Mertensia glanced to Stoker, who gave her a sharp shake of the head. She smiled at her brother. “Nothing but a dream,” she told him. “Sleep now. You are safe.”
But he did not sleep. Instead, tears began to seep from beneath his closed lids.
“Malcolm?” Mertensia called softly.
He turned his head on the pillow, his face averted. “I have done a wretched thing,” he told her, his voice a hoarse whisper. “A wretched thing indeed.”
She leant near. “I am sure you have not,” she told him.
He protested, shaking his head violently. Stoker moved to Mertensia’s elbow. “Keep him calm,” he instructed.
Mertensia patted her brother’s hand. “Whatever you have done, you must have thought it right at the time,” she told him.
“I wish absolution,” he told her. “I must be absolved.”
“Absolution for what?” she asked.
“For murder,” he burst out, the tears flowing freely down his cheeks. “For murder.”
CHAPTER
20
After his storm of weeping had passed, Malcolm composed himself and began his confession. Not to a priest, for there was none present on the island, but to those of us who had gathered at his invitation. His sister sat beside him, holding his hand as if to give him strength during his ordeal.
“I hardly know where to begin,” Malcolm told us.
“Begin with Rosamund’s travel bag,” I said gently. “That is what started this whole sorry business, is it not?”
He nodded. “Yes. I haven’t been able to settle to anything for so long. Eventually, I decided upon writing a sort of history of St. Maddern’s. I pored over the old books in the library, deciding what to include. Trenny was a great help to me as I put together the legends—all those moth-eaten old stories of mermaids and giants. And then I thought I ought to include the building of the castle itself. I dug through the archives and found the plans. There was nothing from the first construction, but there were extensive renovations done in the reign of Elizabeth.”
“The priest’s holes,” I murmured.
“Exactly. A few were constructed where old private staircases had been. One or two were dug out of the living rock. I thought it would begreat fun to explore them properly. They hadn’t been mapped in years and half of them had been forgot,” he went on. “When I opened this one, I discovered a second built behind it, a sort of double blind to trick the priest catchers into believing they had found all there was to see when they discovered the first hole. I pressed on and found the second and that is when I came upon the traveling bag.”
Malcolm paused and Mertensia handed him a glass of water, holding his head so that he could drink. When he had finished, he resumed his story. “I realized then that Rosamund had not left the island. You see, I always believed she had got cold feet after the wedding and run away from me. To the man she really loved.” He looked steadily at Tiberius.
“You knew.”
“No. I only suspected. I always thought it too good to be true when she chose me rather than you,” he said simply. “I had seen her looking at you when she thought she was unobserved. Do you remember that summer? How we pushed one another, spurring our horses to impress her? Swimming further, jumping higher? We were ridiculous. And when she said she wanted me,me, I was exalted. It was only later that the doubts set in.”
“Doubts?” I asked.
“How could she choose me when she might have had him?” he asked.
I said nothing and waited for Tiberius to answer. It was the opportunity he had anticipated through the long, cold nights of the past three years. It was the chance to tell Malcolm the truth, once and for all, to exult in his victory at last.
Tiberius held Malcolm’s gaze. “There is no mystery, my friend. She loved you.”
It was a lie told for the noblest of reasons, and in that moment of duplicity, I had never counted Tiberius higher in my esteem.
“She did not come to me,” Tiberius went on. “My God, man. I would have had the decency to tell you if she had. I would never have let you suffer these years never knowing if she were alive or dead.”
“I realize that now,” Malcolm said. “I knew that summer I was her second choice. She was luminous when she looked at you,” he added with a nod towards Tiberius. “But I understood her. I knew she wanted, above all else, security and contentment. You were exciting but dangerous. You would never have let yourself be ruled by a woman, no matter how much you loved her. Rosamund knew she could have her way with me. I would have done anything for her, and I was content with that,” he insisted. “She did love me. We would have made a good life together and I would have cared for her. I knew something had happened to make her decide so suddenly about marrying me, but I did not question my good fortune. Not at first.”
He paused and Mertensia, with Stoker’s blessing, offered him something else to drink, a sip of hot whisky this time. He swallowed it down and resumed his tale. “As the wedding drew nearer, I saw how changed she was. There was a hectic sort of gaiety to her, a forced happiness, feverish. And when the harpsichord arrived...” He paused again. “It did not take a genius to piece together what had happened.”
“I ought not to have sent it,” Tiberius said. “It was an ungentlemanly thing to give that to another man’s bride.”
