“I’ll come in the morning,” he had promised. “I’ll meet you in the yew walk — about eleven?”
She had nodded.
Yes, he could see her figure now — a white dress, in the shadowy walk. How small she looked between the great shrubs towering darkly above her! The sunlight fell straight and she walked in a path of sunlight, narrow, but wide enough for her to escape the shadows, and her hair was bright in the sunshine.
They met, he held both her hands in his and restrained himself from taking her in his arms. It was still too soon. She was grave from all that had happened.
“The vicar’s here,” she said. “He came early. Lady Mary sent for him. She wants the crypt to be full of red roses. She won’t have a long sermon, she says. And the people are to be allowed to come in and stand as close as they like — and the broken sword is to be put back into its place.”
“How is she?” John asked;
“Brave,” Kate said. “She talked about him this morning quite calmly, though I’m sure she hadn’t slept — such deep shadows under her pretty eyes. She said she was glad he had gone first, because she could bear being alone better than he could; because women are stronger about some things, she said. Men want so much, she told me — but we women ask very little, really. Just someone to give us a little affection, someone to talk to — and a hand to hold—”
Her voice broke. He took her in his arms. She leaned her head on his breast, and he laid his cheek against her hair.
“Kate—” he said after a moment.
“Yes, John?”
“I’m not coming to the funeral. Will she mind too much? I can’t — after that last dreadful meeting in the throne room.”
They paused, still holding hands, and he looked into her upturned face, flawless in the sunlight.
“No,” Kate said. “She’ll understand — a wonderfully understanding woman. She said this morning she wished she hadn’t to go to the funeral, either. She stayed with him alone yesterday evening. She said she was glad he was peaceful at last with his ancestors, where he’d always belonged.”
He wondered, watching her, if Lady Mary had told her anything of herself. Did Kate know that she was the daughter of Sir Richard’s son, and so his own granddaughter?
“Kate, look at me!”
She obeyed instantly, lifting her face to his, and meeting his smile she blushed sweetly.
“Yes, John?”
“Has Lady Mary ever said anything to you about a child?”
“A child? No, John. What child?”
Kate was thinking, remembering. “She did say she wished so much she could have given Sir Richard a child. She said it was her fault they hadn’t an heir. But I told her it wasn’t, because she wanted a child as much as he did — a son, of course, for the castle.”
“What did she say then?”
“She said there was no use in talking about it. And then, I don’t know why, she told me that Queen Elizabeth came here to this castle after Essex was beheaded. She loved him, you know, though he was half her age, but she said nothing after he was dead. Her motto had always been Video et taceo. And it was a good motto for a woman, Lady Mary said, especially for a woman who loves a man.”
“I see and I am silent,” John repeated, “It’s a good motto for us all.”
A silence fell between them.
“You don’t want the castle now, I suppose,” Kate said. She pulled her hands away as she spoke and tucked them into the pockets of her dress.
He answered slowly, pausing often to reflect. “It would be easy for me to run away from it, run away and forget. Yes, the castle fills my heart with horror, and with love. It’s an old, old castle. … Even castles must have evil in them when they live too long. But it isn’t the castle that’s evil, it’s the people who used it for evil. See how the sunlight falls there on the towers, Kate? See how beautiful it is?”
He drew her with him and they looked between the yews. “It’s a work of art. I don’t want it destroyed, any more than I want a book or a painting ruined. I want generations of people — new generations — to enjoy it, and purify it through new life.”
“And you’re taking it away?”
“Yes, I think that’s been settled legally and voluntarily,” he said, “but I’ll leave something in its place — a fine modern farm, the best of machinery. My father will like that! And Lady Mary will live nearby and see the earth bloom—”
“And I’ll be staying with her,” Kate said in a low voice.
“You’re wrong,” he said firmly. “She won’t let you. If I know her, and I think I do — ah, but I’m sure I do — she won’t let you. And I won’t let you. You’ll live on the other side of the ocean, in a new country, my little Kate. With the man who loves you.”
She drew a deep breath, then tried to laugh. “How you can be so sure of — of everything!” she cried. “How you can tell it all out like that!”
He took her face between his hands. “You tell me,” he said. “Am I right?”
A long look passed between them — no, much more than a look. He saw through those violet eyes straight and deep into her heart, and she looked up and saw what she wanted to see, a man she could adore and did, and did—
“Yes!” she said.
“And shall we go on living in the castle,” she inquired, “after it’s moved to Connecticut?”
“No,” he said firmly. “We will not live in it. Nobody will live in it, ever again. We’ll live in a new house, you and I, and there’ll be a wing it it for Lady Mary, if she likes the idea of a new country, another life — without ghosts—”
“Oh,” she breathed in ecstasy. “How you do think of everything!”
They kissed then, for what else was there to do after that, and drew apart at last and only because the church bells were tolling. No, they were ringing.
“Hark,” Kate whispered. “Lady Mary said they weren’t to toll. They’re ringing a song he used to sing with her when they were young — it’s what she told them to do. ‘I won’t have the smell of death, nor the sound of it,’ that’s what she told the vicar …”
She hesitated and gave him a coaxing smile. “But I’ll just go and be with her a bit, John, shan’t I? Until this is over? Since I’m to have the rest of my life with you?”
How could he refuse her, now or ever?
He nodded, smiling, and sat down on a garden seat, from where over the dark yews he could see the castle towering against the blue sky.
“I’ll wait,” he said.