“All right, don’t worry, as you say, it probably means virtually nothing.”
But Liri had seen it, Liri of all people. Maybe the emerging pattern, after all, argued a man at the heart of it, not a woman. Cherchez l’homme! Women can be jealous, too, and dangerous.
“You’d better run,” said George, “or you’ll be late for your class. If you should want me later, I’ll be in the warden’s office.”
And they ran, Tossa looking back doubtfully at George for a moment with her chin on her shoulder. The lilac tree slapped a stray cone of blossom into her face as she turned, and she flung up her free hand – Dominic had taken possession of the other – and brushed it from her. The twig broke, leaving the spray of falling flowers in her hand. She allowed herself to be towed along the leafy ride still holding it.
“You never told me!”
“You wouldn’t have told me, would you? I never wanted to see it.” He wasn’t happy. “What put it into Dad’s mind, anyhow? I don’t get it.”
“I don’t know. Maybe he thinks Liri…”
“What, just because of that?”
“But it isn’t just because of that. Liri was already mad with him about something, what could it be but another woman?”
“You mean she followed him here because she knew about him and…? I don’t believe it! It wouldn’t be like Liri, anyhow.” He had never realised until now how firm an idea he was forming of Liri Palmer’s character. “If she’d broken with him, she wouldn’t follow him around to watch him perform… not to torment herself, not to hit him again, not for anything.” They had reached the footbridge; their hurrying footsteps clopped woodenly over it, and the flood below sent up a low, hollow echo.
“To get him back, she might,” said Tossa without thinking, and instantly drew back from a statement so revealing. She shook the loose blossoms from her spray of lilac with unnecessary care. “This must be a very early kind, look, dropping already, and it’s only late April. Did you ever see lilac quite such a pure blue?”
Even then she didn’t realise what she had said, it was simply a pleasant, superficial observation, something blessedly remote from the ugly mystery that was bedevilling this week-end. They were skirting the open meadow when the truth hit her. She halted abruptly, pulling back hard on Dominic’s hand; he turned in surprise to find her gazing at him in consternation.
“Dominic … she was there! Don’t you remember? I said then, how blue, really blue, not purple at all…”
She thrust the tattered cone of blossom at him, brandishing it before his astonished eyes.
“Have you seen this kind anywhere else? There’s lilac by the drive, and up by the pagoda, too, but it’s all white or mauve, and it’s only in bud yet. Nothing at all like this. But Felicity had some fallen flowers just like this in her hair yesterday! Don’t you remember, she was combing them out with her fingers?”
“Good lord!” he said blankly. “She had, too! Just like these!”
“I picked them up, afterwards. It was the colour …”
He remembered now with aching clarity how Tossa had turned her hand sadly, and let the small blue crosses float back into the grass.
“But she told Dad… she told us…”
“I know! She told us she parted from him where the paths cross. She said she left him there and came on over the stone bridge… She didn’t know where he went afterwards, but she left him there. But she didn’t,” said Tossa with absolute conviction, and very quietly, “Because before she met us she was under that lilac tree. She was there by the river with him. She knows what happened!”
They looked for her in the libraries, in the drawing-rooms, in the gallery, but she was nowhere to be found. In the end they were forced to go in to the afternoon session without having spoken to her; and at the last moment she slid in from nowhere and took a seat in a dim corner, and sat through the two hours of song and argument and speculation with a pale face and haunted eyes. But that meant that at least they could corner her when the session was over, before she could escape again into whatever lair she used for her private agonies.
The afternoon meeting ended with a tour-de-force by Liri Palmer, a thirty-five verse ballad without a dull line in it, all about a traitorous nobleman who killed his king and usurped his kingdom, but suffered the pregnant queen to live, on the understanding that if her child turned out to be a boy, he should be instantly killed, but if it was a girl she should be allowed to live. But the queen managed to elude her gaolers for a short time when her hour was near, and hid herself alone in the stables to bear her son. When the wife of one of the courtiers found her there, the queen begged her to exchange her girl baby for the royal boy.
“ ‘And ye shall learn my gay goshawk
Right weel to breast a steed.
And I shall learn your turtle-dow
As weel to write and read.
“ ‘At kirk and market, when we meet.
We’ll dare make no avow
But: Dame, how does my gay goshawk?
Madam, how does my dow?’ ”
Thirty-five verses, all to one unchanging tune, and mounting excitement with every verse. Liri Palmer was an artist, no question of that. It was partly the pure, passionate drama of her voice, and the latent acting ability that enabled her to people her stage with so many living characters, without breaking the melody or distorting the tone; and partly the virtuosity of her accompaniment, which varied with every verse, and produced the rattle of duels and the muted agitation of women’s plotting as fluently as the hammer of hooves or the ripple of rain. They reached the point where the gay goshawk had grown up, and was hunting with his foster-father:
“ ‘Oh, dinna ye see yon bonny castell
With halls and towers so fair?
If every man had back his ain.
Of it ye should be heir.’
“ ‘The boy stared wild like a grey goshawk:
“Oh, what may all this mean?’
“My boy, ye are King Honour’s son.
And your mother’s our lawful queen.’ ”
Tossa looked at Dominic, and her eyes signalled that they must be near the end of the story now. She was next to the wall, and in a quiet corner; she rose softly, and slipped back into the shadows, to circle the room unobtrustively to Felicity’s hiding-place.
The goshawk had reached his apotheosis, leaping the castle wall and confronting False Foundrage in arms. Not all ballads have happy endings. This one did. The boy killed his enemy, delivered his mother, and took the turtle-dow as his bride. The entranced hush broke, the moment the last shuddering chord of Liri’s strings had vibrated into silence. Under cover of the applause Felicity got up to slide out of the room; and Tossa’s hand closed on her arm.
“Felicity, come into the little library. We want to talk to you.”
The tone was quiet and reasonable, but Felicity recognised its finality. Perhaps she had been waiting for someone to take the burden out of her hands, with even more longing than terror. She went with them, stiff and silent, not trying to escape now, except into the deeps of her own being, and even there hoping for little. They, sat her down in a quiet corner of the small library; the cheerful pre-tea din told them where all the others were, and assured them that their solitude here was safe for a little while.
Tossa laid the spray of wilting lilac flowers in the girl’s lap. “We found these this afternoon. We were looking for you before the session, to show you. These are the same kind you had in your hair yesterday, when we met you. We know now where you’d been. Not just along the path to the bridge. You’d been by the grotto, with Lucien. Hadn’t you?”