The Ghost Tree

  Thomas

  Esmé, my youngest and bravest son, was wounded at Waterloo at the side of the Duke of Wellington. When finally he came home he told me he remembered little of what happened. In the midst of the fury and the fire and the crash of artillery and the screams of horses and men he kept as close to the duke as he could, protecting him, sword in hand, trying to keep him in sight, which was difficult as the duke wore, as was his custom, dark clothes so he did not stand out as a target for the enemy. The cannonball that brought Esmé down he remembers only as a crash like the day of doom. His arm was amputated by a field surgeon and for weeks he lay between life and death, but he lived to return to his wife and children and to his father who, stiff upper lip to the fore, patted him on the back and congratulated him on his survival as though he had been at nothing more than a skirmish or an afternoon following hounds. I was proud of myself, but later I confess I wept a tear for my beautiful youngest son.

  75

  The helicopter hovered somewhere below, sufficiently far away for Timothy to be sure it hadn’t spotted him. Something else must have caught the interest of the pilot. It stayed there for ages, just hanging above the woods, and then it rose up in the air and shot off northwards. Slowly the sound of the engine died away. Pressed against the bole of an old dead tree he peered down the hillside. He thought he could hear shouting in the distance. Perhaps they had seen the smoke from the burning chapel, or seen someone in the trees. Backing carefully away into the shelter of the larch forest he made his way cautiously along the shoulder of the hill heading always north. He had long ago given up any thought of going back to his car. It was several hours now since he had rung the bell of the Tower House and the police did not seem to have given up their chase. He was hungry and tired and, as the adrenaline wore off, beginning to feel afraid.

  It was as he breasted the brow of the hill that he had his first ray of hope. Far below in the glen, in the angle of a winding burn, lay a farm steading, barns, outbuildings, an old square stone house. In the yard behind the house he could see cows, crowding together around a hayrack, and nearby there were two cars. Old, muddy, but both looking as if they were still capable of going somewhere.

  Carefully he began to make his way down the steep slope, sliding between the trees, slipping on loose scree, less worried now about leaving the shelter of the trees as long as the helicopter was grounded.

  Keeping his eyes skinned, he edged towards the yard. The gates to the outer yard were open and he could see fresh tracks in the mud. Hopefully the farmer and his family were out. Crouching low, he ran to the first of the cars and grabbed at the door handle. It was locked. Swearing under his breath, he ducked back to the other one and this time the driver’s door opened. He only pulled it a few inches then stopped and looked round. A cow in the inner yard had started mooing loudly and he froze, terrified someone would come to see what was going on. Nothing happened. A few hens were pecking round the gate. They ignored him. He moved forward, still bent double so he could see inside. There was no key in the ignition. He swore again. Inch by inch he edged the door open until he was able to feel his way to the wires under the steering wheel, and spark the contact. The engine caught almost immediately with what sounded like a deafening roar. He leapt in, engaged gear, spun the wheel and began to back out of the yard. As far as he could tell, only the hens noticed him leaving.

  Thomas was standing by the fire in Sarah’s sitting room in her house in Hornsey, warming his hands. He had been to see Esmé and was still distressed. His son had bravely tried to hide his pain as he talked to his father, but he was pale and terribly thin, and kept pushing away the children as they tried to climb onto his lap. His eyes were huge and haunted and his surviving hand was shaking so much he could hardly hold the cup of tea he had been given. Secretly, Thomas felt it would help the boy to talk about his experiences, to get them off his chest, but Eliza, his wife, frowned and whispered that the doctors had told her not to mention anything about the battle, to pretend it had never happened. Eliza had been ill and she was uncomfortable and thoroughly irritated by her father-in-law’s visit which meant she had to bring out the best china and make what she saw as polite conversation. The visit had not gone well.

  It was a mistake to go straight round to see Sarah.

  ‘I expected a better welcome than this!’ Thomas complained as Sarah flounced into the room. She was expecting another child, and the pregnancy was obvious though she had draped a shawl artfully around herself to try to conceal it; Thomas prayed it would be a while yet before his grown-up children realised what was happening.

  He threw himself down on the chair nearest the fire. ‘Call the maid and get her to put more coals on. I pay your servants enough! They should be here to attend you. And I would like a glass of port.’ She couldn’t keep her servants, he noticed, and he could see why. She was rude and ungracious to them when he was there. He dreaded to think how unpleasant she would be when he wasn’t.

  Unerringly she seemed to read his thoughts. When the boy had carried away the empty scuttle to refill it in the yard she stood for a moment looking at the flames, then she turned back to him. ‘I’m sorry, my darling.’ It was Fanny’s voice. ‘I’m not well. The baby kicks so.’ She sank down on the floor at his feet and rested her head on his knee. ‘This waiting is interminable.’ He said nothing, his thoughts still with Esmé. His son’s three small children had climbed over Thomas like puppies, gladly making do with their grandpapa as they weren’t allowed near their father with his empty sleeve pinned across his chest and his spasms of agonising pain.

  ‘Where is Erskine?’ He loathed the fact that she had used his name for the child.

  She gave a careless shrug. ‘I think one of the nursery maids took him out for a walk.’

  ‘At this hour?’ His voice was sharp.

  She looked up, startled. ‘I’d forgotten it was late. Perhaps they’re back.’

  ‘Then why is he not here to greet me?’ He stood up, pushing her away from him, and walked over to the door. The housemaid came running.

  ‘He’s in the kitchen, my lord.’ She sketched a curtsy. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think to bring him in. Mistress Sarah’ – was that the slightest of sneers in her tone? – ‘doesn’t like the child near her.’

  ‘Well, I do,’ he snapped. ‘Bring him up here at once.’

  The little boy was neat and clean, but, as always, he seemed scared when his father beckoned him over and he shrank from his mother’s hand. ‘So, have you been a good boy?’ Thomas felt in his pocket for a sixpence. He wished he could love this child as he loved the rest of his family, but the little face was narrow and pinched and hostile and already the eyes were over-shrewd and he resembled no one save his mother.

  Sitting down again, Thomas pulled him onto his knee, aware of Sarah’s anxious gaze as she stood close by, ready to snatch the child away if anything went wrong. Erskine sat rigidly upright, perched precariously, careful not to relax against him. As soon as he could, he slid off Thomas’s knee and ran to hide behind Sarah’s skirts. Thomas saw her give the boy a none too gentle push. ‘Go back downstairs,’ she whispered. The boy didn’t need telling twice.

  He sighed and rose to his feet. ‘I am glad to see you well, Sarah. Be sure to tell me if you need anything. Are the midwife and wet nurse booked?’

  He knew they were. She had asked him for the money weeks ago.

  She laid her hand on his arm. ‘I need more servants, Tom.’ He loathed it when she called him Tom, in Fanny’s voice. ‘You must see, these children are yours; it is not right that they have to stay in the kitchen with the servants.’

  He didn’t bother to point out that the second child had not yet been born and that she already had more than enough staff for the small house. It was easier to acquiesce than argue.

  ‘Send your housekeeper with the details when she has found someone suitable,’ he said wearily.

  His carriage was outside. Leaning back against the opulent leather-covered seat
s with their cushions, coachman in front, valet and footman on the rear box, he felt a moment of shame. Sarah should be here in the warm with him, but he knew that that would never do.

  His new daughter was born the following week. To his enormous distress, Sarah called her Agnes after his mother.

  Within two weeks she was visited by the voice of Andrew Farquhar. What he suggested was beyond even her imagining.

  Ruth had been poring over the fragmented last pages of the small leather-covered journal for more than an hour and her head ached. Fin had gone to the Old Mill House to see Lachy, promising to return before dark, and Max was lunching with an author.

  Feeling safe and peaceful in Max’s beautiful flat with its polished floors and its combination of Georgian elegance and modern chic she had brought her laptop and papers into his sitting room to sit by the window, looking down into Queen Street Gardens.

  She had read about Esme’s part in the Battle of Waterloo. The next passage, as intensely personal and painful as it was, transported her into Sarah Buck’s small home; she felt Thomas’s pain and his dilemma over these two unwanted children on whom he could never and would never turn his back. Pulling her laptop onto her knees she began to write, putting herself into the picture, painting the scene.

  Then the last piece of the jigsaw came unbidden to her screen and what she saw appalled her.

  Sarah was dozing on the sofa by the fire in her sitting room. The coals had been banked up and the curtains were half closed; it was stiflingly hot. There was no sign of the baby. Sarah groaned, trying to arrange herself more comfortably on the cushions, and closed her eyes. She could feel someone pushing at her mind, someone who wanted to speak, and she shook her head irritably. She did not welcome intrusions when she was alone. Thomas was her only client now; she didn’t dare antagonise him by allowing others to come to the house, but that didn’t mean she was not sometimes pestered by spirits who needed to talk. She did not encourage them. She was good at this. A natural, as people said. The only voice she permitted was Frances Erskine and she, to Sarah’s intense frustration, came less and less often.

  But now this. The man’s voice was loud and strong, bullying.

  He’ll do anything you want. I’ve been watching. Imagine having one of the most powerful men in the land in your pretty little hand.

  His laughter was cruel, mocking.

  Where was Fanny? Sarah was afraid. She wasn’t sure she was strong enough to shut the voice out any more. She knew he was trying to use her and she was frightened by the growing realisation that she couldn’t control him.

  You should welcome me, as an old friend of Tom’s, he crowed. But don’t tell him I’m here. Let’s surprise him.

  Ruth took her hands off the keyboard, afraid to go on. Andrew Farquhar. Was there nowhere he couldn’t go? She pushed the laptop away and leaned across to pick up the little diary, leafing through the pages towards the back of the book. The ink was faded, the handwriting sometimes barely legible. There were places where Thomas had squashed in so many words she could imagine him writing at top speed, trying to fit it all in, sometimes writing vertically in the margin as well as across the page. It was Sarah she was looking for. Comments about her and the children, but there was nothing there. Instead he said that he was ill.

  ‘It is an inflammation of the lungs such as you had before.’ His son-in-law Samuel had, at his request, come up from Sussex to see him.

  ‘I need your doctoring skills, not your prayers,’ Thomas commented hoarsely as Sam approached his bedside. The younger man smiled gravely and pointed to his medical valise. His hand was cool on Thomas’s burning forehead. ‘I have both here. I will give you some medication, and then some laudanum to help you sleep, then I will pray for you, and I will tell my wife to stay away and leave you in peace until tomorrow.’ He smiled gravely. ‘She is very angry with you.’

  ‘About Sarah?’ Thomas could feel his eyes closing.

  There it was. Ruth leaned closer, holding the little book closer to the light.

  ‘Indeed, and we hear now that Miss Buck has not one but two children …’ Samuel kept his voice carefully neutral. His words were growing unintelligible, fading. Was that the sea Thomas could hear? It sounded like the waves on the rocks at St Andrews when he was a boy, or was it the tide racing up over the pebbled beach at Brighton? He couldn’t breathe and now he was coughing again. Samuel was still talking: ‘… the sea air at Brighton is most beneficial. You shall come and stay with us when you are well enough to travel and perhaps, when the warmth returns, dip in the sea as Dr Russell prescribes. His therapies are very popular. They are said to be almost miraculous in their efficacy …’

  When he drifted back to consciousness Samuel’s words were still weaving in coloured threads around the room: ‘… as you know, I plan to rebuild our parsonage. It is too small for us. It may be that Frances and I will have to move house in the interim …’ The voice faded again.

  When Thomas opened his eyes once more the room was almost dark, a single candle burning on the mantelpiece. He could hear someone talking quietly; no they were praying. Samuel was still there, by the fire, a little prayer book clasped in his hands.

  He had dreamed he was Sir Thomas More, another Lord Chancellor. How strange. He had studied the man’s life as a student and now he realised he and More were of the same cloth. But that couldn’t be. More had died on the scaffold for his Catholic faith, and now, two hundred years later, on his own desk was the draft of a speech he himself was to deliver in parliament on the contentious subject of Catholic emancipation. He groaned. The prayers stopped and Samuel came across to the bed. He felt the cool hand on his brow again. ‘You should be a doctor.’ His lips were too dry and his throat too sore to speak clearly. He heard his son-in-law chuckle and then felt the cooling drops on his tongue. More laudanum and he was back in the Tower of London, awaiting execution. Then as the door began to open he saw the figure standing there waiting to escort him to the scaffold. It was Andrew Farquhar.

  When he woke again it was full daylight and his daughter, Frances, was standing over the bed.

  ‘At last, Papa. We were so worried. Your fever broke last night and you will be better now.’

  He reached out and took her hand. Beside her his dogs were crowding round, wanting to jump on the bed. As long as she was there, he knew they wouldn’t dare. ‘My darling,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘It is so good to see you here.’ Margaret was there too and Samuel, Bible in one hand, doctor’s bag in the other. Thomas lay back on the pillows, exhausted.

  With his children around him, surely Farquhar would be unable to reach him.

  The police car came into view just as Timothy was unlocking the door of Number 26. He dived in and slammed it behind him. Had they seen him? He leaned against the door, waiting. He heard the car wheels on the road as it drew up outside, then nothing. He waited a full five minutes then he moved away from the door and tiptoed into the front room. He edged towards the window and peered round the curtain. The bastard had parked right outside, staring through the windscreen, then he unclipped his seat belt and pushed open the car door. He climbed out and stood for a moment on the pavement, staring at the house. Timothy held his breath, but as he watched the guy turned abruptly and ducked into the car again, reaching for his radio. Timothy saw him listen and nod briefly. In seconds he had started the engine and raced away from the kerb.

  Timothy sagged with relief. It was several minutes before his heart resumed its natural rhythm. Throwing back his head, he began to laugh. The dumb, stupid pig had almost had him! The man was within a few metres of him! The euphoria that flooded through him was overwhelming. Even if he had failed in his main objective, which was to find Ruth, he had enjoyed his day, rounding it off by abandoning the stolen car, engine running, on a double yellow line in the middle of the city and now he was back under his own roof and hungry again.

  Ruth’s eyes were sore from studying the faded writing and her head was thumping. Abruptly she put the
book down on the table by the sofa, desperate for some air. The others wouldn’t be back for hours yet. What she needed was a walk.

  Slipping the keys to Number 26 into her coat pocket, she let herself out of the house and set off towards Princes Street and the West End, then on up Lothian Road towards Tollcross. She had never given a thought to the spare set of keys she had left behind at the Old Mill House.

  Thomas

  I remember that fateful year for many other things. His Royal Highness saw fit to fulfil the second part of my own strange prophecy of all those years before and make me a Knight of the Thistle in recognition of my service and my noble Scots blood. The family were pleased but Sarah grew more and more bitter at her exile in her little house where she saw nothing of the great and exotic men and women who were my friends. She did not take well to being discreetly put away as my children had insisted. Not well at all.

  That was the year I concluded my novel. I had been writing it for years on and off, dreaming of fame for my literary skills. I was missing life as a barrister far more than I had ever expected; for one brief year as Lord Chancellor I had forfeited my chance of ever again practising at the bar. But then, look what I had in return. Title, wealth, fame, notoriety perhaps, and enormous influence at another bar, the Bar of the House of Lords. I called my book Armata, and the first edition sold out within weeks, which was gratifying. It went into several more editions before it was forgotten.