Free The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth by Michelle Paver Page B

‘Out of the question. We can’t possibly—’
    Cousin Lettice raised her hand for silence. ‘A mother’s wish ,’ she hissed. ‘It is our duty to pay it heed.’
    ‘A mother’s wish?’ Cousin Septimus studied her with dislike. ‘What would you know about that?’
    Cousin Lettice’s colour deepened, but she refused to back down. ‘A mother’s wish,’ she repeated like a catechism. ‘A mother’s dying wish. It is a sacred charge, Septimus, you know that as well as I. It is a sacred charge which cannot be ignored.’
    Cousin Septimus scowled, but did not demur. It appeared that even he had to agree with that.
    Slowly, Madeleine breathed out. The shaky feeling was gone. The shell was whole again.

Chapter Seven
    Letter to Jocelyn Monroe, Fever Hill Estate, Parish of Trelawny, Jamaica, from Captain Cameron Lawe, Carysfort Military Prison, Suakin, 18th March 1884.
     
    Dear Jocelyn,
    By the time this reaches you, you may already have seen accounts of an incident arising from the death of my Commanding Officer, Major Alasdair Falkirk, as a result of which I have been the subject of a General Court-Martial. I am writing to report the circumstances in so far as I can, and the sentence of the court, which Her Majesty has today confirmed. (In view of the ongoing campaign, the Court-Martial was convened at great speed, and I regret that there was not time to warn you of it in advance.)
     
    Cameron set down the letter and put his elbows on his knees and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.
    Discharge with ignominy from Her Majesty’s Service. Forfeiture of all field medals and decorations. Committal as a common felon to a public prison for a term of not less than two years.
    He remembered Jocelyn’s face on the day he had received his commission in the Borderers. He had been so proud. ‘For seven hundred years, your family has sent its best to fight for their country. You have the finest of traditions to uphold, my boy. Honour it.’
    This was going to tear him apart.
    Cameron took his hands from his eyes and stared at the rough coral wall of his cell. A large copper-coloured cockroach emerged from a crack beneath the window. A fly crawled across the notepaper on his makeshift desk. It was an old crate of Nestlé’s Condensed Milk which Sergeant Watts, an ill-at-ease gaoler, had dragged in for him the day before. As it was six inches lower than the rough native angareb on which he slept, he had to pause frequently to ease the ache in his shoulders.
    He got up and went to the window, and the cockroach withdrew into its crack. Through the shutters came the steady roar of the bazaar. He smelled cumin and palm oil and goat.
    Clear and bright and painfully vivid, he pictured the old man receiving the news. He would be on the great north verandah at Fever Hill, sitting in his favourite rattan armchair with the frayed old tartan throw trailing on the tiles. At his elbow there would be the usual Scotch and soda, and beside it the tarnished daguerreotype of Kitty, the young wife who had been dead for thirty-five years. The liver-spotted hands would be carefully shaking out his weekly Times – his one extravagance – which had just arrived on the mail coach from Kingston. The sunbleached eyes, as fierce as an osprey’s, would be scanning the columns with grim relish for reports of suffragists and Baptists and those damned, meddling educationists.
    Then the stillness as he spots the familiar names: . . . A notable casualty of the Battle of Tamai was Major Alasdair Falkirk of the 65th York and Lancasters. It is this correspondent’s painful duty to report the horrifying news that one Captain Cameron Lawe, a brother officer on special attachment from the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, was observed in the aftermath of the hero’s fall despoiling the body . . . persistently refused to explain his actions . . . immediate Court-Martial on grounds of insubordination and conduct unbecoming . . .
    Beneath the window sill