The Master of Blacktower, page 4
One morning as I was settling down to work the door opened. I had been expecting the scullery maid and didn’t look up until a large shadow came between me and the sunlight.
“Have you ever wondered,” inquired Mr. Hamilton, “why ladies are not admitted to the professions? Look at yourself! Your hair is covered with dust; your face is pale, and you are beginning to stoop like Angus.”
“My appearance, sir, is my own affair.’’
“Quite true. But your health is my affair. As your employer, I order you to exercise daily. Do you ride?’’
“No,’’ I said quickly, without adding that I was afraid of horses.
“Then you ought to learn. Go up and change your dress.”
“I—I have no riding costume.”
“A lady’s riding costume is only another set of skirts. Wear something warm—and clean. I don’t care to be seen with a person who looks like a scrubwoman.”
Naturally, this taunt provoked me into putting on my best day dress—a redingote skirt of green poplin with a jacket bodice that flared out below the waist. It had a narrow white collar and the new pagoda sleeves, piped in darker green velvet. It was a perfectly absurd costume for riding, of course. But when I came into the courtyard Mr. Hamilton’s black eyes raked me from head to toe, and he said nothing. So I concluded that I had passed inspection.
He was already astride his horse, a tall gray with a wicked, rolling eye. I was glad to see that he had chosen a milder-appearing animal for me. It had its eyes closed, and it looked as if it wanted to lie down.
I was determined not to let Mr. Hamilton see that I was afraid, so I fed the animal some sugar, expecting at any moment to feel the great teeth snap on my hand. But the questing mouth was as soft as velvet. Somewhat reassured, I accepted the help of a groom and scrambled ungracefully into the saddle. Mr. Hamilton watched my thrashing skirts with discourteous amusement.
“Hook your knee over the saddle,” he ordered. “You must learn not to kick a horse in that hysterical fashion. Any animal but Flame would have run away with you before this.”
“Flame?” I looked incredulously at the horse’s nodding head.
“She was a lively infant, and bright red-brown in color.” Even as I watched, the laughter left his face. He said slowly, “Yet the destiny of the animal cannot be altered. We are what we are; no training can wipe out faults that are bred in the blood and bone.”
He turned his horse’s head toward the gate, leaving the forbidding words adrift in the air, like fog.
I caught him up outside the court, and said earnestly, “You can’t mean what you said just now. That’s fatalism—it leaves no hope of redemption, for body or soul….”
He had been sitting his horse in brooding silence, his head bent. At my words he looked up.
“I do not believe in the soul,” he said curtly. “I referred to the physical animal.”
He gathered up his reins and leaned over to give Flame a smart slap. She stumbled forward with a groan of protest.
“I’ll have a whip for you next time you ride,” said Mr. Hamilton, eyeing my gallant steed critically. Then he said, with a quick sidelong glance, “Aren’t you going to comment on my heretical statement about the soul?”
I knew he was baiting me, so I said primly, “Your beliefs are no concern of mine. But I don’t agree with any of your conclusions.”
“Of course you don’t. For all your intelligence, you are a very unworldly young woman. Do you always believe the best of everyone, and everything?”
“Why, no,” I said, taken aback by the bitterness of his tone.
“You know that there is evil in the world, that not everyone is to be trusted, or believed? I doubt that you do. Where, after all, could you have learned such unpleasant truths? Not from your father, surely.”
His hands relaxed on the reins. His horse stopped. We sat facing one another, and under the intensity of his gaze my eyes fell.
“There was the butcher,” I said, hoping to strike a lighter note. “I soon learned that he was not to be trusted. Mutton for lamb, beef for veal—”
“And did it never occur to you to apply the lesson learned from the butcher to men who offer you positions in remote country houses? What, in heaven’s name, possessed you to come here with me?”
He leaned forward, hands clasped on the pommel, his face dark and angry. I couldn’t move away from him without moving Flame, who was not easily stirred. I felt my heart pounding heavily.
“There is—there is such a thing as judgment,” I began hesitantly. To my relief his grim expression lightened. He took up his reins.
“That will do. In a moment you will mention your feminine instincts, and I can’t endure that sort of argument.”
We rode on in silence, following a twisting path that climbed the hill behind the house. I was intent on keeping my seat, and meditating on the conversation that he had concluded so abruptly. It was with a start of surprise that I saw the rough walls of the Black Tower looming just ahead.
Mr. Hamilton drew rein upon the narrow level space around the foundations. The stones were rough and incredibly massive; weather and time had darkened them to their present hue, from which the Tower derived its name. I urged Flame up to the walls, and put my hand on the stone, which was cold and harsh.
“It was a strong fortress,” I said musingly. “How did such a place ever fall?”
“Oh, there is some tale or other about it,” said Mr. Hamilton indifferently. “The treachery of the ladylove of an ancient chief of Dunnoch. His enemies cut his throat at her feet—and then cut hers, as a reward for her betrayal. You picked a poor place for a retreat, Miss Gordon. The Highlands have never been civilized, and the Highlander is still only a savage in a kilt.”
I smiled at him, refusing to be baited, and after a moment he rode on around the Tower’s southern corner.
The level space atop the ridge was large enough only for the Tower itself, with a narrow ledge around it. Almost at the horses’ feet, the ledge fell away into a steep rocky slope that ended, far below, in a narrow glen. The hills to the west were lower than those behind us, and I could see beyond them to the moors, covered now by a faint veil of the palest green. Upon this color the darker surface of the road looped in and out of sight and finally disappeared in a sweeping curve toward the south—to Edinburgh, to London.
With an effort I dragged my eyes from the road and the thoughts it evoked, and looked at the slope below. Our ride wouldn’t take us that way, certainly. Nothing less sure-footed than a goat or mountain sheep could have traveled on that rocky slant. I said as much to Mr. Hamilton.
“You forget that other sure-footed animal, man,” he replied.
“Surely not!”
“Oh, yes. Do you see the smoke down below? The cottage there belongs to one of my crofters. When he has business with me he comes over the hill just here. Look; you can make out the path.”
There was a path, of sorts; it wound between the rocks and the contorted pines that clung tenaciously to the bitter ground. Yes, it could be climbed. But if the climber slipped he would roll, amid an avalanche of stone, all the way back down to the valley floor.
“I wouldn’t care to walk that path,” I admitted.
“It’s not difficult; I have done it. But now look behind you.”
To the east the glen lay spread out before me like a map, looking clean and peaceful from that height, with the gray stone houses huddling low to the green-washed ground, and with the bare beautiful hills beyond. Then I looked to my left. Blacktower House lay below.
I had not realized its size and extent. The original central portion must have been nearly as old as the Tower. It was built of the same rough, time darkened stone, with twin towers flanking the old entrance. The wings to right and left were of lighter stone; they had wider windows and thinner walls than the central section. On one side a wall was joined to the stables and offices to form a courtyard. Even in the spring sunlight the house was not an attractive dwelling. As it crouched upon the slope it had an air of neglect and indifference that could not be reduced to any specific detail.
I turned my back on it and looked in the opposite direction, along the length of the glen. A flash of brightness, as of sunlight striking some polished surface, caught my eye.
“What is that?” I asked, pointing.
“That must be the windows of Glengarrie. Strange how the light strikes them.”
“Another house? Or a town?”
“Glengarrie is the nearest big house. It used to belong to the Dunbars, but it has been empty for years.”
He stood up in his stirrups, straining his eyes toward the far-off sparkle. When he settled again into his saddle I couldn’t tell from his expression whether he had seen anything or not. It hardly seemed possible; the distance was too great.
“Well,” he said, with an air of decision, “what do you think of the world into which you have come? I warned you that it would be isolated—confined….”
I raised my eyes from the peace of the glen to the hills beyond. They were rocky and forbidding, like a series of enclosing walls; but they had a savage beauty of their own.
“No, I don’t feel confined,” I said. “‘I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space—’”
“Spare me your literary allusions,” the Master broke in. “And what of myself? Has Mr. Shakespeare a comforting quotation to suit me?”
I thought of one at once—it was from Macbeth—but it wasn’t very flattering, so I decided to keep it to myself.
As I pondered, the Master said sharply, “Look at me.”
He was leaning toward me, his face only inches from mine. His black eyes were cold, without their usual spark of mockery.
“Are you afraid of me?” he asked.
“No!” I said, promptly and defiantly. And then, in wonder, as I realized I was only speaking the truth, I added, “No, I’m not.”
For a long moment his eyes held mine, searching. Then, without another word, he jerked the horse’s head about, and led the way back down the hill.
Chapter
4
AFTER THAT WE RODE OUT SEVERAL TIMES EACH week, and spring ventured cautiously into summer. Even that luxuriant season was sparse and “near” in the Highlands; yet it had its own austere beauty. Birch and rowan put on fresh green leaves, and the heather bloomed purple. When the weather was fine one could see for miles in the clear air. Mr. Hamilton pointed out the separate peaks and told me their odd-sounding Gaelic names—Ben Macdhui, Ben Avon, Ben-na-Bhourd. One bright morning he showed me a tiny pyramid on the far western horizon which he said was Ben Nevis, more than thirty miles away.
I went to Miss Hamilton’s room that morning, after we returned to the house. I had taken to calling her Annabelle now, and she called me Damaris; but we were still far from intimate. That day the perfumed staleness of the room seemed worse than usual after the winy air of the hills. I went to one of the windows and threw it wide open.
Annabelle gave a shriek. “Close it at once! I can’t endure cold air!”
“It’s not cold enough to hurt you. Only see the sunshine!”
I came back to the bed and stood beside it, to be sure there was no draft. She was well sheltered by the bed curtains, where she crouched like a small sultana in her silken tent.
“This stale air is bad for you day after day,” I said. “Don’t you ever leave your room?”
“You forget.” The blue eyes shot me an angry look. “I am a cripple.”
“I don’t know anything about your condition. How did you lose the use of your limbs?”
“I fell into the water when I was a small child. The burn is very wide and deep at the mouth of the glen, before it goes over the falls….” Her voice trailed off, and her eyes looked inward. Then she gave a little jerk and said quite calmly, “I was in the icy water for hours. It paralyzed my legs.”
“Do you remember that?”
“Oh, no…. No, Mrs. Cannon told me.”
“If you were in the water so long, why didn’t you drown?”
“The current threw me against a rock,” said Annabelle glibly. “My head was out of the water, but my legs hung down in the burn.”
“Perhaps you were cut or bruised by the rocks.”
“No. It was the cold water.”
I sat down on the bed beside her. “That’s nonsense,” I said bluntly.
“Why—why—you don’t know anything about it! How dare you say such a thing?”
“I dare because you aren’t Cleopatra or Semiramis, and can’t order my head cut off if I displease you.” I smiled into her sullen face. “I studied some anatomy with my father. Will you let me look at your legs?”
“Oh, go ahead.” Annabelle threw herself back against the pillow and glowered at me. “But don’t pretend you know about medicine. You’re just inquisitive like the rest of the servants.”
I ignored the last remark, having found this the best way of coping with her insults, and drew the covers back. Her poor white limbs were as thin as those of a child. But there were no scars, and the structure of the bones seemed to be faultless.
Finally I drew the coverlet up and rearranged it.
“It’s strange,” I said, half to myself. “I can see nothing wrong.”
The moment the words were out of my mouth I regretted them. Annabelle’s head turned sharply. We stared at one another for a moment, I in consternation, and she—well, there was the dawn of an idea in her glittering eyes, an idea which I knew I must put down at once, before it could flower into hope. I had no business suggesting such a thing to her. The fact that it hadn’t occurred to me until I spoke didn’t excuse my carelessness.
“But of course I’m not a physician,” I said quickly. “A doctor would have known—and you must have had the best—at the time of the accident.”
“I don’t remember any doctors,” said Annabelle.
This was the sort of statement she was fond of making—negative, hostile, implying persecution and neglect. I knew her better than to take her seriously.
In an effort to get her away from the subject, I said at random, “How was it that a small child was allowed to wander near such a dangerous spot?”
Annabelle was slow in answering. Finally she muttered, “The nurse was careless, I suppose. After my mother died, everything went to pieces here.”
It was the first time that I had ever heard anyone mention the former Mrs. Hamilton. I forgot all else in an upsurge of curiosity.
“When did she die?” I asked.
“When I was born. I killed her. That,” she added calmly, “is why my father hates me.”
“Annabelle! Where did you get such a wild notion?”
“It’s not a wild notion. It’s true!”
“Well, you certainly don’t remember that. And I know Mrs. Cannon never told you such a thing.”
“No one had to tell me! It’s like that novel, Lord Ellsworth’s Secret. My mother was very beautiful, and my father loved her madly. He hates me because I killed her.”
“Your father doesn’t hate you.”
“Oh, yes, he does. Look—I’ll show you something, if you promise to keep it a secret. I’ve never shown it to anyone else.”
“I promise.”
Annabelle stretched out her arm toward the table beside the bed. Then she gave me an oblique, sly look.
“Hide your eyes.”
I covered them with my palms. There was a great rustling and rattling from the head of the bed, and finally Annabelle said, “Now you can open them.”
She was sitting up against the pillows, holding a flat oval shape of wood about five inches in length. She handed it to me.
“That was my mother. Wasn’t she beautiful?”
I looked dubiously at the portrait—a miniature on ivory, yellow with age. The gilded frame was worn. The face was like those of the simpering dolls in the fashion book, round-cheeked, with rosebud mouth and languishing dark eyes. The black hair hung in ringlets over the plump white shoulders.
I looked at the face for a long time, and the painted black eyes seemed to return my stare with bland indifference. Something about the picture roused a dim disquiet; but although I stared and thought, and thought and stared, the impression would not solidify. Finally I gave up and handed the portrait back to Annabelle.
“She is beautiful,” I said mendaciously. “Thank you for showing it to me.”
She made me cover my eyes again while she restored her treasure to its hiding place, and then I rose to go. Still the odd impression—that there was something not quite right about the portrait—haunted me. I was almost at the door before I remembered what I had meant to say earlier.
“Why don’t you come downstairs for a bit after dinner? One of the men can carry you.”
“Oh, no.” Annabelle shrank back into her pillows.
“I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt you. Come now, I want you to see what I’ve done in the library. And you must meet Toby.”
“Who is Toby? A servant?”
“No, not a servant. I won’t tell you who he is. You must come and see for yourself.”
“Well…all right.” She returned my smile with a twinkle that made her look almost pretty. But, being Annabelle, she had to have the last word. “If I hurt myself, it will be your fault.”
I was willing to risk it. It seemed to me that the danger to her body was less than the danger to her mind if she remained isolated and brooding in her own room. Already she was losing the ability to distinguish between fact and fancy. That wild tale about her mother, for instance…
I stopped in the middle of the hall, struck by a new idea. The tale was wild; but could I be sure it was untrue? I didn’t know anything about the history of the family. If I wanted to help Annabelle I would have to learn something about it.
I knew this was just an excuse to justify my shameless curiosity. But it gave me the courage to keep on being curious. I decided to talk to Mrs. Cannon.
