A Most Extraordinary Pursuit (5 page)

“Naturally,” I lied.

“And to make the whole situation even more wretched, there is the matter of the institute.”

“The
institute
?”

“You must be aware of it. Olympia's latest obsession. Of course, it was Max's idea to begin with, but they had been corresponding about it for years and—well, naturally you know all that.”

“I had the pleasure of transcribing a great deal of correspondence on the matter. It is, if you'll allow me, a subject close to my heart.”

She gave me a wise look. “But you didn't approve, did you?”

“It wasn't my place to have an opinion on the subject.”

“Of course not. But you don't
believe
in any of it, I expect. You think it's all hokum. Anything that smacks of the extra-natural.”

“It's His Grace's fortune. He has a right to do what he likes with it. The institute will provide employment for a number of eminent researchers, to say nothing of the staff and the upkeep. In such a small village as Rye, the economic advantages may be almost miraculous. I have already received many grateful messages from the local residents, on the duke's behalf. The mayor's letter in particular was most touching.”

“Damned risky business, if you ask me,” said Sir John.

“But that's your trouble in a nutshell, John. We can't sit grumbling in the old century, pushing back progress with both hands, or it will end up engulfing us, and then what?” The duchess spread her palms in a remarkable parody of helplessness.

“I don't say I don't support the damned institute,” he said. “But only with the gravest of reservations.”

“Duly noted, my dear fellow. In any case, it will all come to nothing, and very soon, if Max doesn't turn up. The project represents an enormous investment, even for an estate so large as ours. Naturally the wretched bloodsuckers at the underwriting bank have already asked me about its continuation—in the letter of condolence itself, if you will!—and I have no doubt they will withdraw their support at once if my nephew doesn't appear soon, all capable and businesslike and ducal.”

“But that would be disastrous!” I cried. “The structure is already half-built, and they have begun hiring permanent staff. There is such hope.”

Her face turned grim. “Yes, it would be disastrous indeed. And
only the nose of the locomotive, were that dolt Marcus to get wind of his brother's disappearance and start causing trouble. They will give us a decent interval, but legally I have no control over the estate, my dear, no control at all. I am only the dowager now, and everything belongs to the new Duke of Olympia. Progress, you know,” she said, and I thought her voice broke at last, a small quaver in the center of the word
progress
, quickly recovered.

Sir John, who by now was watching my face with almost unnatural keenness, leaned forward over the top of his walking cane. “Miss—”

“Truelove,” I said.

“Miss Truelove. Why this passionate interest in the welfare of a single coastal village?”

My palms hurt, and I realized that I had been digging my nails into the creases just below the finger joints. I opened each damp hand and clasped them around each other with deliberate looseness, so that the tension might drain away. In the past, I had found this an effective means of resolving these irksome knots of anxiety that formed in the various points of one's body, from time to time: one's stomach, one's neck, one's back, one's clenched hands. To concentrate on the physical loosening; the mental always followed the physical, in my experience.

“I was born in Rye, sir,” I said. “My earliest memories lie there.”

“I see,” he said, and I wanted to laugh, suddenly and absurdly, because I couldn't imagine Sir John could see anything behind those clouded eyes, which might once have been blue.

But of course I didn't laugh. I had learned long ago how to manage these inconvenient impulses.

Sir John turned a close and scientific gaze to the duck at the end of his walking stick. “A nice coincidence,” he added.

“It was not a coincidence at all. When His Grace first began to investigate the project, several years ago, my father suggested Rye as an ideal location: remote in character, yet within easy distance of both London and the Continent, via the Channel ports.”

“I see,” he said again.

The dowager duchess drew in a great sigh, as if gathering herself for the final stretch of a racecourse. “All very interesting,” she said, turning her thumbs in a windmill, “but I'm afraid we must return to the vital point. Time is short, you know.”

Her eyes leveled upon mine, and for an instant I had the unsettling sense that she was not the dowager duchess at all, but someone else. Someone familiar, and yet unrecognizable in her present form, such that I might spend days clawing back the layers of her disguise and come no closer to the stranger within.

Then I blinked, and the illusion disappeared.

“Very well,” I said. “Since the errand is of such an urgent nature, and discretion so essential. I shall, of course, need a few days to put everything in order, and to obtain the necessary—”

The duchess was shaking her head. “Oh, dear me. No, no. A few days? Gracious me. The motorcar is already waiting outside.”

I startled in my seat and turned my attention to the window overlooking the grand oval drive. An indigo twilight had already settled behind the glass, rendering invisible the landscape beyond, though I knew every tree and stone and stable of it, like a map in my brain. “The motorcar?”

“Yes. Our driver will take you straight down to Southampton docks, where the duke's yacht has just completed a thorough refitting. You will then—”

“His yacht?” I said faintly.

“The
Isolde
. We took our honeymoon tour in her,” the duchess said, and an expression of joy came to light across her face, faded, and was gone. “She is now bang up to date, as they say, and is already taking on coal and supplies for the voyage.”

“But I can't possibly— An entire steamship, all to myself— What about the train?”

“The train is too public, my dear, and you yourself mentioned the difficulty with the Alpine passes this year. Besides, you would only have to find a steamer in Venice anyway. You will lose no time and much inconvenience by taking the
Isolde
.”

“I shall need to pack.” I don't remember thinking the words; I existed by then in a kind of dream state, acting and responding as if I were quite human and sentient, instead of the stunned animal I had actually become. I added, “I have no passport, however.”

“Oh, that's all been taken care of.” She rose from the sofa and went to the door behind me. Her skirts rustled stiffly against the rug. I glanced at Sir John, who was still staring at the duck, eyeball to eyeball. “Freddie!” called Her Grace, in a voice that echoed sweetly down the hallway, encouraging no refusal.

“Freddie?” I whispered.

A brisk pair of shoes shook the floorboards, and then a gust of new air invaded the old library, whistling among the leather and the plaster, smelling of tobacco and spirits and modern frivolity.

“We're all set, Freddie. She's agreed.”

The wind began to whir in my ears. I set one hand on the sofa arm and rose. From this height, the view of the drive appeared in shadow through the window glass, and I could just make out the
black shadow of the duke's custom Burke open-drive limousine hovering near the front steps.

An unmistakable voice broke out cheerfully behind my head. “Oh, splendid! Was just beginning to lose hope, to say nothing of my virtue, which has been threatened at least a dozen times by your licentious old friends, Penelope. All true what they say about widows, what?” The voice paused. “I say. Are you quite convinced? She looks a trifle blanched, if you ask me.”

“I didn't ask you, darling, and she's quite all right. She's just a bit stunned by the suddenness of it all. Aren't you, Miss Truelove?”

“Yes.”

Freddie's voice again, like the bark of a young and deep-throated puppy. “What's this, Miss Truelove? Haven't you ever just set out on a lark, that very day, tally-ho and all that, never mind the toothbrush and the hair oil?”

“No.”

“Ah, well. As the weasel said to the frog—or was it the other way round?—better to hop—”

I turned at last to face them, shielding my eyes so as not to be blinded by the reckless optimism shining forth from the doorway. “Duchess, is this some sort of joke?”

“Joke, my dear?”

I pointed to Freddie's collar, from which the funerary black neckcloth had somehow come askew. “You're sending me off to Crete with this
millstone
hanging from my neck? I am not a nursemaid, madam, nor yet a chaperone.”

The duchess wore a beatific smile. “Miss Truelove, may I present Frederick, the Marquess of Silverton, heir to the Duke of Ashland,
who is quite thirty, I believe, and in no need whatever of either nursemaid or chaperone.”

“I'm afraid I had the opposite impression.”

“Well, I'm dashed,” said Lord Silverton.

“Now, Miss Truelove. Freddie's an experienced traveler and very good company, and what's more, he went to university with Max and knows him very well. No one could be more suitable to accompany you.”

“It's improper,” I said desperately.

“It is not improper at all. These are modern times, Miss Truelove, and an independent woman of good character may safely have intercourse with a gentleman—you
are
a gentleman, aren't you, Freddie?—without any sort of impropriety attached to the affair at all. Isn't that right? Freddie?”

Lord Silverton placed his palms together and genuflected. “You are as a goddess to me, Miss Truelove. Our intercourse shall be of the most sacred kind, I solemnly vow.”

Behind me, Sir John erupted into a fit of coughing.

“You see?” said Her Grace. “Not even the strictest mind could possibly disapprove.”

“Ha!” someone said, over the top of Lord Silverton's left shoulder, and my heart dropped like a piece of coal into my belly.

Go away
, I thought.

“I suspect the strictest mind could
well
disapprove, madam,” I said. “In fact, I'm certain of it, but given the gravity of the task before me, I see no choice but to—”

“Refuse!” The Queen's head appeared around the corner of Lord Silverton's elbow. Her pale eyes nearly bulged from their sockets. “Refuse!”

“Be quiet!” I hissed.

His lordship blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“That is, I see no choice but to do what is required of me, whatever my personal objections to the haste and the unsuitable company.”

“Very good,” said the duchess.

“Fool,” said the Queen.

“Right-ho,” said Lord Silverton. “That's settled. Let's push off, shall
we?”

The Lady spared not a glance for the gross and bloated body of her husband the Prince as she rose from their bed, but stepped instead into the antechamber and called for her handmaids to dress her. When she had dressed and broken her fast, she made her way deep into the intricate chambers of the palace, until she came upon the room that belonged to her idiot brother, which was locked and bolted.

But the Lady had the key to this chamber, and she went inside without fear and greeted her brother tenderly, for they had since childhood been all in all to each other. She told him of the ships' arrival, and her great distress over the fate of the Athenian youths, and her brother said, ‘Then why do you not seek to help them, my sister?'

The Lady shook her head. ‘But what can I do? Our father will never allow me to deprive him of his greatest sport, nor will my husband the Prince.'

‘Then, beloved sister, you must use your clever mind to trick them. Go in disguise to the great halls of the port, and discover among the comely youths one who has the strength and cunning to defeat the King and his depraved ally with your help, and you will surely please the gods . . .'

T
HE
B
OOK
OF
T
IME
,
A. M. H
AYWOOD
(1921)

H
er Majesty did not follow us into the automobile, for which I was grateful. Next to me, Lord Silverton stretched out his long legs, tucked his head into the upholstered corner between door and seat, and went promptly to sleep. He did not awaken until the Burke's wheels began to rattle over the paving stones of Southampton, and the driver took a particularly ambitious lurch around a corner.

“I say.” His lordship picked himself up from my lap. “Are we there already?”

“We have been on the road nearly seven hours, your lordship, and stopped for water and petrol three times.”

“Do call me Freddie, now.”

“I cannot possibly call you Freddie.”

“Frederick?”

“I think it best if we continue to address each other in a formal
manner, Lord Silverton, in order to prevent any tendency to lapse into familiarity during our travels.”

“God forbid
that
,” he said. “Silverton, perhaps? Or even Silver, should you feel a momentary thaw coming on.”

“Silverton, then. I beg your pardon.” I had just fallen against his shoulder.

“Think nothing of it. I've had far worse calamities befall these old bones.” He helped me upright and peered out the window at the lurid pattern of the arc lamps against the terraced buildings. His hand disappeared into his waistcoat and emerged in possession of a handsome gold watch. “Half four already! Now there's an odd perspective for you. One doesn't usually see the hour from this angle.”

“Which angle is that?”

“The waking-up angle. As opposed to the falling-asleep.” He replaced the watch and stretched his apelike arms upward, getting as far as the elbow before clunking against the roof of the automobile. “Jolly nice motor, this.”

“His Grace took ownership of it only a month ago.”

“Poor chap. I hope he got to ride in it.”

“He drove it home himself from the factory. He took enormous pleasure from Sir Phineas's machines.”

“You mean his son.”

I pressed my lips together. I quite liked Sir Phineas, who lived not far from Aldermere with his wife and children, but one couldn't escape the fact that his mother was a noted adventuress who had once been the duke's mistress, in the years before he met the dowager duchess.

One could only ignore that fact politely.

“Ah, Truelove,” said Silverton. “What a jolly voyage spreads out before us.”

“I don't think it's jolly at all. His Grace is scarcely a fortnight gone, and the present duke has disappeared—”

“Do you always take everything so seriously, Truelove, or are you just trying to teach me a lesson?”

“I don't quite understand, your lordship.”

“Silverton. Never mind. Here we are, then.” He turned back to the window. “Glorious Southampton docks in the dregs of night. I do hope they've readied us a drop or two of coffee aboard that old tramp. Or perhaps something stronger. Or the two together, a happy cohabitation.”

“Coffee would be welcome,” I allowed. The well-cushioned interior of the Burke limousine, supplied at the outset with hot-water bottles and traveling blankets in abundance, had taken on the oppression of a prison after about an hour of Silverton's percussive snoring. Outside the glass, the driver huddled around the steering wheel, wrapped like a Cossack in greatcoat and fur hat and several woolen scarves. “Though certainly poor William should have the first cup,” I said. “He seems half-frozen.”

“
Poor
William? What's this? Do I detect a note of actual human sympathy in those stentorian tones, Truelove?”

“Only for those who deserve it.”

The brakes squealed lightly, and the automobile came to a delicate stop. William climbed stiffly from his seat and opened the door of the cab, charging the interior with dank marine air. No escape now. I took his outstretched hand and levered myself free to step on the dock, one unsteady foot after another, and I thought,
This is the last time these feet will tread on English boards,
this is my last sight of England for many weeks
. Only twelve hours ago I was sitting in a pew of solid English heart of oak, and the choir sang “Abide with Me.”

The water slapped restlessly against the harbor walls, and from somewhere nearby came a groan of metal, the immense strain of rivets and joints. A few greasy tendrils of mist swirled past the pilings and drifted into my lungs, laden with the sting of salt and of coal smoke, and as I stretched back my neck and looked up and up along the black steel hull before me, I imagined it was actually alive, a thoroughly modern monster waiting to gobble me up and bear me away.

Something brushed my sleeve: Lord Silverton, stretching his arms, shedding sleepy warmth into the fog. “There she bobs,” he said. “The faithful
Isolde
.”

I will confess to your ears alone: I have had a terror of steamships since I was a young girl. Why, I can't say. Perhaps news of some great marine disaster appeared in the papers, and the story made a terrifying impression on me as my parents discussed it over the breakfast table, unaware that I could comprehend them. Such things happen, and we don't even remember them. I do recall a painting that used to hang in the duke's morning room in London, depicting a frigate as it climbed toward the crest of an impossibly massive wave, its decks nearly vertical, a plaything in the foamy hands of God. I was only five years old when I came to live under the duke's roof, and used to play in that room when no one else was there.

Now, I quite understand that a modern steamship is not a Napoleonic frigate, and I have studied the design and
construction of a twin-screw propeller and the system of bulkheads that renders a vessel almost impervious to the dangers of moderate collision. Moreover, the Marconi wireless has made it possible for a ship in distress to communicate her emergency to a dozen waiting ears in an instant, thus improving the ordinary passenger's chances for survival.

But I simply cannot overcome, in my logic, the extreme fragility of a ship on the ocean. The vessels of today may be larger by many multiples than those of a century ago, built of steel instead of wood, propelled by machine instead of wind and sail, but to the ocean itself, this difference is beneath notice. Against the infinity of nature, we remain but grains of sand. It is folly—hubris—to imagine our machines can prevail against God's will.

Nevertheless, I had been ordered to take ship in search of the Duke of Olympia's missing heir, so to the
Isolde
I repaired, disappearing like an ant into that massive steel hull, to be greeted by the respectful captain and shown to a stateroom by a white-clothed steward. The cabin itself was new and luxurious, having (as the duchess informed me) just benefited from a thorough refitting, and I fell asleep soon afterward on my brass-railed bed, not even noticing our grinding departure from England until I woke, some hours later, to the gray morning light in the porthole, and was promptly sick over a large portion of the expensive new carpet.

If you have had the good fortune never to suffer the misery of seasickness, I congratulate you.

You can then only guess my vexation at missing the entirety of the ship's passage through the famously temperamental waters of the Bay of Biscay, and the debilitating sense of physical malaise
that accompanied my confinement to my cabin. Let me assist you. Imagine that your stomach has been replaced by a butter-churn, and your brain has been removed from its stem and placed upside down in your skull, which has incidentally been filled, in the manner of a rubber balloon, with a mixture of pebbles and bicarbonate of soda. Owing to the severed connection between brain and stem, you are likely unable to move, and if you can, by immense concentration, manage to part your eyelids, the image you see before you will demonstrate an unfortunate tendency to roll about in exact opposition to the churn in your stomach.

Indeed, you are better off not opening your eyes at all.

But I did, eventually. Open my eyes, I mean, to the darkened cabin around me, sometime the next day, because I could no longer bear the sole company of my own overturned brain. The curtains had been drawn over the two portholes, and the lights were off, but when I trained my gaze on the benign gilt-framed painting across the room, ignoring the drunken swing of the room around me, the details of my surroundings began to take vague shape.

The cabin was not large, but it was beautifully furnished. The bed was made of brass and railed on each side, to prevent the sleeping occupant from being turned out of his berth. There was a door on the opposite wall, leading presumably to a private bathroom—all the
Isolde
's staterooms now boasted individual facilities for the convenience of the duke's guests—and a chest of drawers, secured to the floor. As I lay observing, the ship lurched into another wave, and the room and its furniture held me in firm grasp, coasting effortlessly over the top of the disturbance. The painting, I now saw, was of Arundel Castle on a golden autumn afternoon.

On the table to my left, some unknown steward had deposited a cup of water, made of metal and weighted at the bottom.
I reached out a shaky arm and forced myself to sip. The tempest in my head, I knew, was the result of a drought of vital fluids, not the seasickness itself. The back of my throat welcomed the water's coolness. I sipped again and sat up.

What time was it? I was not wholly certain, but I thought we had left Southampton no more than a day ago. The glow around the edges of the curtains was dim and gray and shifting, but certainly daylight. We must be in the Bay of Biscay, I decided, and the bay was notoriously violent against those ships that dared to cross her. My misery, therefore, would last some time. I might as well find a way to endure it.

Come on, Truelove. Get out of bed.

I lifted my legs free from the covers and discovered I was wearing a nightdress and dressing gown. My slippers had overturned and lay against the wall, near the door to the bathroom. I staggered toward them, clutching the furniture for support, and continued through the door to retch unsuccessfully into the bowl of the convenience.

When I was finished—that is to say, when my stomach gave up attempting to rid itself of nonexistent bile—I wiped my damp forehead with a towel and made my way back into the bedroom, where I settled myself into the armchair next to the porthole and stared at the ceiling.

Mr. Haywood. Mr. Arthur Maximilian Haywood—Max, it seemed, to those with whom he was familiar, like the amiable idiot Lord Silverton—was wholly unknown to me: a ghost who had, until now, occupied a vital yet theoretical role in my life. His letters and parcels I had forwarded unread to my employer's attention, as I did with almost all of the duke's personal correspondence. I knew him only by the handwritten direction on those letters, quick and
precise, and by the portrait that hung above the mantel in the duke's Hampshire study. It depicted a serious-eyed young man with dark hair and a thick mouth, and features that resembled the duke's own, except for the coloring. He was not handsome, but his expression commanded attention. I had often felt that he was observing me as I worked at my small desk near the window, though of course the idea was absurd. A painting is only oil and pigment, after all.