Killing Violets, Tanith Lee [the two towers ebook .TXT] 📗

love to, or raping, a female servant in the roof conservatory, Anna got up early, about seven, before any of them arrived in her room.

She dressed in the plain chic dress from Paris, and filled her largest handbag with anything she had left, that was of use.

Then she put on her coat and hat, and the galoshes which had somehow been abandoned here following the wet walk with Raoul.

She had some money, in English currency, which Raoul had given her idly, on their reaching the country. It had never, of course, been utilised. Anna had no idea if it would be enough, but she thought so, these substantial crackling papers, and the bright burnished coins.

She descended through the house, prepared to say that she was going for a ‘turn about the gardens’, a phrase she had found in a book.

Only two of the maids passed her, eyes down, bobbing and cowering, scuttling on.

Because she could not recall the way to the front of the house, she went down to the orangery and the salon, from which a passage led away to the storage and gun rooms, the route Raoul had taken her.

At eight, the men would use the breakfast room, but that was somewhere across the house. The women took their breakfast in bed. Unless, for some reason Raoul had also lied about this.

But no one was about, though the salon curtains had been folded back, and a maid was kneeling in the fireplace, clearing up the evening fire.

The door to the gun room stood ajar, smelling of gun lubricant and tinders.

A mouse – or perhaps a maid, reduced to Lilliputian size – scuttled by behind the wall.

Outside, and down the damp mossy steps, Anna surveyed the sea of mud that was the path up and around to the drive.

A cedar, frosted blue, towered on a lawn. There was a walled kitchen garden. An elderly man with a wheelbarrow full of cabbage toiled along, and seeing her, bowed his head, and touched his brow with one arthritic claw.

But the rain only sparkled, shed like dew, on every blade and leaf. The far-off hills seemed cut by a knife. The sky was clear, pure as glass. The sun shone, young and pale, flashing among the Basulte trees.

As she was walking through the park in the morning sunshine, a rider on a black horse went galloping by, so near she felt the heat, and off among the historic oak trees.

If he saw her she couldn’t have said. It was Raoul, probably. She thought it was. Behind him sat Lilith Lizard, her sandy hair flying free, her goat eyes narrowed.

She was clinging to Raoul, her face pressed into his back. Her expression, but for the narrowed eyes, was unfathomable.

Actually, Anna might have been invisible. Maybe she was. Though the mud of their going had lightly splashed her coat, she had entered another universe.

His brother – William? – had said Raoul had a woman here.

It didn’t matter now. Anna was leaving.

She had not cared anything for Raoul. It had been an error. But she always made mistakes. Her forté.

To proceed, she had thought she must go to the village. Here she might be able to persuade someone to take her to the nearest town or station. She had seen no cars she could recollect in the village. She might have to ride on a cart, or something like that. Elsewhere she had done this, from time to time, over the long white dusty roads, through groves of orange trees and figs and apples. In another life, the past.

Anna believed she had memorized, inadvertently, the way Raoul had led her to the village.

But soon she was lost, as in the Basulte house.

Brilliant sunlight too, seemed to change things. There were more colours; birds sang or squeaked, and butterflies danced on the green stalks of the fields.

In one of the lanes, an old brown man came stooping out of a field, with a lean tan dog on a piece of string. When he saw her, the man touched his cap, and made the bowing motion. But his back was bent anyway, perhaps from decades of such ghastly grovelling.

The dog only stared, then lifted its leg against the stile.

“The village,” said Anna, “is it…?”

“Yooum Mus Animal,” said the old man.

Anna contemplated this version of her name: Anna Moll, Miss Animal.

“Yooum gum frotha ouse.”

“Oh… yes. A walk. The village.”

“I knows,” said the ancient man, “byee hair.”

“Do you know the way?” Anna said.

The old man began to crawl along the lane, talking to her, with the dog trotting at his side. Did this mean the man was taking her to the village?

“Thold sunce out,” said the old man.

“Yes,” said Anna.

“Byar oll sumba.”

Anna kept silent.

The chestnut trees overhung the lane, nettles and wild parsley flourished. The dog constantly snuffed things and made water over them. The pace of the old slow man allowed ample space for that. The man talked on and on, now mostly incomprehensibly.

Anna wanted to run away.

“Is the village this way? Down there?” she asked in the end.

The old man lifted his old face to the old sun. She had seen such faces on peasants everywhere. Baked so hard, a hundred wrinkles worked in leather. He looked one hundred, and might be sixty-five.

Running downhill, the lane grew narrow. Cows stood motionless yet with mechanically swishing tails. A small wood enveloped the road.

From shadow, yesterday’s rain dripped, sprinkling lights. The dog shook itself.

The old man had not answered any of her questions, that was, her repeated question, but as they left the wood, the lane turned, and a rundown cottage appeared, with burnt green paint and a rickety water-butt.

“Here are,” said the old man. He moved through the broken fence, and by the door let the dog free of the string. “G’dee, Mus Animal.” The door shut. The dog bolted into a hedge.

Deserted on the track, Anna frowned. She wanted to shout invective after the man, but really it wasn’t his fault, she supposed.

Dismally she went on