Black Rainbow (28 page)

She assumed Edmund had gone to attend Sam's trial, but the more she thought about it, the more incomprehensible the situation became. How could a prisoner be brought to trial so quickly? The offenses with which Sam was charged were very grave. He could be transported, even hanged, if
he was found guilty. Did the local court of quarter sessions have jurisdiction over such cases?

At first she could not believe Sam was in real danger, but as she went over Edmund's seemingly irrational plans, she began to realize it was she, not her brother, who was out of touch with reality.

The Astleys, Megan, Barkens the butler, perhaps a few of Sam's union friends—like Jane herself, they were witnesses to Sam's real motives the night of the riot. However, when she started to break the list down, she realized the frailty of Sam's defense. The Astleys didn't count. Cynical and corrupt themselves, they probably agreed with Edmund's interpretation of why Sam had come that night, and even if they believed Sam innocent, they would support whatever Edmund chose to say. Poor old Barkens probably had not understood half of what transpired that night; he would never contradict his master; and even if he did, his word would carry no weight against Edmund's. The same applied to Sam's friends. The only person who might be believed was a member of the same class as Edmund and his fellow justices.

Megan was his only hope. When she comprehended that, Jane's heart sank. Megan would speak out, if she had the chance; Jane did not doubt her integrity or her sense of right and wrong. But she would not have the chance. Edmund did not have to imprison her physically, she was cut off from the world by her semi-invalidism and disinterest. She never read a newspaper, she said the ghastly stories of the Mutiny upset her. The servants had been told to keep distressing news from the mistress. And even if, by some chance, she heard of Sam's danger, she lacked the strength and the will to act.

Edmund had not been stupid after all. She, Jane, was Sam's only witness, and once he was condemned it would be almost impossible for her, a woman, to convince the magistrates that justice had not been done.

Sickness like sour bile rose in her throat. That was the real
root of her helplessness. She was a woman. She had been slow to comprehend this because her father had never treated her as an inferior. To all intents and purposes, however, she was a member of a lower class, almost a lower species of humanity—without legal rights, without control over her surroundings or even her own body. If she accused Edmund of swearing away a man's life and of imprisoning her against her will, he would simply say she had lost her mind; and the great male-dominated outside world would support his cause and accept his word. She hated them—all of them—curse their smug, complacent, narrow minds! Even her father had done her no service when he allowed her privileges she could never claim as rights. And Edmund had been a sweet, lovable human being before he turned into a
man.

The realization born that day was never to leave her. It would become one of her most deeply held convictions. But as her anger faded, she knew she was wrong about Edmund, at least. For months she had made excuses for him, and tried to understand what had changed him. He had not changed. He had always been selfish and self-centered. Utterly charming, when he got his way—and he always got his way, from fawning servants and adoring little sister and indulgent father. It had taken the inevitable frustrations and tragedies of adult life to bring out his true nature, but the seeds of corruption had always been there. Only her own uncritical affection had kept her from seeing them. She should have known—if not before, then on the day the shabby, desperate girl had forced her way into the house with Edmund's baby in her arms. Edmund had rejected child and mother; it was his father, not he, who had offered little Caroline a home and provided the mother with enough money to make a new life for herself.

A few slow, hot tears trickled down Jane's cheeks as she mourned the death of a boy who had never lived, except in her own mind.

Resolutely she brushed the tears away. Sam was her main concern now—another man! If it had not been for Sam. . . . But that was too outrageous; her sense of humor, battered and bloody but still alive, would not allow her to entertain resentment of Sam. She laughed and said aloud, "There must be a few good men. So many billion human beings can't all be wicked. And now I'm talking to myself. A few more days of solitude and I'll be as mad as Edmund claims."

Knowing that Sam's time must be running out, she made her last effort to bribe the jailor that night. Every other means had been explored and found wanting. She had torn her nails and bruised her knuckles on the stones looking for hidden doors; on hands and knees she had gone over every inch of the floor. Balancing dangerously on the rickety table, she had finally worked one of the leaded panes of glass out of its enclosure. It fell without a sound, the impact muffled by the grass below. For hours she stood looking down at the rhododendron and azaleas on the lawn; when, at last, the foreshortened figure of a housemaid in white cap and apron appeared, she put her mouth to the opening and shouted at the top of her lungs. The girl didn't even look around.

When the jailor finally came, Jane was ready for him. She had little to offer, only a pair of plain gold earrings and a brooch with a twisted braid of hair—Edmund's and her father's. For the first time she regretted her simple tastes. But when she held out the pathetic trinkets she saw a flash of greed illumine the dull, porcine face.

"I have more," she said quickly. "In my room. My jewel box is there, and some money. You can come with me, close behind me."

For a moment she thought she had him. But he was not as stupid as she had thought, or else Edmund was paying him a princely retainer. She had also underestimated the terror felt by the uneducated for insanity—they still thought in terms of demons and possession. When in her eagerness
she took a step toward him, he stumbled back, extending his fingers in a gesture older than the Druids.

The key scraped in the lock. Jane sat down on the bed, holding her rejected treasures. So that was that. The last hope had failed.

And the wretch had neglected to bring oil for the lamp. It would scarcely last the night, and she would have none for the hours of darkness before he came next night—if he came. She had frightened him badly. What a pity she did not have the power he feared—the Evil Eye. "I would have dropped him in his tracks and then gone after Edmund," Jane thought viciously.

Best to save as much oil as she could. She turned the knob that lowered the wick and lessened the flame. She had not meant to turn it off completely, only dim it, but her fingers continued to twist, quite independently of her will, until the last spark flickered and died.

Jane scuttled up the length of the bed to her old refuge against the headboard. It was the first time she had been in the dark since the initial night of her imprisonment, but the assault she feared and expected did not come. Wincingly, as a tongue probes an aching tooth, she sent out an exploring tendril of thought, tapping the reservoir of fearful memories. The Hag, the Black Dog, the ghost of Lord Lovell—are you there? Where are you? Nothing answered. The dark night was empty.

She must have stretched out and closed her eyes, but when the dream began it seemed to her that she was still sitting upright staring into blackness broken by a single point of light—one star, framed in the space left by the missing pane of glass. The lights blossomed and multiplied. The opening was expanding. That was when she knew she must be dreaming, for she felt no surprise, only gratification as the walls melted into air and the broad starry sky arched over her. It was the same sky she knew, with the constellations she had learned to read in childhood—the Great Bear,

Sagittarius the Archer, Cassiopeia on her glittering throne. At first the landscape, silvered by a full moon, was unfamiliar; there were no walls or gates or buildings, only an empty clearing enclosed by forest wilder and more tangled than any she had seen. Then she saw the hills. Their shapes had altered, but not beyond recognition. A shining ribbon of river flowed down one dark slope and vanished, to reappear at the edge of the clearing.

With no sense of transition or movement she found herself standing on a grassy surface starred with small white flowers whose scent filled the air with sweetness. She was facing the center of the clearing. There was something there —something angular and unnatural. Its shape was hidden by a pale, luminous mist, like curdled moonlight.

Jane started to walk toward it. The mist wavered and blew away, together with whatever shape it had concealed. She was on a dim path whose surface glimmered, unsubstantial as water, and the path was moving. She was carried with it, passing through trees and shrubs as if they were shadows. Strange objects began to appear along the path, lumpish and unformed. Gradually they took on human shape—men and women and the smaller forms of children; a Roman soldier in breastplate and cuirass, a woman in a rough homespun robe like the one she had worn to the ball; all quiet and motionless as life-sized painted statues.

Faster and faster the path carried her past them—or were they rushing forward and gliding by, while she stood still? She could not tell; she could no longer distinguish the details of faces and clothing, though one white-robed image, surmounted by a gleam of golden hair, reminded her of Edmund's painting.

She sensed that she was coming to the end of the strange journey. Something waited for her there in the shadows; she could see a dim outline, featureless but oddly familiar. She had felt no sense of fear, but now a vague horror seized her, not of the thing itself, but of what it meant. Struggling in
vain to free herself of the dream, she was carried remorselessly on till she saw it plain, its face twisted and rotted by the primeval sin, its bloody hands stretched out to greet her. Covering her eyes, she came gasping back to consciousness in the musty dark of the tower room.

The plot
devices of real life are never as appropriate as the ones invented by novelists and playwrights. Megan should have learned of her lover's peril from a breathless messenger galloping hell-for-leather across the country, and arrived at the foot of the gallows in the nick of time. Instead she heard the news from a gossipy old woman whose violation of her master's express orders was prompted by prurient curiosity instead of zeal for justice.

Lizzie had no doubt Sam was guilty. Master Edmund had said he was, and that was fact. She and the other servants had accepted Edmund's original explanation of Megan's absence the night of the riot: she and Jane had lost their heads, as women were inclined to do, and had gone running out into the night instead of staying safe at home. Yes, Lizzie was genuinely shocked and surprised when Master Edmund told her the truth and warned her to make sure her mistress
was not upset by the news of Sam's arrest. Sam didn't seem like that sort of man. He had been a limb of Satan when he was small, like all lads, and she had often threatened to take a stick to him when he teased her. She hadn't approved of Miss Jane's friendship with him and the other village children either. But there had been no harm in him. She had rather liked the young rapscallion.

It just went to show what happened when a boy got above his station and read all those books.

Edmund had not attempted to conceal Sam's arrest from the servants. They were bound to hear about it from friends and relatives, since the local paper had carried the story. But the charge of abduction was one of his mistakes. Inciting to riot was a serious crime, but it did not necessarily carry the ultimate penalty; Edmund wanted blood, not a few years in prison. It never occurred to him that Lizzie, like all virtuous women, would be irresistibly titillated by the implications of the word "abduction." Since she could not stoop to discuss it with the lower servants, her curiosity boiled for three days before she finally succumbed.

Megan was in the nursery with the baby that morning. As she sat on the hearth rug tickling young Eddie's nose with a feather, she looked almost like the girl who had come to Grayhaven two years earlier. The baby was the only thing that could rouse her from her dreamy lethargy. A pity there would be no more, Lizzie thought sadly. She didn't know why she was so sure of that, but she was. And Miss Jane looked to be a spinster all her life, she never did flirt with the young men. Maybe she would meet some gentleman in London. At the least she would buy some handsome new clothes. She hadn't taken hardly a stitch with her.

It was very sad. Miss Jane practically an old maid and Miss Megan—not that she was good enough for Master Edmund anyway—and now not really a wife at all, just a mopey little thing, wasting away . . . not long for this world.

Lizzie sighed. Absorbed with the baby, Megan paid no attention, so Lizzie sighed again, louder.

"What is it, Lizzie? Tired, already? It is just the start of the day."

Master Edmund had told her to make sure none of the servants mentioned the subject to their mistress. That didn't apply to her, not really. Besides, she wasn't exactly bringing it up, she had to answer if her mistress asked.

The feather stopped moving as Megan listened. The baby's fat, fumbling fingers closed over it. Mechanically, without looking, Megan pulled it away before he could stuff it into his mouth.

Lizzie was disappointed by Megan's calm reception of the shocking news, but she was also reassured. She hadn't done any harm in telling the girl; Master Edmund was just fussy, like all men.

"I was that shocked, you can't believe, ma'am," she concluded. "Why, you must have been frightened to death. Did he—er—did he harm you, ma'am?"

"No."

"Or say something—well—rude?" Lizzie persisted.

"No."

"Oh," Lizzie said flatly. "I'm that glad to hear it."

Megan rose. "Thank you, Lizzie."

She didn't even say good-bye to the baby, Lizzie thought, as her mistress moved to the door. Poor young thing, she's failing every day.

Megan sat down, very carefully, in her favorite chair. Dressed in the height of fashion, with every curl in place and gems glittering at neck and wrists, she was a modish, elegant little figure, and her face had the remote doll-like expression Victorian gentlemen favored in their ladies. Beneath the calm look her mind was racing.