Circle of Shadows

I.2

15 March 1784, Caveley, Hartswood, Sussex, England

Harriet Westerman was in the garden with her four-year-old daughter the morning the news came. They were hand-in-hand, examining the flower-beds for the first signs of snowdrops, some promise that the vicious grip of the winter was loosening. The soil still looked stunned with cold, but the air was warming. Anne was singing her mother nursery rhymes, and when Harriet glanced towards the house she could see the shadows of her son and his tutor at study in the library. She was aware of her good fortune. On her desk in the salon there were letters waiting for her and her accounts books. She knew she would be able to read both with pleasure.

Then came the crunch and rattle of hooves on the gravel driveway. They came at a fast trot, and Harriet turned from her daughter. She saw a liveried messenger, straight in the saddle, his coat splashed high with the drek of the road. He had been travelling fast. The laugh died in Harriet’s throat. She remembered the moment the news arrived of her late husband’s injury at sea, and seemed to be caught in that moment again. Anne tugged on her fingers but Harriet did not move. A minute passed, then she heard the kitchen door open and Mrs Heathcote, her housekeeper, emerged from the walled garden behind the house and began to jog across the lawn towards her, the letter in her hand. Don’t come so fast, Harriet found herself thinking. Give me a moment more of not knowing.

‘Mama! You are hurting my fingers!’

She released her and looked down. Her daughter had Rachel’s colouring, her hair the colour of old brass rather than Harriet’s fierce copper. ‘Sorry, darling,’ she said quietly, then put her hand out to take the letter from her housekeeper. Mrs Heathcote bent down to gather up the child.

‘Come, my lovely. Cook wants your help and Mama has a letter to read.’

‘Let her read it later — why is it a now letter? I haven’t finished singing.’

Mrs Heathcote bundled the little girl into the kitchen, then returned to hover round the garden door. She heard Harriet cry out, and saw her sit suddenly on the cold ground as if her legs had given way.

Mrs Heathcote marched back into the house.

‘William! Get to Mr Graves. Tell him bad news come to Caveley. Mr Heathcote, if you could go deliver the same to Mr Crowther. Your hat’s on the hook, man. Quick, quick. Dido, a word to Mr Quince, if you please.’

‘What on earth is happening, Mrs Heathcote?’ the cook asked, floury and blinking. Little Anne sat on the floor at her feet, oblivious to everything when there was cake mixture to be cleaned out from the bowl.

‘No notion, Mrs Brooks. But if Mrs Westerman’s taken like that, it’s something serious, that’s all I know. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll tend to my mistress.’

After the trials, scandals and losses of the previous years, Harriet Westerman had been trying to live quietly. There would come a time when her children would need to be launched on the world, but she thought before then to have some peace, to let people forget her. In Keswick the previous summer she had shot and killed a man. She was satisfied she had been justified, but she had seen that yank against the trigger as some finale to her adventures in blood. Scandal had flared, and slowly fallen away. She had decided to concentrate her mind on domestic concerns.

Her friend Mr Owen Graves had married Miss Verity Chase in November of 1783, and had removed her from London to Thornleigh Hall in Sussex, the home of his ward, the Earl of Sussex. Lord Sussex was now ten years old, his sister thirteen, their uncle almost eight. This strange group of aristocratic orphans the new Mrs Graves had taken to herself, and they loved her for it. Marriage had lessened Owen’s burdens and made him happy.

Miss Rachel Trench, Harriet’s younger sister, married Daniel Clode in early December, and soon afterwards, the newly-weds had left Hartswood for some months abroad. Rachel and Daniel Clode had intended to spend most of the year on the continent. Neither had yet enjoyed the opportunity to travel, but it was not in their nature to do so only for pleasure. Daniel Clode was Graves’s right hand in the administration of the estates of the Earl of Sussex, and Lord Sussex’s financial interests spread beyond the borders of Great Britain and onto the continent like ivy, even while he skated on the frozen lake behind his ancestral home and played soldiers with Harriet’s son, Stephen. Clode justified his trip with the thought that he could establish some sort of contact with Lord Sussex’s debtors and partners on his way, and so the path they intended to take across Europe was paved with money and interest. It should have made for a smooth passage.

Once these celebrations were complete, the winter had proved a rather lonely time for Harriet. Her friends at Thornleigh Hall called often, but she saw little of Mr Gabriel Crowther. He always had been reclusive and was quite rich enough to never leave his house. She told herself it was winter, and therefore his preferred season for his anatomical studies. The cold meant he could work without the smell of corruption crawling through the house, upsetting the servants. She also told herself that the bullet wound he had received in his shoulder in the summer was still troubling him, making the short ride to her house uncomfortable. Then she would read, in one of the newspapers her housekeeper had failed to hide, the continuing speculations about their adventures in the Lake Country, consider how much she had learned about Crowther’s family, his childhood, and wonder as she stared out over her frost-covered lawns if he was avoiding her company, whether seeing her reminded him of the gothic horrors of his history. He was already over fifty when they first met and had grown comfortable in his isolation from society. She asked herself if he was trying to become what he had been before they met in 1780, a closeted eccentric, cut off from human society, working his knives by candlelight and content only in the company of the dead. Yet during their time in the Lakes they had met his nephew, Felix. Crowther was making the boy, his heir, a generous allowance and heard regularly from him. He had also taken into his care Felix’s wife and child. Harriet herself was godmother to the infant. He could not retreat entirely from the world now. Harriet would sigh, and return to the estate papers on her desk.

Her household still recognised Crowther as part of the larger family of Caveley, however. It was never questioned that on seeing Harriet in distress, they would send for Mr Crowther at once. Their faith was justified. Whatever Crowther’s involvement with his work, or reluctance to stir from his house, he was in the Long Salon at Caveley within half an hour of the messenger stirring the gravel on the driveway. He had been afraid on seeing her servant’s pale face, and ridden at a pace that would have impressed even in a far younger man, but as he rode he did not speculate, only concentrated on the speed he could draw from his horse. Mrs Heathcote had the door open for him before he had dismounted. He handed her his hat, and following her nod, walked into the Long Salon unannounced. Harriet was seated on the settee, her back straight. She was not ill, it seemed. He felt his relief, took the letter she held out towards him and retreated to one of the armchairs. It was only then he became aware that his heart was thudding at a startling rate and a blossom of pain opened out through his shoulder. He put his fingertips to his forehead and tried to read.

At first he could hardly make it out, an hysterical outpouring of fear, an assertion of Daniel’s innocence, a sudden conviction that the terrible misunderstanding would be speedily cleared up. He would have struggled to make any sense of it at all, but there was another, longer letter attached from a Colonel Padfield. The Colonel appeared to be an Englishman, employed in Maulberg and resident there some two years. This letter was a great deal clearer, but in its way more worrying. It gave a short account of the facts of the case against Clode, the seriousness of the situation and a simple statement that Mr and Mrs Clode were in need of support from their friends in England. Crowther only had time to read it twice, carefully, before Mr and Mrs Graves arrived from Thornleigh Hall and he put it into their hands. Mrs Heathcote served coffee, and he noticed that her eyes were red. Stephen could be heard in the hallway demanding information, and his tutor sharply insisting he return to his lessons. At last Verity Graves spoke.

‘You will go, Owen, at once, of course.’

Graves nodded. ‘Thank you, my dear. Though I hate to leave you with so much business to conduct.’

‘Mrs Service already has the Hall running like clockwork,’ his wife answered briskly. ‘I shall ask my father and mother to make a long visit while you are away. You trust Papa to advise me?’

‘No one better than Mr Chase.’

‘His poor parents!’ Verity turned to her hostess. ‘Harriet, would you like me to carry this news to Pulborough?’

Harriet started. ‘Oh, yes! His father and mother … I had forgotten. Thank you, Verity.’

‘I shall tell them Graves leaves at once, and …?’

‘I shall come with you, Graves,’ Harriet said, then looked at Crowther. ‘Gabriel?’ He only nodded. ‘Thank you.’ He watched her as she covered her mouth with the back of her hand, staring at the carpet, her eyes slightly wide. He wished they were alone, then he could tell her to stop trying to think of everything at once. He did not find the company of Mr and Mrs Graves overly trying, which in the general scheme of humanity made them part of a particular and privileged group, but he could not speak to Harriet as frankly as he would wish in front of them. ‘Should I go and see them too?’ Harriet said. ‘Clode’s parents?’

Verity put out her hand and took Harriet’s. ‘I shall take the news to them. They will be relieved and grateful you are all going to his aid and will not want you to waste time calling on them. Leave this to me, Harriet.’ Crowther thought, not for the first time, that Graves had chosen very well.

The company parted and returned to their households to share the news, or what parts of it they felt they must, and make their preparations for an uncertain journey. Crowther’s housekeeper received her instructions calmly and began her work. He retreated to his study, a generously-sized space which had served as the dining room of the house when it had more sociable occupants, and wondered what he could save from the work he was now forced to abandon. There was no time to take the steps necessary to preserve the samples he had been studying, and it would be difficult to replace them. Still, it could not be helped. Mrs Westerman had asked him to go, and go he would.

He unwound the soft leather roll that held his knives to check all was in place, then opened the walnut case that held his bone saw, forceps, tweezers and hammers. The instruments were German-made, commissioned and bought while he was a student in Wittenberg some thirty years before. It had been the first place he had fled to after the execution of his elder brother. He had abandoned his title, sold his estate, and under the name of Gabriel Crowther had turned his interest in anatomy into his occupation; his knowledge into expertise. He fitted the magnifying glass into its velvet bed. It was ridiculous to carry them. The body of this Lady Martesen was buried already, and by the time he and his companions could reach Maulberg the flesh would have putrefied, but he intended to take them with him anyway. They were, like his cane, his signifiers. His markers and talismans. In all likelihood he was leaving his home for no good reason at all, but it never occurred to him not to go. If Mrs Westerman was riding off into any sort of danger he would always follow while he had the strength.

It dawned on him, slowly, that while he had been packing away his effects the street door had opened and closed a number of times. Indeed, it sounded as if the door had just closed again now. He looked into the hall.

‘Hannah?’

His housekeeper turned towards him. She had a large wicker basket over her arm.

‘The news has spread, sir. Just about every soul in the village has come to the door with something to ease the journey. Wool blankets from the drapers … enough dried meats to feed you all half a year.’ Crowther frowned and Hannah smiled at him. ‘Mr and Mrs Clode are well liked, sir, and it is more convenient to leave things in this house rather than take them to Caveley or Thornleigh Hall.’

‘They do have food on the continent.’

‘Not any that our butcher thinks healthy for an Englishman.’

‘Of course.’ He was about to turn back into his study when he hesitated. ‘I do not know how long I shall be gone, Hannah.’

She nodded. ‘Of course, sir. But do not concern yourself. We shall manage quite well.’

‘If you find yourself in any need, you may apply to Thornleigh Hall.’

‘I know, Mr Crowther. Your friends there will take good care of us for your sake.’

He said no more, but withdrew to his study and his papers.