Page 56 of Ondine
Perhaps it was only natural that the fine weather failed as they neared North Lambria.
As they came upon Chatham Manor the sky grew dark, though it was early afternoon.
The wind picked up, cool with a feel of rain.
Trees and brush swayed by the roadside. A slash of lightning lit the sky, and thunder cracked as if to render the very heavens in two. Ondine thought it fitting.
All that had sustained her throughout the miserable journey had been the self-sworn promise that she would escape Warwick in Liverpool and follow her own quest. She would return to her lands in Rochester, find and steal that evidence against her, and—dear God!
—somehow discover a way to clear her father’s name.
“We’re home,” Warwick, sitting across from her, murmured suddenly. He leaned forward, lifting her chin with his thumb, eyes shielded in shadow, brooding, dark. “What plots pass through that swiftly moving mind of yours, my love?” he queried her.
She twisted from his touch and sighed. “None that concern you, Chatham. May we alight?” she asked coolly.
He opened the door and stepped out. They were upon the drive before the house. Jake and Justin were down already; Mathilda was rushing from the house, and Clinton followed behind her.
“Welcome! Welcome! Has been strangely lonely here, with all the household gone!” Clinton greeted Warwick. Mathilda had little interest in either Warwick or Justin; as ever she was differential and polite, but Ondine was her main concern.
“Ah, lady, you do look well and fine!” Mathilda said, beaming. “And now that you’re here, I’ll give you the greatest care. ’Twill be a boy, I’m ever so sure. Male children do dominate this family line. Whatever, though, ’twill be a child, a babe, to bring youth and laughter back to this house!”
It seemed that the wind died suddenly, leaving everything still and silent with the portent of explosion.
Warwick stepped between them.
“There will be no child born here, Mathilda. I’m gravely sorry for the injury you will feel, but I will not claim the child as mine.”
“What—?” Justin began incredulously, but Warwick’s voice rose in harsh tones above his.
“For reasons known to my wife, I am dissolving the marriage. Her child is no Chatham; as of now, I no longer call her wife. As of tomorrow morning, she will be gone. Any and all who dispute my decision are welcome to leave this place and never return.”
Shocked silence followed this announcement. Warwick stared at them all, ending with Ondine. Then, in great mockery, he tilted his hat in her direction, then strode from them all in the direction of the stables.
“Why, you unholy bastard!” Justin spat out in fury. “Warwick!”
Warwick turned, but Ondine raced to Justin even as the color fled from her face, leaving it pinched and white.
“Leave it!” she implored him.
Warwick stared at Justin, waiting, then shrugged and started on his way once again.
Mathilda burst into tears. Jake shifted uneasily from one foot to the other.
Only Clinton stared after Warwick curiously. “’Tis not like him. ’Tis not like him at all,” he murmured thoughtfully. Ondine gazed at him, swallowing, remembering that logically she had presumed the haunt of Chatham to be this very man.
Yet now he offered her a reassuring smile and came to where she stood with Justin, taking her hands.
“Take heart, lady, this is not the man, the cousin, that I know. We are of an age. As babes we played upon mats together, as toddlers we waddled and tousled and spat, as youths we learned our lessons well. I know him as I know myself, my blood, my soul—this cruelty is not of his nature, and it will pass.”
He bowed to her most courteously and started after Warwick.
Justin, holding Ondine, was as tense and rigid as bone. “Clinton has not seen Warwick’s strange behavior; he does not know the dangers of his mind. I’m near to believing madness rages here, and near to thinking my brother—he that I once knew and loved!—dwells no more within that shell!”
“None of it matters, Justin,” Ondine said softly. She escaped his hold and raced up the steps, eager to reach the sanctity of her chamber.
Once inside, she started up to the second floor, fleeing past the portrait gallery, hurrying to her own chamber.
Once there she pitched onto the bed and indulged in desperate weeping. On and on she wept, the brewing storm outside a tempest that raged and swept through her soul.
Somewhere through her fog and misery and desperation she realized that someone was pounding fiercely upon the outer door. It was not Warwick, she knew, for he would never ask entry, but always take it as his right.
She forced herself to stiffen—to remember that she must pursue her own honor!
—and answer that knock. It was Mathilda who sought entry.
Mathilda with a silver tray and her wretched goat’s milk, but a Mathilda who quickly melted that newly acquired hardness in Ondine’s heart, for she shook with sobs and tears that streamed wet and heavy down her cheeks.
Ondine stepped aside, letting her in, and smiled despite it all. She took the tray from Mathilda, set it on Warwick’s desk, and gently urged the housekeeper into a chair.
“Please, please don’t be so upset—”
“Clinton’s right! This isn’t like Warwick at all. Some madness has seized him!”
She shook her head painfully, then knotted her fingers in her lap and looked at Ondine.
“He’ll come to his senses tomorrow! I refuse to believe this!
And who does he think he is! Not even our splendid sovereign Charles seeks a divorce from his wife, and that poor lady is barren! He’ll not get it! This is—lunacy!”
“Mathilda, please, do not be so distressed, I’ll find some brandy, that should help,”
Ondine brought the bottle from Warwick’s desk, mistress becoming server as she pressed a small glass in Mathilda’s hand. “Drink it. Mathilda, please. You’ll feel better.”
She wished that there were something she could say, some assurance that she might give, but there was none.
She’d never seen anyone quite like Warwick when he was set on something, nor did that matter.
She was through with Chatham Manor, through with its lord.
By tomorrow, one way or the other, she would be gone.
Mathilda absently drank the brandy offered her; Ondine then pried the tiny glass from her fingers.
“It will not happen!” Mathilda said suddenly. “It simply will not happen! I will not let it!”
Perhaps Ondine should have argued with her; she didn’t have the strength. She smiled at Mathilda, and was then amazed to find herself stifling back a yawn.
“Oh, poor dear!” Mathilda exclaimed. “The milk, you must drink the milk! He’s run you so ragged! You must drink the milk.”
Ondine went to the tray and consumed all of the goat’s milk. It was a small price to pay for the happiness it gave Mathilda.
Ondine set the glass back upon the tray. Mathilda came to her like one in a daze and took the tray without looking at her again. She went, like a sleepwalker, to the door and only there paused. “It will not happen. It will not happen.”
She left. Ondine closed the door behind her, then walked back to her own chamber.
With determination she went to the window first. Her heart sank, for there was surely no escape that way. A fall would kill her.
She stared out at the weather. The sky was almost black. The wind continued its haunting cry.
Would the storm hinder her escape? Or would it shelter and hide her? That didn’t matter either. The rain had still not started, but everything seemed alive and vibrant with its threat.
Ondine pulled back into the chamber, frowning, remembering the first whisper she had heard. There had been nothing here, but it had come from here.
An excitement began to grow within her. Step by step she tread the floor, staring down at it. She saw nothing but ordinary floorboards, scrubbed clean and fresh, covered here and there with elegant rugs.
She refused to give up her quest. She was not mad, and she had heard a whisper that night. Someone had been here and had escaped.
Ondine next began to comb the walls, looking for fissures in the stone, for any little thing out of the ordinary. Nothing appeared, and she began to grow despondent and weary.
Then it occurred to her that she had not pushed aside the curtain to the latrine, that private place where the chamber pot was kept.
With vast excitement she swept it aside, bypassing the seat with the pot. Her fingers worked hurriedly over the wall, and anxiety rose in her along with the excitement.
Then she found it, a stone, an ordinary stone. But when she pressed against it, it moved in, and an entire section of the wall gave way just as if it were a door.
She stared at it in amazement, then in high elation. This was it; her escape. It worked upon a lever and hinges, set into motion by pressure on that one stone. It was ingenious, it was wonderful. But where did it lead?
She stepped back quickly into the room and grabbed a candle, then came back to the dark opening. Holding the candle high, she began to follow the corridor.
Oddly, she heard no squeak of rats, nor did spiderwebs tangle about her. Someone used this passageway and had used it recently.
She moved quickly ahead, more desperate than frightened, more determined than careful. After a walk of about forty paces, the corridor suddenly turned and gave way to a narrow spiral stairway.
She followed that stairway.
And, to her delight and amazement, it brought her to a small wooden door, one that gave easily to her touch.
The door opened outside the manor house, several feet from its western edge.
She wondered that she had never seen the door before, but then realized that it was below the earth, that she had to climb uphill several paces to reach the ground, and that it was blocked by a high set of spreading hickory trees.