The Devil Walks Read online

  True, she believed she had good reason to keep me close.

  But to have kept me in my bed! No, that was cruel.

  And once her long deception had been discovered, why did she hide from me? What would have been so wrong with sending for me from the hospital, then opening her heart to tell me plainly why she’d tricked me into the belief I was an invalid? Didn’t she realize I’d have forgiven her gladly? Didn’t she even know that much about me and my love for her?

  She was a mystery indeed! So I kept at my plan to find out everything I could before I left. In between swinging the cricket bat with growing vigour and sending the croquet balls more often through the hoops, I haunted Martha and Thomas, pestering them with what I hoped they’d think were idle questions.

  And so I found myself one day seeking out Thomas as he shifted last year’s leaves into a barrow.

  ‘I’ll help you, shall I?’

  He pushed the hair back from his eyes. ‘Tiring of play?’

  I nodded and went off to fetch another fork. After we’d worked a while, I asked him casually, ‘Tell me what games my mother played in this garden.’

  He chuckled. ‘Tell me what games she didn’t! Why, she and Edmund were forever hurling balls about and climbing trees and teasing the chickens.’

  ‘Chickens?’

  ‘Edmund kept chickens from the first day he was strong enough to pick one up and fall in love with it.’

  ‘There are no chickens now.’

  ‘No.’ Thomas’s face set. ‘And there’ll be no more till Martha’s six feet underground. One single cluck from a henhouse can set her weeping to this very day.’

  ‘Because of Edmund?’

  ‘Yes, because of Edmund.’

  We both fell silent. Then I said, ‘You told me that he died at sea.’

  ‘He did.’ He thrust his fork tines deeper in the mulch. ‘And I will not forgive myself for that.’

  I stared. ‘How can his death be any fault of yours?’

  He searched my face, as if deciding whether or not to share his story. But then the need to speak overtook reticence. He threw the fork aside. ‘Oh, I’m to blame! You see, it was my chattering. All of my life I’d dreamed of seeing high seas, and all those wonders of the deep that sailors talk about. I was forever telling tales of dolphins frolicking in the wake of ships, and whales as big as houses that rose from the waves. And I infected Edmund with my dreams. So when Jack tempted him – “One voyage, Edmund! Just to see the world!” – he couldn’t resist.’

  ‘But he knew Jack. He must have known the risk he would be taking.’

  ‘Oh, he’d more sense than to go to sea with such a stepbrother. And Jack was cunning enough to know it. So when Jack came back one summer to hear that Edmund had a plan to join the Brave Redoubt, Jack filled our ears with talk of his own new commission on a ship he called the Pride of Passage, sailing from Portsmouth. He even packed his bag and left again within a week. So, till the ship that Edmund joined was safely out of harbour, nobody knew that Jack was also on board.’

  I watched as Thomas kicked a clod of moss and made it spin before he added angrily, ‘And after that even a child would have been able to guess the end of the story. Just some brief mystery an ocean away, and one more good and loving soul was lost to us for ever.’

  ‘And so my mother was the only one left. Is that the reason she fled?’

  ‘That’s why we made her go – that very night, though she was weak with weeping. Martha packed up her few possessions before the captain could get home from his dark work.’

  I thought of Martha’s claim that Liliana had sensed Samuel’s death. ‘But if the boys were on the very same ship, how did my mother know about her brother’s death before Jack came back home?’

  ‘Ah, now, for that,’ said Thomas, cheering suddenly, ‘we have to thank your father.’

  ‘My father?’

  He smiled. ‘You surely can’t be such an innocent you didn’t think you had one.’

  I felt the blood rush to my cheeks. There was no way to explain to someone who had known a different Liliana just how impossible it was to ask my mother anything about her past.

  Now he was curious. ‘You never guessed who it might be?’

  ‘Guessed?’ Into my mind there sprang an echo of my step-uncle’s chuckle of amusement at the idea of any Mr Cunningham who might have wooed my mother and offered me his name.

  ‘I had no reason to believe I lived under the shelter of any name that wasn’t mine,’ I told Thomas shortly. Then, in a sudden burst of words that took my own self by surprise, I raised my eyes to his and added frankly, ‘Though, if I had spent time guessing about some other hidden father, then from the first few days I was in this house I might have thought that it was you.’

  You’d think I’d told him that I thought he might be King of Spain. ‘Me? Me? Your father?’

  I tried to defend myself. ‘Why not? I knew you spent your waking hours making a doll’s house for my mother. And Martha has quite openly declared that it was a labour of love.’

  He laughed, then laid his arm around my shoulders. ‘Daniel, I would be honoured to stand in his place. But no, your father was a man called Harry Hetherington.’ He peered at me in gathering astonishment. ‘You’ve never heard the name?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Truly? Your mother never once spoke of your father?’

  ‘Except to tell me he was dead. And make it clear it was a matter on which she had no more to say.’

  He shook his head in wonder. ‘Poor soul! Her heart can never have healed.’ He took a breath, as if even to tell the story would cost some courage. ‘He was a friend of Edmund’s – a fine-looking lad. As soon as Edmund told him he was off to sea, he wouldn’t be satisfied till he’d arranged to go along. And on the day the two of them left on that fatal voyage I watched Liliana standing on the dockside waving her handkerchief until the ship was no more than a speck on the horizon. And though not a word was spoken, we all knew that Harry was as much in her mind as her beloved brother.’

  ‘He couldn’t save him, though.’

  ‘Nobody could have saved him, for what went on there was the devil’s business. There was a fire on deck, and much confusion. Still, Harry said, it was a mystery how someone as sure-footed as Edmund could vanish overboard in such a way.’

  ‘He thought it was no accident?’

  ‘He was convinced it was no accident. He’d heard the whispers about the other deaths. And here was Jack, one further stepping stone towards the family’s fortune. Harry was wise and kept his counsel till the end of the voyage. But when they berthed, he gave your step-uncle the slip and rode home in a blaze of speed. I can remember seeing him pull Liliana after him out onto the veranda. “You won’t be safe,” he warned. “No, not till you’re out of this house and hidden away. That Jack’s the very devil and won’t rest till you have joined the rest of your benighted family – in death!”’

  Thomas was shuddering at the memory. ‘Poor Liliana didn’t say a word. She was unfit from weeping. But we all knew that she loved Harry. And he said he loved her. So it seemed safest by far for him to rush her away and marry her next day, and keep her safe in some far town.’ He pushed his hair back from his forehead as if still panicked at the memory of that grim night. ‘You see, we hoped that if the captain thought that it was passion that had made her leave the house, not terror of his wiles, he was less likely to chase after her.’

  ‘And so you tried to make it look as if, even before Harry sailed, the two of them had planned to run away together afterwards! And that’s why he’d rushed off the ship!’

  ‘Smart boy. So Martha tumbled Liliana’s few possessions into bags and threw them on the cart. And Harry and I fetched down the doll’s house because the captain knew she cared so much for it that, if she’d left in anything less than some great storm of hurry, it would have gone with her.’ His face turned dark. ‘But one of the things that Liliana took away with her that night must have been pre
cious to your uncle – so precious he won’t rest until it’s back. He chased poor Liliana and Harry until your father was tired to the bone of moving towns at dead of night, and changing names to leave false trails, and never being able to hold to a profession or a friend. And, in the end …’

  Rather than say the words, Thomas fell silent.

  But I was not prepared to let the matter drop. ‘So this fine-looking father of mine deserted my mother.’

  He tried to soothe me. ‘Harry was not a saint.’

  ‘He said he loved her!’ I burst out.

  ‘And I am sure he did. But you’ll soon learn that when trouble flies in the window, love often chooses to creep out.’

  ‘Then it’s not love!’

  ‘Perhaps.’ His face changed. Over it spread a puzzled look. ‘But there was something else as well. Over the years he had sent word that Liliana was changing. She was becoming cold with him, he said. She had turned stiff and unfeeling.’

  ‘He should have tried a little harder and a little longer!’

  ‘Perhaps he did. But we don’t know because his letters stopped.’

  ‘So he had gone! Leaving my mother – and me.’

  ‘Perhaps he didn’t realize you were on your way. Certainly we knew nothing of the matter.’ Thomas brushed the last leaves off his sleeve. ‘But clearly your mother soon did. And looking back, we now believe that it was Liliana’s fear for your safety that stopped her sending her beloved Martha any more messages.’

  ‘What, not a word?’

  ‘No. Not a word. And though we waited, always trying to live in hope, we could learn nothing of her whereabouts – or whether she was alive or dead – until, walking behind the captain one day, I heard him muttering about the letter he’d received from Doctor Marlow.’

  My head was spinning from the tale. ‘What of my father?’

  Thomas shrugged. ‘A man who leaves his wife is not much prized among his friends and family. We think he started off another life.’

  Another life! I felt a stab of bitterness. So Harry Hetherington – my father – had carved out two full lives where I had only had the shade of one.

  Yes, only the shade. Because although we’d spent the years cooped up together, it seemed I had not truly known my very own mother. She had not shared a single moment of her past with me. Everyone knew more about her than I! To me, she might as well have been some wooden-headed doll, quite empty of the sort of love that will share memories and hopes and fears. She’d cheated me of any knowledge of my own place in the world, down to my own real name. She had preferred bland silence to the truth of who I was, and, for her own convenience, had forced me into living one long debilitating and bedridden lie.

  And then, to cap all, she had deserted me! Nobody murdered her. She didn’t die of fever, like the doctor’s unhappy patients. No. She had put an end to her own life simply because she couldn’t keep things in the way that suited her.

  She’d put her own desires before her duty to her child.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder. ‘In time you’ll come to understand.’

  I shook him off. ‘I won’t! Not ever, no! Both of them made the coward’s choice. I won’t forgive my father for deserting her, or her for abandoning me. No. Never! Never!’

  Breaking free, I ran away from him, down to the river, to follow the track along to the hollow tree in which my mother spent so many of her childhood hours. The smell of leaf mould rose around me like a cloud as I squeezed in. I sat exactly where she must have sat so often all those years ago, on a small rounded lump that formed a kind of seat. And here I pulled out her diary and, in between spasms of tears, I read it through again from first to last, in desperate search of some small proof that this young Liliana had always been a spoiled, selfish person who cared not a jot for anyone around her.

  What was I trying to do? Convince myself that she had never merited a single ounce of my love? If so, it was a hopeless task. The diary was studded with things that proved the opposite:

  Yesterday Mother decided that Edmund was careless with his letters, and so today she kept him in the house all morning, scraping away with his pen. Jolyon wanted to jump on the veranda steps. But it seemed cruel for Edmund to have to hear us playing happily outside. So I led Jolyon into the raspberry canes, where we spent the rest of the morning playing at tigers in the jungle.

  I turned a page or two, only to find:

  I found a rabbit with a mangled leg. Thomas said it would be kinder to snap its neck and be done. But I let fly at him, saying I wouldn’t trust a single mouthful offered to me under this roof from that day on. So Thomas sighed and laid it carefully in a cage. I hate to watch the poor thing shivering. It longs all day to be free. If only it could understand that its imprisonment won’t last for ever!

  Then, on the next page, yet another tale of someone else’s woe:

  Poor Jolly! The tiny fellow woke covered in angry spots, and Martha is insisting he rests in his crib. He roars and roars, though whether from the irritation of the pox or from the horrid business of being cooped up, no one can tell.

  I snapped the diary shut. No, it was hopeless. This was no tiresome, heartless girl going her own way with no thought for others. This was a loving, caring child. So in the end I sighed and slid the little leather-bound book back in my jerkin, ready to leave my mother as the mystery she had become to me and pack my bag.

  If I could not make sense of my own past, still I could do my best to build a future.

  And I would.

  Filled with determination, I went back to the house.

  There in the open doorway lay my uncle’s travelling bag. I hoped to slip past, but he must have seen my shadow on the steps, for out he came. ‘There you are, boy!’ He pulled me into the house. ‘So, Daniel, have you kept this place in order while I was away?’ Without waiting for an answer, he drew me closer. ‘Why, I believe you’ve grown another inch since I’ve been gone.’

  ‘It has been only days, sir.’

  ‘Enough for a bean to sprout!’ He thrust me to arms’ length and studied my face. ‘Your eyes are raw. Have you been weeping?’ He roared with merriment. ‘Did you miss me so much?’

  ‘No,’ I said stubbornly. ‘Something stung my eye.’

  His tone changed. Thrusting his face at mine, he told me threateningly, ‘You’d best take care. More than one thing can sting under this roof.’

  And then again he roared with laughter, reeling around under the chandelier almost as though he were dancing with an invisible wife. Where had he been? What had he been about, that he should come back home in such a mix of anger and elation?

  Suddenly spinning to a halt, he pointed a finger at me and declared, ‘We shall have supper together. Yes! And we shall have it now.’

  He reached down for his bag. ‘Tell Martha she must root up something to serve at once. I’m as starved as a bear in spring.’ As he went up the stairs, he added in a mutter I’m sure he thought that only he could hear, ‘And I’m as sick of playing the gentleman as any man can be.’

  By the time Martha had laid the food on the table, his mood had changed. He barely raised his eyes as I came in to take my place. I wished him a good evening and picked up my napkin.

  Still he said nothing.

  As I sat wondering if I dared ask if I’d somehow displeased him, down came his giant hand to make the silver rattle and the plates jump.

  ‘So! Now we play the frightened rabbit, do we?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Staring down at your plate like some waif in a poorhouse. Come, you’re a guest under this roof. Sing for your supper!’

  So I obeyed. Although my heart was thumping at his rage, I stammered out some tale about my growing skills at archery and bagatelle. I told him how I had been helping Martha in the kitchen, and wandering around the grounds. The whole time I was spilling out my childish news he kept his eyes on me, but still I had the feeling he barely listened to a word. Was he just satisfying himself that nothing had changed and I
was still the stupid and unthinking boy he’d left behind some days before?

  Or was there something else that chewed away at him?

  I couldn’t tell. Still, maybe he found the mere sound of my voice soothing, for soon I saw that he’d begun to nod along with things I said. Then he began to prompt me. ‘So you’ve enjoyed the books that you’ve been picking off the shelves. Then we shall find you more.’ ‘You took to archery? Then you must let me show you how to sharpen arrow points.’ The minutes passed, and gradually I saw that he had slid back into that elated mood I’d seen before, grinning away at me as if each word I said pleased and amused him.

  Feeling a little safer, I dared ask, ‘And your own business? Did it go well?’

  ‘Go well?’ Again the fist came down on the table. ‘Why, it could not have gone better if I’d found a pot of gold at one end of a rainbow!’ He chuckled. ‘Oh, it was well worth the journey.’

  Now he was eyeing me with such great mischief that I felt shudders of terror. I couldn’t help but think again of that strange face that haunted me through childhood – that illustration in my book of fairy tales which, looked at one way up, was just a smiling girl but, turned the other, showed the wicked stepmother.

  Narrowing his eyes, he leaned across the table and added in a dangerous tone, ‘And I have spied out a secret.’

  Martha had said there was an angel on one side of him, a devil on another. I almost saw them as I stammered out, ‘A secret?’

  He leaned even closer. ‘Oh, yes! A secret that someone else would no doubt have preferred to keep.’

  My hands were slick with sweat as I laid down my knife. His eyes looked devilish-green as he kept on, ‘And, why, I ask myself, would anyone try to keep a secret if he did not hope to cheat another?’