corpse. Kindness! Anne felt her heart swell under the pressure of grief. There had been that in plenty but it
had not touched the icy emptiness which still lay inside her.

  Life would be hard, Unity had told her after they had returned from that heartbreaking little grave. It would have to be lived from day to day but they would live it together, one helping the other until with God’s mercy the pain would begin to lessen.

  But the pain would never lessen… and why should it? Pressing knuckles hard against her mouth she held back the cry brought by a remembered touch of a tiny hand clasped about her finger, eyes the colour of deep oceans smiling up into her face. Why should this torment ever leave her… a mother who had refused—

  ‘But it was not because I didn’t love him,’ despite the pressure of her hands the words sobbed their way into the shadowed room, ‘not because I did not want him. I wanted him to be safe, to be where he would be cared for.’

  Yet you were prepared to put him to the workhouse even after Unity had asked he be entrusted to herself and Laban!

  It came like an accusation, the stark truth of it snatching at her in the darkness, a cold condemning truth she could not deny.

  ‘I cannot alter what I did.’ Her broken whisper brushed the silence. ‘I was too full of self-pity. Forgive me, my little one, forgive me and believe I did come to love you, to love you with all my heart. And that love will never die, you will for ever be a part of me.’

  Beyond the window a great golden moon sailed in a sea of its own brilliance, reflections of silver bathing the small bedroom in glittering light, but Anne saw none of the beauty. Swimming with hot tears, her eyes saw only the dresser at the foot of the bed… a dresser with all of its drawers in place.

  *

  This was what Mikhail Mikhailovitch Yusupov and others had feared.

  Sir Corbett Foley’s fingers tightened about the newspaper.

  This was what they had dreaded, the evil of that madman Rasputin. They had heard his boasting, his drunken raving when he claimed his powers could set the world aflame. Was this somehow an attestation of that power?

  ‘We are united in the opinion that the one we speak of was the motivating force behind that assassination in Sarajevo.’

  Corbett Foley’s mind recalled an earlier letter of Yusupov’s. If it was as they thought, that Rasputin’s evil was behind the murder of the Archduke Ferdinand, then could it be he was also the architect of this disaster? But that was impossible, no man alone could have that power.

  … with that package goes the peace of nations…

  He remembered the phrase Anne Corby had repeated; the phrase spoken by Mikhail’s son when giving that amulet into her keeping. But this…! Lifting the newspaper he read again the headline printed in heavy black letters: ‘Britain at war with Germany’.

  But no man…

  The thought only halfway repeated was checked by another.

  … no man… but the evil of Satan!

  Was this the work of the devil, a war that would spread from nation to nation?

  The newspaper falling to the bed. Sir Corbett Foley’s eyes closed against the horror of such thinking.

  … the peace of nations…

  Would heaven allow that to happen? Could evil be so strong, could men be given such power… and was Rasputin among those possibly so chosen?

  The Tsarina’s closest friend Anya Vyrubora’s recovery from certain death indicated he was. Eyes still closed, Corbett’s mind recalled the details of the terrible derailment of a train returning to St Petersburg from Tsarskoe Selo, the Tsar’s country home. Although pulled from the wreckage alive, the woman’s body was so crushed and mangled she was beyond the help of doctors. Rasputin had gone to her bedside and, focusing so hard upon that broken body his own had dripped with perspiration, he had taken her hand saying, ‘Annushka, Annushka… rise!’ The woman had immediately awoken from her coma and risen, though true to the monk’s prophecy she lived the rest of her days a cripple.

  The power of life over death? Only heaven or hell held that and heaven would not plunge mankind into war; but if only a little of so tremendous a power had been given to Rasputin, a man besotted by evil, would he not use it in other ways? Ways which would harm individuals… such as cursing a pendant, endowing a piece of jewellery with the power to harm any who touched it – as he was certain it had tried to cause his death in that motor carriage?

  Anne Corby had touched it! Eyes which grew more and more weary with the days opened slowly. She had not looked upon the piece, he believed her in that, but nevertheless even though protected by cloth her hands had touched it. A coldness creeping over him, Corbett Foley rested his hands on the newspaper. Shipwreck, abduction, an accident with a cart! All potentially fatal… were they the product of a curse placed on that pendant… would it strike again?

  It must not happen. He must ensure the daughter of the woman he had lost, the woman he had never ceased to love, be protected.

  ‘I lied to her, Viola,’ he whispered into the quietness of his room. ‘I lied, my love, so she would have no fears, now I must make certain no harm shall touch the girl again.’

  *

  Leaving the newspaper to lie on the bed, Corbett Foley threw back the covers. It must be now or it might never be done at all, his strength would not last much longer. Crossing to the ornate fireplace he pressed the centre of an expertly carved Tudor rose, watching a panel slide silently open. It had guarded many secrets in its three hundred years but none more closely than that which must now be revealed.

  ‘Trust no one,’ his grandmother had commanded. ‘What folk are not told cannot be repeated.’ He had followed that order until she had died.

  Reaching his hand into the small cavity he drew out a neatly folded parchment, holding it while memories flooded his mind.

  Viola had married. She was lost to him and his pain had turned to madness, madness which had left a servant girl with child. His grandmother had been furious but as always had taken matters into her own hands.

  Only at her deathbed many years afterwards had he learned of the girl’s fate. She had been confined in a mental institution, dying there five years later; but her child had been taken by his grandmother to be reared by a couple who had her absolute trust. But he had not been given that information freely… he had been forced to pay for it with a promise, the promise he would never bring disgrace upon the Foley name by admitting he was the father of a bastard.

  He had not reneged on his word, never spoken of that girl or her child, but here on this parchment the written word told it all.

  Carrying it nearer the lamp he read the document through carefully, checking all details were as he wanted, that every fact as he knew it was recorded in absolute truth and the signatures of both witnesses were plain and legible, before re-folding it. This could not erase the wrongs he had done, it could not absolve him of blame for a young girl’s misery, but pray God her child might in time forgive a father it had never known.

  Leaving the envelope with its contents on his night table he drew his dressing robe tighter about him, then, the malady which had steadily robbed him of strength slowing his steps, he walked to the bedroom which had remained unaltered since his grandmother’s time.

  Entering the room he lit a lamp then, locking the door, listened for a sound which said he had been heard.

  Elizabeth Foley had been a powerful woman in many ways. It would have been easy for her to have cleansed that servant girl’s womb of the child he had set within it. Money and influence were not the only avenues open to her, Elizabeth Foley’s powers went far beyond those boundaries. Yet she had not used them; for reasons never told to him she had allowed the child to be born, allowed it and its mother to live. Though the girl’s life had not been a long one, the child lived yet and in all those years Elizabeth Foley had remained silent, only the touch of death releasing the words from her lips… words he had followed with a promise. Now that promise must be broken. His child – Corbett Foley stared into the yellowy light of the oil lamp – his child! It was the first time he had thought that way. He had fathered it bu
t never owned it, never held it as an infant, never walked with it as it grew… if only it had been Viola’s child, a child begotten of love between them…

  From the distance a church bell pealed but though the sound was faint it dispelled the trance beginning to trap Corbett’s mind and he shook his head to clear the dream.

  Viola had had her own child, one now threatened with a danger more grave than she could possibly conceive, one which might possibly claim his own life should he intervene, but that was the only gift he could now offer the woman of his heart.

  Carrying the lamp to where a tall cupboard stood against one wall he opened both doors, using the light to see the contents neatly stacked on shelves. Yes, Elizabeth Foley had been a powerful woman and these were her tools.

  In his earliest years he had stood at her knee, listening to words he had not understood. Then with the death of his parents at sea she had brought him from boarding school to be educated at home in Bentley Grange and alongside that more formal tuition had come her own teachings; to him she had imparted greater knowledge, a wisdom ancient as man himself; a secret whispered lore passed through the ages, an intimate sharing of the powers of magic. Now he must call upon that power, use the teachings of his grandmother… but would they prevail against the dark malevolence incorporated into that pendant? Only the Lord who held knowledge of all things had the answer.

  Once more the bell of the distant church sounded faint in the silence of the old house. There was little time before the moon would hide her image in the dawn. What was to be done must be done quickly.

  Setting the lamp where its light still fell across the shelves he gathered various implements and ingredients upon a large round table placed beneath tall, arched windows.

  Had he remembered all that was needed? And the words… would memory fail him, play him false? His blood quickening, he whispered the request for blessing his grandmother had him repeat whenever he was present in this room.