A Child of Secrets Page 5

  ‘Oh…’ Lily coloured, tossing her hair, giving a little laugh. ‘No one, not really. Just a friend of Dickon’s. No one of any consequence.’

  Despite her attempts at self-deception some unhappy thought laid a shadow over her eyes as she turned away, going to stare out of the window.

  When she remained silent, Jess said, ‘Somethin’ wrong, Miss Lily?’

  Lily looked round, smoothing the front of her skirt with the palms of her hands. ‘It’s just… Oh, perhaps I am a silly goose, just as Clemency says. But Mr Ashton Haverleigh…’ Misery made her fold her arms round herself as she began to talk of the young man, speaking half to herself as she described him. ‘He’s the third son of the Earl of Morne. They keep a country house near Fakenham, twenty miles from here, though Lord Morne stays mainly in London. I believe Cousin Oliver acts as his lawyer locally. Mr Haverleigh is a close friend of Dickon’s. He comes sometimes to stay at the Manor with the family and…’

  Ash… so tall and slender, hair like spun gold, eyes, in contrast, so dark, with the profile of a Greek god, like the statue she had seen on a visit to one of the London museums. She imagined his body to be like the statue’s, too – strong and muscled, glorious in its nakedness, but made of warm flesh and blood, not cold stone. The image came to her in dreams and made her wake sweating, restless for something she could not name.

  ‘He does notice me!’ she cried. ‘Oh…’ She threw out her arms before wrapping them about her own shoulders. ‘No woman with any sense should ever fall in love. Only an idiot would allow herself to come under the spell of one of those cruel creatures we call men. Don’t you agree?’

  Jess shook her head. ‘I dunno, Miss Lily.’

  ‘Haven’t you ever been in love?’

  To Jess, the question seemed ridiculous. Women like her didn’t have time for fancy notions like ‘in love’. At Fisher’s End you got wed when it was time, to whichever man your family chose for you. ‘In love’ wasn’t part of the bargain, though loving might come later if you were lucky – so Mother had said.

  ‘Never thought about it much,’ she said.

  Lily seemed surprised, her odd eyes widening with a little pucker between the dark brows. ‘How old are you, Jess?’

  She had to think a moment to remember. ‘Nineteen. Twenty, come February.’

  ‘Two years older than I am,’ Lily said. ‘Two years and a few months. My birthday’s in May. At least… that’s what Mama decided.’

  ‘Didn’t she remember?’

  ‘No.’ Lily looked at her without expression, her eyes – the blue and the brown – hiding all her thoughts as she said slowly, ‘The man who hurt you… What did he do? How did he… Can you tell me about it?’

  She wasn’t prying, Jess understood. She wanted to know because she was seventeen years old, a child becoming a woman. Even so, Jess was not the one to enlighten her. Just thinking about it made her want to scream. Her insides seemed to shrivel, curling up into a tight ball. ‘No. No, I can’t. I’m sorry, Miss Lily, but you shouldn’t ax me such things. Don’t let’s talk about it, if you please.’

  ‘Very well.’ Lily moved away, petticoats whispering under her bustle as she walked across the room and paused a while in silence, then said brightly, ‘I know what we’ll do – I’ll read to you. Would you like that, Jess? We’ll have some of Mr Dickens, shall we? I’ll go and fetch my book.’

  Three

  When Lily returned with her copy of David Copperfield she settled herself in the window seat, summarising the early part of the story so that she could get to where David met Dora and the ill-fated love story began. That was Lily’s favourite part. She acted out the story, using different voices, amusing Jess no end.

  After a while, when the story paused between chapters, Jess said, ‘Did you name your Gyp after the dog in the book?’

  Lily looked up slowly. ‘Yes, I suppose I did. Except… Except that I spell it differently.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Jess, to whom spelling was a mystery.

  Making a little dismissive gesture, Lily said, ‘It’s foolishness, but… it’s short for gypsy.’

  ‘Ah,’ Jess said again. ‘Diddicoys, we call ’em. You fond of gypsies, Miss Lily?’

  ‘I?’ Lily flushed and shrugged. ‘Why… no, not especially. What makes you ask?’

  ‘I recall you wonderin’ if my name come from the diddicoys, and then Miss Clemency say…’

  ‘Oh, that!’ She shook back her curls, moving her shoulders as if she felt a draught from the window. ‘Gracious goodness, it’s getting colder. If it snows any more there’ll be no one at the service on Sunday.’ Getting up, she went to hold her hands to the fire, her back turned to Jess.

  As silence stretched, Jess sensed her companion’s turmoil. It swirled in the air around her like clouds building for a storm.

  Lily looked round, seeing Jess lying against white pillows, looking small and frail – only two years her senior but much older in experience. Lily couldn’t match her knowledge of life’s mysteries, but she did have secrets she could share. Wanted to share.

  Not knowing where to begin, she blurted, ‘I do know how it must be for you, because… because I was once a foundling, too.’

  Jess’s eyes grew round. ‘Oh, Miss Lily…’

  ‘It’s true!’ Lily cried. ‘I was found on the doorstep – here, at the rectory. Mama and Papa took me in, and looked after me, but they’re only my adoptive parents, not my real parents. You see, Jess… I was stolen away from my real home. I was stolen by the gypsies.’

  Pale and intent, Lily came to sit on the bed. Her slender fingers, the nails bitten below the quick, traced patterns on the coverlet while her luminous, mismatched eyes glowed into Jess’s. In a compelling, story-telling voice, she began, ‘It was late in October, a wild, stormy night, with the wind blowing and rain beating across the windows. When Mama first heard the sound she thought it must be a cat, caught outside in the downpour. She sent Papa to look and… there on the doorstep was a rush basket – such as the gypsies sell – and cradled in it, wrapped in a knitted blanket, was a baby. Me.’

  ‘Oh!’ Jess breathed.

  ‘Yes!’ Lily responded, her eyes glowing with an inner fire that betrayed her excitement. ‘And that’s not all. There were other things in the basket – things that prove who I really am.’

  ‘What things?’ Jess asked, caught.

  Lily jumped from the bed and made for the door. ‘I’ll show you.’

  Jess waited expectantly. She loved stories. Her grandmother had had a talent for telling the most fantastical tales and Jess had loved to be amazed, or terrified, safe on Granny Henefer’s knee.

  When Lily returned, she brought a small bag made of blue linen, fastened at the neck with black ribbon. Using great care, as if the objects inside were infinitely precious, she pulled open the neck of the bag and let the contents slide out on to the coverlet. There was a gold bangle, and a string of strange, orange-coloured beads.

  ‘I still have the basket, too,’ Lily said. ‘I’ll show it to you one day. The mice got at it, so Papa made me put it away, but I wouldn’t part with it for anything. And look…’ Sliding her hand inside the bag, she removed a tattered piece of paper with some writing on it. ‘This was pinned to the blanket in which I was swaddled. It says…’ The tip of a pink tongue came out to moisten her lips before she went on in a hushed voice, ‘It says, “Her name is Lilith”.’

  Jess’s eyes widened. Was it possible that it was not just a made-up story? ‘Lilith? That’s a queer sort o’ name.’

  ‘See for yourself.’ Lily thrust the crumpled paper into Jess’s hands.

  Jess looked at the scratchy marks on the page, shaking her head. ‘I – I can’t read, Miss Lily.’

  ‘What?’ Lily stared her astonishment. ‘Didn’t you go to school?’

  ‘Oh, I had some schoolin’,’ Jess said. ‘Learned a lot of hymns, and some Bible stories, and how to mind my manners in front of my betters.’

  In the North End o
f Lynn, the schoolteachers hadn’t bothered much with educating girls, except in ways that fitted them for their future as workers and wives. And Jess had often been kept away from lessons because Mother had needed her help with the little ’uns. Fanny ought to have done it, being the oldest, but Fanny had a hasty temper and a way of lashing out, so the gentler Jess had been preferred as a baby-minder.

  Truth to tell, Jess didn’t understand why folk laid so much store by reading. What you needed to know you could learn by watching and listening, surely? That was the way it had always been done in the North End. And, as her mother had always said, what did a mawther from Fisher’s End want with book-learnin’? Books didn’t teach you how to crack mussels for bait, or feed a family on a tail-piece of salt herring.

  Pushing back her hair with a gesture that also pushed aside painful memories, she said, ‘Go you on, Miss Lily. When did you find out, about your bein’ stolen by gypsies?’

  ‘Oh, not until I was ten years old. Mama… Mama fell very ill. Lung fever. Cousin Oriana came to nurse her, but we all knew the end was coming. I prayed and prayed for her to recover, but God didn’t hear me – he never does answer when I really want something.

  ‘Then, one day when her mind was clear, Mama sent for me. She told me then, about my being found on the doorstep. She said she loved me just as much as if I were her own, but since I wasn’t really her daughter she felt I ought to know…’ Her voice trailed off as her eyes filled with tears and it was a moment before she shook herself and went on, ‘So you see… My name isn’t really Lily Victoria Clare. I don’t belong here. My own father – my real father – is a very important man.’

  Jess, caught up in her new friend’s distress, felt her heart beat slow and heavy, making it hard to breathe. ‘Your… real father?’

  ‘Yes. My real true father is a great lord, perhaps. Even a prince.’

  Lord! Jess thought. Miss Lily was a princess? Lord!

  ‘Of course, I can’t be sure,’ Lily went on earnestly, ‘until he actually comes for me. But I know he will come, some day. He’s been searching for me all this time – that’s why the gypsies abandoned me, because he was after them. But he’s still looking for me, and one day he’ll find me and take me home where I really belong.’

  Jess’s brain was beginning to work again. The sensible part of her – the practical, down-to-earth, commonsensical Jess – wanted to dismiss the tale as squit. There were holes in it that a seal might swim through. But it was apparent that Lily believed every word. Her lovely face was alight with faith, her strange eyes intent, holding Jess in a spell.

  ‘And your real name is… Lilith, did you say?’

  ‘That’s what it says on the note – I think my real mother may have been of foreign blood. But Mama Clare preferred to call me Lily, and Papa added “Victoria” – he had me baptised to make sure it was done properly, and he always calls me “Lily Victoria”. He doesn’t like Lilith because… because it has bad associations.’

  ‘How come?’

  Lily’s brow wrinkled. ‘One of the girls, at the school I attend in Cambridge, said that Lilith was Adam’s first wife, who turned into a demon!’

  ‘Adam who?’ said Jess.

  ‘Adam… Adam and Eve!’

  ‘What?’ Jess was astounded. ‘Why, whoever say he have another wife? That’s a load of old squit. That’s not in no Bible story I ever heard.’

  ‘No, nor I,’ Lily agreed. ‘I looked, but I couldn’t find any reference to it, and when I asked Cousin Oriana she told me not to talk such nonsense – but you know how obtuse adults can be. Anyway, the gypsies left me other clues to my identity, so my father will know me. This necklace… It’s made of amber beads – look, there’s a fly caught in one, can you see?’

  Peering, Jess could just make out the small black shape transfixed inside what looked like a blob of orange glass. It gave her the strangest feeling, like an icy wind passing over her scalp.

  ‘Amber’s a powerful charm to ward off danger,’ Lily said. ‘It was meant to protect me. And the gold bracelet is inscribed with letters. Look…’ She displayed the inside of the bangle. ‘An “R” and an “S”, all twined together. Those are my real parents’ initials, I’m sure of it. I think she was probably called Rosalinda, and my father was Simon, or Stephen. It’s solid gold, worth a lot of money. I expect my real father had it made specially for my mother. And here it says “MIZPAH”. That’s a special love word my parents had between them.’

  Jess had heard that word before. ‘“The Lord watch atween me and thee when we be apart from each other”,’ she quoted under her breath.

  Lily’s head came up, her eyes narrow as they focused almost accusingly on Jess’s face. ‘What?’

  ‘That’s what Granny say that mean. She have a brooch with that word on it. Grandad Henefer won it on the coconut shy at the Lynn Mart, when they was walkin’ out, so she say.’

  ‘Say it again, what it means,’ Lily ordered.

  Jess did so, her tone as reverent as her grandmother’s had been. Even though Granny Henefer had been a very old lady, widowed for twenty years before she died, she’d never stopped treasuring that brooch.

  It was odd that Lily hadn’t known what the word meant, and her so educated. Unless… was it possible that, because she hadn’t known the word, she’d made up an answer to fit her story?

  Jess began to wonder what else Lily had made up.

  ‘You see!’ Lily’s eyes were round with delight. ‘It is a special message. A message for me from my real father. It’s a promise that he will come for me, one day. Oh, Jess… Now do you believe you were sent here to be my friend? It was fated – I know it. The moment I saw you there in the wood, I had a feeling our meeting meant something special.’

  Though she would have liked to deny it, Jess too had had the strange feeling of being in fate’s hands.

  ‘You will stay with me, won’t you?’ Lily begged. ‘And then, when my real father comes, you can come home with me. We’ll be sisters. You’ll never be cold, or hungry, or ill-treated, not ever again.’

  With loving hands, not waiting for an answer, she returned her treasures to their bag and took it back to her room.

  Behind her, Jess lay staring at the painting above the hearth – a scene of a mountainside with a great stag poised on a rock. To Jess’s eyes the animal, with branches growing out of its head, looked as unlikely as Lily’s story had sounded. She thought of her youngest brother, Joe, who’d had an imaginary friend he trailed around with him. Lily’s fantasy about her ‘real father’ seemed similar. But Joe had been four, and he’d grown out of it; Lily was seventeen, nearly adult.

  Thinking of it, Jess shivered and huddled closer into her blankets, touched by a chill that was more than physical. She felt as though a great black raven had swooped over the rectory, blurring the daylight and leaving behind it a feeling of menace.

  * * *

  On Sunday morning, Miss Peartree decreed Jess well enough to be allowed out of bed to sit by the bedroom fire, well wrapped up in a dressing gown, with a blanket round her knees. The morning being grey and dreary, Lily elected to sit with her; she lingered by the window, staring out, her mind on Ashton Haverleigh.

  ‘This awful mist…’ she mourned. ‘I can’t even see the church tower this morning. Surely the Clares won’t come all the way from Syderford?’

  Curious to see more of her surroundings, Jess eased herself to her feet and made her unsteady way across to the window seat. She could see part of the garden now, snow-covered humps of shrubs massed around a curve of driveway that someone had roughly cleared. Tall elms loomed black through freezing fog. Off to the left was part of a garden wall, with beside it the great frozen wave of wind-blown snow that Lily had described days before. It was marked by the faint tracks of birds and animals.

  ‘The church is over there,’ said Lily, pointing into grey distance. ‘It lies beyond a hill, so you can only see the tower from here. In between, the footpath from Hewing village leads acros
s the park.’

  The rectory and its garden stood inside the grounds of Hewinghall House, its drive connecting with one of the main driveways. It had been built in a hollow, well out of sight of the big house and thus well away from the church, which now stood isolated in the park.

  ‘The old village was torn down after the Black Death killed all the inhabitants,’ Lily said. ‘But sometimes, in very dry weather, you can see the humps where the houses used to be, all around the church.’

  ‘Black Death?’ It sounded horrible to Jess.

  ‘It was a disease. It wiped out thousands of people in… Oh, ages ago. Whole villages were left empty. Old Hewing was one of them. At least, that’s what they say. My cousin Clemency says it’s more likely that one of Sir Richard’s ancestors had it moved because it spoiled his view. After all, they did build the rectory where they couldn’t see it, so—’

  ‘Lily Victoria…’ Miss Peartree put her head round the door. ‘I shall be leaving for church in five minutes. Be ready.’

  Lily was torn in two. To go to church and perhaps see Ash – though he might not come at all, they might none of them come – or to plead a headache, stay away and… Her desire to see him proved strongest.

  Cousin Oriana liked to be in church half an hour before the service began, to sit within the confines of the wooden box pew allotted to the rector’s family and prepare herself with silent prayer. Lily spent the time trying not to fidget, practising the waltz with tiny movements of her toes, or playing music with her fingertips inside her muff and watching her breath turn to steam as it met the freezing air. The oak-carved pulpit loomed over her like the prow of a ship, carved with a pair of remarkably ugly, squint-eyed angels at whom she pulled faces to while away the time.

  As the pews behind her gradually filled it took all her willpower not to keep glancing round to see exactly who was arriving. She was desperate to know whether Ashton Haverleigh would attend the service. Every step and rustle of movement caused her flesh to eddy in flurries of alternate hope and horror.