Michael Cox (3 page)

ROSA MUNDI
P. RAINSFORD DAUNT

As I was turning to leave, she looked up and spoke once more.
‘I hope, Alice, that you and I will suit, and that we might become friends – as far as our conditions allow, of course. Do you think that we shall?’
‘Yes, my Lady,’ I replied, taken aback by her frankness. ‘I am sure of it.’
‘Then we are of one mind. Good-night, Alice.’
‘Good-night, my Lady.’
Outside, in the now candlelit Picture Gallery, I found Barrington waiting to show me upstairs to my room, a service that he performed in complete silence.

I HAD BROUGHT little with me to Evenwood from my former life in France, except a small valise containing some few clothes, half a dozen books, a handful of precious childhood trinkets, and of course my Book of Secrets.
‘We must not trust our cause simply to memory,’ Madame had warned me before my departure. ‘Memory is often a false friend. Words, my dear, if they be clearly and truly and immediately set down, are our best ally, our best defence, and our best weapon. Guard them well.’
When I first came to Evenwood, the pages in my Book stood blank; but this, as I soon discovered, was a house of secrets, and the pages quickly began to fill.
On the evening of Monday, 4th September, in the year 1876, I slept for the first time in my cramped but cosy room under the eaves of the great house of Evenwood, although not before I had written down in my Book an account, in the shorthand that my tutor had taught me, of my interview with Lady Tansor.
In the darkness, I lay listening to the soft patter of rain against the glass of the two dormer windows. Somewhere, a door banged, and there were voices echoing down a corridor. Then silence.
I was on the threshold of a great adventure, alone in this place, knowing not a soul, ignorant as yet of why I had been sent here. All I knew was that Madame had told me – so often, so urgently – that I
must
be here. Yet as I composed myself for sleep on that first night, assailed by doubts that I could fulfil Madame’s expectations of me, I also experienced a tingle of eager anticipation at the prospect of finally understanding what then remained beyond my comprehension.
Tomorrow, then. It would begin tomorrow. At eight o’clock.
Sharp.

1

In My Lady’s Chamber

I
The Great Task

I
WAS AWOKEN
by the sound of a clock, somewhere outside, striking the hour of six. If the same obliging instrument had chimed out the hours throughout the night, as I supposed it must have done, it had only now intruded upon the deep sleep into which I had quickly sunk.
Eager to greet the first day of my new life, I jumped down from my warm bed, skipped across the bare boards to one of the little dormer windows, and pulled back the curtain.
Looking down, I could just make out a balustraded terrace stretching the length of the wing in which Lady Tansor’s apartments, and my own room two floors above, were situated. Steps led from the terrace to a broad area of gravelled walk-ways and formal flower-beds. Beyond, the densely timbered Park lay partially submerged under a bar of dissolving mist, thicker in the distance about the margins of a large lake, and along the winding course of the Evenbrook, a looping tributary of the River Nene that eventually rejoins the main stream some three or four miles to the east of the Park.
The previous night’s rain had gone, and the pale, blue-grey sky was already growing brighter. I took this harbinger of a sunny morning as an omen that, after my success in obtaining the position of maid to Lady Tansor, all would be well for me in this place.
Tuesday, 5th September 1876: my first morning at Evenwood – and such a beautiful one! I had arrived in England a little time before, full of apprehension, but determined – being stubborn once my mind has been made up – not to disappoint Madame in what she expected of me. Although anxious to know why my guardian had contrived to send me here, my true identity disguised, I had resigned myself with difficulty to waiting until she was ready to reveal her purpose to me at last.

TWO MONTHS EARLIER, Madame had come to my room as I was about to retire for the night.
‘I have something to tell you, dear child,’ she said, taking my hand, her face white and drawn.
‘What is it?’ I asked, feeling a sudden lurch of anxiety. ‘Has something happened? Are you ill?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I am not ill, but something has happened, something that will change your life for ever. What I have to say will be a shock to you, but it must be said, and said now.’
‘Then say it quickly, dear Guardian,’ was my reply, ‘for you are frightening me dreadfully.’
‘There’s my brave, dear child,’ she said, kissing me. ‘Very well. You are to go to England – not quite yet, but soon, when certain matters have been arranged – to begin a new life.’
I was completely unprepared for this extraordinary announcement. Leave the Maison de l’Orme, the only home I had ever known, to go alone to England, where I had never been in my life, so suddenly, without warning, and with no reason given? It was absurd, impossible.
‘But why?’ I asked, my heart thumping with apprehension and bewilderment. ‘And for how long?’
‘As to the last,’ replied Madame, with the strangest smile, ‘if you are successful in accomplishing the task I shall be asking you to undertake, then you may never return here – indeed, I hope, with all my heart, that it may be so.’
As I listened in astonishment, she went on to tell me that, for some weeks past, regular advertisements had been placed in London newspapers setting out my qualifications for a place as lady’s-maid.
‘Lady’s-maid!’ I exclaimed, in disbelief. ‘A servant!’ Had my guardian gone mad?
‘Hear me out, dear child,’ said Madame, kissing me once more.
It appeared that the intention of the advertisements had been to recommend me for a particular vacancy that Madame knew existed, and to which a reply had now been received. The consequence was that I must go to a great country house in England called Evenwood, there to be interviewed by its owner, the widowed Lady Tansor.
‘You must charm this lady,’ urged Madame. ‘This will present no difficulty, for you charm everyone – as your dear departed father did. She will immediately discern that you are no common servant, but have been brought up as a lady, and this will be your great advantage. But you will have one other. There will be something about you that she will not be able to resist, although she might try. I cannot say more; but this you must believe, and take strength from it.’
‘But why must I do these things?’ I asked, dumbfounded by her words. ‘You still have not told me.’
Again that strange smile, which I believe was meant to set my mind at rest, but only served to alarm me even more.
‘Dear child,’ she said, ‘don’t be angry with me, for I can see that you are, and I understand how you must feel. There is a purpose – a great purpose – to be served by your becoming maid to Lady Tansor, but it must be kept from you for the time being. Knowing too much too soon will make it all the harder for you to play your part, and compromise those qualities of innocence and inexperience in your character that you will need to draw on. If you secure this position, as I’m sure you will, you must daily convince your mistress that you are indeed what you present yourself to be. She must have no suspicions of you. Until you have gained her complete trust, therefore, the less you know, the better; for your ignorance will make your behaviour more natural and unstudied. When you have established yourself in her favour, it will be time for you to know everything – and you shall. On that you have my solemn word.
‘So will you trust me, child, as you have always trusted me, and believe that what I do, I do to serve your interests alone, to which, since the day you were born, I have always been, and shall always be, devoted?’
What could I say to such an appeal? It was only too true. Her loving care for me had been daily proved. Surely I must trust her now, although blindly? Not to do so would be to repudiate all she had done for me, all she meant to me. I had no mother; I had no father; no brother or sister. I had only Madame, whose lilting voice used to sing me to sleep, or hush me gently when I awoke from the fearful nightmares to which I have always been susceptible. I was certain that she would never deceive me, nor deliberately put me in the way of harm. If the task that she now wished me to undertake was bound to my closest interests, as she continued to insist, what cause did I have to doubt her?
I knew in my heart that, in the end, the duty I owed to Madame would make it impossible for me to reject her assurances that my going to England was absolutely necessary. Nevertheless, I eventually accepted them only with the greatest reluctance, feeling that my guardian had given me no other choice, by exploiting my love for her to overcome my most natural and reasonable objections.
‘Dear child,’ said Madame, after I had composed myself a little, her elfin face now alive with relief. ‘We know only too well that this is a great deal to ask of you, and at so young an age; but we also know that you have it in your power—’
‘“We”?’ I broke in.
For the first time she hesitated in her reply, as if she had let slip something that she had not wished me to know.
‘Why, myself and Mr Thornhaugh, of course,’ she said, after a moment’s thought. ‘Who else should I mean?’
I asked what my tutor had to do with the matter.
‘Dear child,’ came her smiling reply, accompanied by a soft touch of her hand, ‘you know how much I have come to rely on Mr Thornhaugh’s advice, having no husband to turn to. I need that advice more than ever now.’
I appreciated why Madame had made my tutor a party in what she kept calling the ‘Great Task’, for he was in every way a most exceptional individual, in whom I also trusted absolutely; but why had she not told me of this from the start?
‘I have taken Mr Thornhaugh into my confidence,’ she admitted. ‘He must know all, if he is to assist me. I would not have kept this from you had Mr Thornhaugh himself not insisted on it. It is to his credit that he was sensible of the delicacy of the situation. He felt that it would be hurtful to you if I told you that your tutor knew what you cannot yet know. He was right, of course. Will you forgive me?’
We sat in silence, our arms around each other, rocking gently to and fro, until at last Madame said that we would resume our conversation in the morning.
From that day onwards, she set about preparing me for what lay ahead. Her own maid tutored me daily in the various duties that I would be called upon to perform, and I was given a copy of Mrs Isabella Beeton’s excellent manual of household management, in which the many onerous responsibilities of a lady’s-maid were set out. This I studied assiduously night after night, and later made sure to take the book with me to Evenwood.
It was frequently impossible for me to stop myself from asking Madame yet again about the purpose of the Great Task, and why it required me to quit France.
‘It is your destiny, dear child,’ she would say, in a most solemn and conclusive manner, which instantly discouraged further enquiry, ‘as well as your duty.’ This was all the answer she would ever give me; and so, feeling the impossibility of defying Destiny, I at last submitted to the inevitable.
A week or so later, on a hazy August morning, Madame came to me as I was sitting reading in the salon. I saw immediately that she had something of the greatest importance to tell me.
‘Are you ready, dear child, to begin the Great Task?’ she asked, flushed with excitement.
She stretched both her hands out towards me. I took them, and we stood facing each other, our fingers locked tightly together.
‘I am ready,’ I replied, although I was sick with renewed apprehension, and still silently resentful at the position of unquestioning obedience to Madame’s will in which I had been placed.
‘Do not think that you will be alone,’ she said, gently stroking my hair. ‘I shall be here, whenever you need me – and Mr Thornhaugh too, of course – and you will always have a friend near by in England.’
‘A friend?’
‘Yes, and a good and trustworthy one, who will make sure that no harm comes to you, and who will watch over you in my place. But you will not know this person, unless – God forbid – circumstances make it imperative that you should do so.’
So the time for leaving the house in the Avenue d’Uhrich grew ever nearer. In the last days, Madame had impressed upon me again and again the need, if I secured the position, to gain Lady Tansor’s complete trust, whilst warning me that this might not be won quickly, or easily. She then told me that there had been only one intimate friend of her own sex in Lady Tansor’s life, but that, as far as she knew, this friendship had been ended many years ago.
‘You must not remain a mere servant for long,’ she went on, ‘but must become a substitute for that lost friend. The success of the Great Task depends on it.’
For the last time, I ventured to ask what the purpose of the Great Task was, knowing even as I did so what Madame’s response would be. For now (it was always, provokingly, ‘for now’), I must continue to put my faith in her, although she promised to send me three ‘Letters of Instruction’, the last of which would finally reveal the goal of the Great Task, and how it was to be achieved.

FROM THAT MOMENT, I have come to feel that my life is not my own, and that it has never been truly mine. Yet until then, on the contrary, it seems to me that I passed a most contented and enviable childhood and girlhood, secure in my own protected world; often alone, but never lonely; and fully alive within myself, where I revelled constantly in bright imaginings – except when the nightmares came, and I would cry out in terror. But even these, while dreaded, did not disturb me so much when the next day broke fair, and I would wake to see the dear face of Madame, whom, if the terror had been severe, I would always find sleeping in the chair beside my bed, her hand closed protectively over mine.
Of my mother, I could recall nothing. Of my father, I sometimes fancied that I had a vague remembrance, as of a place once visited long ago, but of which one retains only the faintest sense, indistinct yet always bringing with it the same indelible impression. Curiously, this fragment of memory never tormented me. It was too insubstantial, and came too infrequently. Only on birthdays did I sometimes feel forlorn at my orphan state; but then I would scold myself for my ingratitude towards Madame, and look upon myself as a very selfish creature indeed. Orphans that I had read of in books were often poor suffering things, cruelly treated by wicked guardians or stepmothers. It was never so with me. Madame was kind and caring; the house in the Avenue d’Uhrich, although its high walls shut out the distant world, was large and comfortable. I wanted for nothing, lacked no bodily comforts or stimulation of the mind; I was loved, knew that I was loved, and loved in return. How, then, should I have been sad or unhappy?