Serpent in the Heather Page 10

  Kim obligingly opened it and stood aside as the baroness shouldered herself out onto the enormous stone porch. Wind barreled in off the sea, snapping their clothes around them.

  Lady Ellesmere led the way to the crenellated parapet overlooking a grass-swathed headland.

  “Sulcliffe has occupied this place, some three hundred acres, since 1588,” she explained. “There’s a tidal beach about a mile from here, but Sulcliffe land is girded by rock cliffs. This headland is a sacred location, where land, cliff, and sea join. That’s why Sulcliffe is the spiritual center of the Ancient Light fellowship and why our devotees will make sure the land remains intact and the castle maintained for the future.”

  Kim jotted in her notebook as Lady Ellesmere looked on approvingly.

  “Sulcliffe is blessed with a very special site of power. I’ve given Powell permission to show it to you, if you’re up to a hike.” She waved Kim’s inquiring look away. “We’ll keep it a secret until tomorrow. Powell wants to surprise you.” Turning from the inland view, she led Kim to the other side of the battlements, where they looked out on the vast expanse of the Irish Sea, stained golden in the afternoon sun.

  “It’s breathtaking,” Kim said.

  The old woman leaned on the parapet. “Bowen loved it so. He was the one who taught me that land and sea have powers. Then I lost him to the war, the war that ought never have been fought.” She remained silent for some moments. “Eighteen years. When does it cease to matter?”

  Kim stared out to sea. “I don’t think that ever happens.”

  Lady Ellesmere turned to her, murmuring, “Ah, then. You know, don’t you? You have your own loss.”

  Kim was startled by the comment. “So many do.”

  “Oh, but it is always particular, isn’t it? There were so many, but for each of us, only one is a stone in the heart.” She put her hand on Kim’s, a surprisingly personal, and not entirely pleasant, gesture. “I have the gift, you know. It’s no use to keep things from me, particularly not here.”

  Kim affected nonchalance. “By ‘gift,’ do you mean a Talent?”

  Lady Ellesmere waved a hand in dismissal. “Not a term we care for. We take the spiritual viewpoint.”

  It’s no use to keep things from me. . . . She so hoped that it wasn’t the spill.

  Lady Ellesmere spoke again, nodding shrewdly, as Kim’s stomach twisted. “I’ve always known people’s strong feelings. It’s a burden, but also quite useful, if one is in the public eye.”

  Kim considered the phrase about people’s strong feelings. It came to her then, from the Bloom Book: hyperempathy, tracking emotions in another person. It wasn’t a fatal advantage if the dowager had it. But it would be bad enough.

  Powell returned, carrying a fur coat. He placed it over his mother’s shoulders.

  “Such a good son,” the dowager said to Kim. “All this is his, of course. But it is Ancient Light that he wants.” She turned to Powell. “Isn’t it, darling?”

  “I hope to deserve it, Mother.”

  It seemed like a ritual exchange, a safe formula to bring out a nasty problem and let it breathe before burying it again.

  “Just one picture, Lady Ellesmere?” Kim patted her camera.

  The baroness threw up a hand, palm out. “You may take Powell’s picture. The heir, as it were.” She turned a look on her son that was half-doting, half-despairing.

  “No, Mother, it should be you.”

  She pointed to the parapet. “Stand there and strike a manly pose.”

  Kim was beginning to pity him for having such a mother, with her hostility and sarcasm. So far, annoyingly, he was letting her get by with it. She fumbled with the camera case and drew out her Leica before they changed their minds. Or their single mind, since clearly Dorothea Coslett’s was the only one whose preferences seemed to matter.

  Self-consciously, Powell moved to one of the gaps that cut into the battlements.

  “A little to one side,” Kim directed. “We’ll get the sea behind you.” She adjusted the rangefinder and framed Powell next to the parapet with a gold-and-silver sunset infusing the clouds. Setting the shutter speed, she took a few shots. “And one smiling,” she said, because when he smiled, one felt one could follow the man anywhere.

  “Oh, excellent, Powie,” Lady Ellesmere said dryly. “Now you look like a cinema star.”

  “I’ll take that as compliment,” he said, apparently enjoying himself and surprising Kim by daring to talk back.

  As Kim snapped the camera back into its case, Lady Ellesmere beckoned to her. “You asked about the chapel statuary. What happened to it.”

  She pulled Kim into the stone embrasure. “See?” Her hand pressed on Kim’s back, requiring her to look down. The side of the castle formed a curtain wall, and below that the rock cliff fell another five hundred feet.

  “I sent them down the cliff.”

  Kim bent forward to look over the edge of the battlements, not that she would have been able, at this remove in time, to see the shards of the banished relics. The rocks below were slick in the last of the sun.

  The dowager watched Kim in some amusement, as though throwing the icons over the wall had been a rather clever solution. “I shouldn’t wonder they’re well out to sea by now. The earth cleanses all.”

  Powell helped his mother back inside, her form covered with the full-length fur coat, making her look rather like an old bear returning to its den.

  14

  SULCLIFFE CASTLE, WALES

  THAT EVENING. “Thank you for having me in your home,” Kim said to Idelle, who stopped sawing at her mutton for a moment before ignoring the statement. At one end of the twenty-foot-long table, Kim sat across from Idelle and Powell, the only others present. A place had been set at the head of the table, but the dowager would not be joining them tonight.

  Powell responded for his aunt. “Glad you’ve come! Sometimes, it seems Sulcliffe is in a forgotten land.” He wore a sweater under his fine wool jacket, and Kim wished she had brought one as well. Neither the dining hall nor any of the castle was heated, making sweaters and furs obligatory, as at a Russian palace. The hall, although not the one with the trestle tables, was as large as the whole ground floor of Wrenfell.

  Despite being served on fine china emblazoned with the Sulcliffe emblem, the meal was hopeless: bland roast potatoes and a rather tough mutton. A savory pea soup saved the meal, though it was served tepid from a kitchen that might, for all she knew, be a furlong away.

  “What did you think of Mother?” Powell asked. Idelle glanced up, waiting for her to answer.

  “Her ladyship is a most remarkable woman. So suited to this place.” In fact, she could not imagine Dorothea Coslett anywhere else.

  Powell beamed. “Yes, she’s quite the heart of Sulcliffe. I can’t think what it will be like when . . . when she’s no longer here.” He pushed a potato around his plate. “I expect I shall be wanting a wife then.”

  Kim could think of no rejoinder to this statement, but Idelle, looking at her nephew, produced a sweet smile. Powell returned it.

  “Lady Ellesmere mentioned having a gift. Do you know what she meant?” Kim took a sip of the very dark red wine which, tasting dusty and overripe, reminded her of her bedroom upstairs.

  Powell dabbed at his mouth with a brocaded napkin. “Yes, she has the gift of perceiving a person’s true feelings. It’s what makes her such a success with people. I know that at first she may not seem empathetic.”

  “When you say gift, do you mean what most people call a Talent?”

  “We find ‘Talent’ a bit crass. So much of the popular conception is the product of tabloid sensation.”

  Idelle pushed her unfinished plate aside. Rian, who had been standing by a sideboard watchful for any needs, moved forward to remove the plate.

  Powell said, “Please, Iddy, you must try to eat. Just a bit more?” Idelle looked distressed, prompting Powell to nod at Rian, who helped his aunt from the table. They made their way toward a small do
or next to a wall tapestry and disappeared.

  “She’s not used to a formal dinner,” Powell explained, “but I thought she might enjoy a little company. My aunt has lived with us my whole life. You ought to have seen her when she was young! An expert horsewoman, keen interests in everything. She taught me to ride.” He glanced at the door through which she and Rian had gone.

  “But we were talking of Mother.” He took a sip of wine and appeared to gather his thoughts. “She is really extraordinarily perceptive. Her personal magnetism is what has kept our fellowship together for so long. I may never be able to fill her shoes. I just hope that I won’t make a hash of it.” He put down his knife and fork. “I say, you won’t write that, will you? I didn’t mean to state it that way, and it’s probably not true.”

  How delightful, when people said things they didn’t mean to! A spill? She tried to read Powell’s expression. It had a tinge of alarm, she thought.

  “I’ll come into my gift at some point, of course, we all believe that.”

  “Is a gift earned? Say, through good works or spiritual practice?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say so, no. One has to be receptive, is how we think of it. But gifts are a mystery of earth. And truly, they are only notable when they’re visited upon a potential leader. A person who can inspire the masses. A leader must be able to persuade and inspire, or movements tend to dissipate. Gifts in the hands of the rank and file . . .” He shook his head. “They can’t really be meaningful.” He glanced at her notebook. “I’d rather you didn’t mention this in your piece. It might appear snobbish or a bit authoritarian.”

  “It does, rather.”

  “Well, Mother and I do think a strong hand is needed in large affairs, but it can be misinterpreted.”

  Indeed it could, Kim thought. “Tell me more about places of power.”

  “The idea may sound like superstition to you, but it is really the essence of our beliefs. Have you ever been to one of the ritual spaces of the country?”

  “You mean like Stonehenge?”

  “Yes, that’s one. But most people don’t realize there are hundreds of such places scattered throughout Great Britain. Orkney. Pentre Ifan. Callanish in the Scottish Isles. Silbury Hill in Wiltshire. Hundreds.”

  Kim nodded. “And aren’t they all evidence of ancient cultures? Tribes who used them for ceremonies and burial and primitive worship?” She had done a bit of homework beyond the Crossbow dossier. “Surely, you don’t ascribe meaning simply by virtue of it having been an early belief system?”

  “No, no. But those primitive tribes were more open to the true forces of the landscape, and they created memorials in those places of power.”

  He went on as Rian cleared the plates and served coffee. “They were simple people—which can be a very good thing. Their monuments are markers of places they felt had a nonmaterial influence. They were attracted to sites with energy fields, as we still are today. So, it isn’t the standing stones, barrows and mounds and suchlike that have power, but the places such things stand upon. That is what we are trying to say.”

  “And are these places unique to Great Britain? Surely, they must exist elsewhere in the world.”

  “Our island is a place of great power. But every land mass is its own sphere of power, nested within the larger spheres of continents and hemispheres. Ancient Light is focused on Britain. The most powerful places are always where we live and where our ancestors have lived. It’s why Hitler was keen to reoccupy the Rhineland, and quite right, too. These things are not just lines on a map.”

  “You admire the German chancellor, then?”

  He considered this for a moment. “Well. He’s one of the few to take a clear stand against the Communists. Our way of life is at risk if these revolutionaries have their way.”

  “He does seem to have done some good things.”

  He brightened. “Exactly. The economy. Getting people back to work. And why this man and not another? Because of his gift for oratory and persuasion.”

  It was rather an alarming stew of ideas: the fascist-sounding politics, the mystical powers of leadership, the devotion to charismatic individuals.

  Powell set down his napkin. “I say, I wrote a book about Ancient Light, did you know? The history, the family involvement. Perhaps you’d like to borrow it.” Kim said that she would very much like to, and he excused himself to fetch it.

  Alone now in the dining hall, Kim sipped her coffee and made some notes. Not all would find their way into her article, especially things like the Coslett approval of the Nazi party; Powell’s bleak obstacle of needing a Talent to inherit the leadership of Ancient Light.

  A shuffle behind her gave Kim a start. Turning, she found that Idelle had returned. The woman had a knack for moving so quietly, one could almost believe she floated. She gazed at Kim’s notebook and lifted her chin as though in inquiry. After a moment, Kim slowly put her pen down on the table, thinking that Idelle might take it up. She did.

  The woman drew the notebook closer and wrote something. Kim looked into her very dark eyes, and for a moment they seemed brimming with words never spoken. She imagined the years, the decades creeping by, none commented upon, except inwardly. It might be the most profound peace. Or a wild storm never let go.

  Kim looked down at her notebook. In a lovely, copperplate script, Idelle had written, “Flory Soames.”

  She looked up at Idelle. “Who is Flory Soames, Miss Coslett?” She hoped for another note, but Idelle put her finger to her lips and backed away. She wandered to the fireplace, leaving Kim surprised and intrigued. She wondered how much Idelle communicated in writing, or if this had taken a rare effort on her part. The woman was regarding her with keen interest. Idelle might not always be tethered to the moment, but whether she had been perfectly alert just now or had behaved irrationally, Kim couldn’t judge.

  When she heard Powell come into the dining hall, she slipped the notebook into her handbag. They pored over his slim volume, titled Earth Powers, as she tried to pay the strictest attention to his spiritualist view. He took pains to elucidate it, turning to chapters where he had treated the topics. But she kept thinking of Idelle and how she was not susceptible to a spill. Unless the spill might be in writing.

  If this were the case, then it was possible that Idelle might wish she had not written what she did.

  Kim thanked Powell for the book, which he intended her to keep. He collected his aunt, who was gazing into the fireplace as though seeing, or imagining, a nice fire, and the three of them left the hall together, parting ways at the corridor with the long march of windows.

  In the red bedroom, Kim sat propped up in bed in her nightgown, reading the LNER timetable to settle her nerves. It had been an unusual day, and the arrivals and departures of the London and North Eastern Railway line, as always, calmed her. What connections from Edinburgh to Hull before 11:00 AM? And from London to York on a Sunday?

  Tomorrow, she hoped for another interview with the baroness, and she was to accompany Powell to view a location of spiritual import on the estate.

  Ancient sites of earth power. It was one, perhaps minor, thread of the Crossbow investigation. But she must remember that the major one was Dorothea’s tie to the Nazi movement and the Nachteule assassinations. In so many ways this case was as convoluted as her last, with minor clues, misdirection, false leads and the fickle role of intuition. But at least then she had known her enemy, the Sicherheitsdienst officer, von Ritter.

  As she settled in to sleep, she thought about Ancient Light’s twisted version of Talents, distorting the bloom to support their philosophy of a Sacred Earth. It must have an appeal for those who had no use for the Church of England. But it worked against the family’s hopes for leadership of the cult, if Powell was never to have a Talent. And he wouldn’t, she knew. He was the wrong age to acquire one as an adult. He would have been an adolescent during the outbreak of the bloom. So, it seemed the Cosletts were stuck with their own curious requirements for leadership. Upon
Dorothea’s death, the next leader would be installed. Powell did not have long to prove himself. He must be in the most dreadful hurry.

  As for the baroness, perhaps she did not greatly care who led Ancient Light, as long as it was a person with a gift as she defined it, and the fellowship made sure the estate was generously supported after her passing. They would likely do so if they believed Sulcliffe was Britain’s spiritual center.

  Late that night, she woke, confused for a moment about where she was. She had heard something; was it a cry? By the time she had rearranged her pillow, sleep had retreated. She turned on the lamp and went to the bathroom, thinking that she had read too many ghost stories. Wailing, indeed.

  As she crawled back into bed, she heard once more, and unmistakably, a faraway cry. Someone was hurt.

  Lacking a robe, Kim grabbed a fringed shawl from the back of a chair and ventured out onto the landing of the winding staircase. The way down fell into blackness. Back in the room, she found the flashlight and returned to the little landing. Following the flashlight’s yellow cone of light, she made her way downward, her bare feet immediately icy.

  She came to the long hallway near the sitting room and hurried along it toward the area she knew the dining room to be. It unnerved her to be about the stony place in such darkness. There were light switches somewhere. . . .

  An appalling cry erupted from one of the rooms up ahead. It was half a moan and half a startled scream. She thought she should have a weapon. The only thing she could think of was the poker by the fireplace in the sitting room, but no time for that now. Another scream. It led her around a corner to another stairway. She heard someone shouting, “Now! Now! You damned shrew!” Lady Ellesmere’s voice.

  Kim slowed her climb up the stairs, uncertain whether she would interrupt a murder or a family dispute. At that moment, Idelle appeared around a turn and stopped in surprise to see Kim.

  “Miss Coslett! I heard screams. Is everything all right?”