Beyond the Wild River: A gorgeous and evocative historical novel - Softcover

Maine, Sarah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1473639697 ISBN 13: 9781473639690

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton, 2017

Synopsis

Nineteen-year-old Evelyn Ballantyre has rarely strayed from her family's estate in the Scottish Borderlands, save for the occasional trip to Edinburgh, where her father, a respected magistrate, conducts his business -- and affairs of another kind. Evelyn has always done her duty as a daughter, hiding her boredom and resentment behind good manners -- so when an innocent friendship with a servant is misinterpreted by her father as an illicit union, Evelyn is appalled.

About this title

About the Author

Sarah Maine was born in England but grew up partly in Canada before returning to the UK to study archaeology. She now lives in York with her family. The House Between Tides was her first novel.

Kirsty Cox trained at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. She is a professional actress who has worked extensively in theatre, radio, television, and film, performing in contemporary works, Shakespeare, BBC radio dramas, independent films, commercials, and more. In 2010, she extended her acting career to narrating audiobooks and has since recorded many titles including Secrets of the Sea House, Star Gazing, and Wedlock.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Beyond the Wild River Chapter 1

Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893

Every few minutes the beam of a giant arc light swept the roofline of the White City, cleaving the Illinois night sky to startle the grebes that rode the lake’s dark swells. It lit the sleek undercut bow of Mr. Larsen’s steam yacht Valkyrie, which rode at anchor, adding lustre to her varnished hull, and it reached Evelyn Ballantyre as she leant over the port rail, staring down at the jagged reflections. She began counting the seconds between each raking shaft. One, two, three—and as the beam swept away again, she raised her head, following its course over the ripples to the pier a hundred yards away, where it lit the promenade with its booths and stands, shuttered now for the night, before rising again to illuminate the improbable cityscape of classical domes and colonnades, every roofline a string of stars.

The White City . . .

Briefly, the beam lit the aft deck where her father sat with Mr. Larsen, their host. They were elegant in evening dress, taking their ease under the yacht’s striped awning until the evening’s engagement should begin.

“Alright, my dear?” her father asked, lifting his head and looking across at her. She nodded briefly and turned back to the lake. She had sat with them earlier, then risen, excusing herself with a smile that neither man noticed, and drifted over to the rail to watch the extraordinary spectacle as the miracle of electricity transformed the scene on shore. Their conversation had been dominated, as ever, by the day’s newspapers with their daily accounts of bankruptcies and suicides, and she had found it tedious. How could there be anything new to say?

She frowned down at the toes of her sequined shoes. It was a new pair, and very fine they were, very costly, purchased during a brief shopping trip after disembarking in New York en route to Chicago. The sequins glittered as the arc light swung back, evoking a glamour that, as yet, had no substance.

The White City. Back in Scotland, when she first heard the name, it had conjured up an ethereal, mysterious place of great wonder, and looking across the shore now, she thought it lived up to expectations. But there had been nothing ethereal inside the noisy Machinery Hall, where they had squandered their morning, nor in the Mines and Mining Building that afternoon. Her father, inevitably, had been fascinated by both places, engrossed by what he saw, probing for information about costs and returns while she stood by with nothing to do but wait and study the extraordinary fashions of the few women there who, like her, attended their male companions.

Mr. Larsen had left a selection of souvenir guidebooks and programmes in the yacht’s saloon, and she had browsed through them with a keen interest. “The world has come to Chicago,” he told her with a smile, “so prepare to be amazed.” She had browsed through the Illustrated Guide to the World’s Fair and Chicago and The World’s Columbian Exposition, which informed her that, quite apart from the main pavilions, there was a Japanese garden and a Chinese pagoda to see, a group of Esquimaux and a Red Indian encampment, as well as the well-publicised attractions of the Midway Plaisance. But her father had skimmed over those pages, focussing instead on the dullest of the exhibition halls, not for a moment considering what she might want to see.

Tomorrow, though, when the rest of their party arrived, she and Clementina would leave the men to their machines and explore the wonders of the Woman’s Building together. A whole building designed entirely by women, Mr. Larsen had told her, filled with the creations of women, lined with murals which celebrated the different spheres of womankind, and with exterior ornamentation, the work of a sculptress her own age.

She glanced again at her father as he sat there, complacent and urbane, and considered what she had to show for her nineteen years. Buried in the rural fastness of a Borders estate, miles from Edinburgh, she was left for weeks on end with only the dullest of companions, an occasional drawing master and an enfeebled tutor who taught her classics. Did her father ever consider her feelings, or her future? Did he simply assume that she would marry some neighbour’s son, as Clementina had done, and live out her days on a similar estate, while the world passed her by?

The thought terrified her, the sheer relentless boredom of it.

And could he not see, for goodness’ sake, that it was boredom, nothing more, which had led to the Incident?

She gazed down at the water again, seeing how the reflections fractured into zigzags as the raking light swept towards the Valkyrie’s hull. A simple friendship, nothing more, born of loneliness and a deepening frustration—it had meant nothing! But the shock of her father’s discovery had spurred him into action, and the outcome had left her more delighted than she would allow him to see. Nothing more had been said about it since that dreadful day when she had stood before him in his study and been asked to account for herself, but she knew that he watched her now with an unnerving intensity and a speculative eye.

Behind her, she heard him laugh at some remark of Mr. Larsen’s and raised her head to look again towards the enchanted shore. He watched her, yes, but he saw nothing.

The two men talked of visiting the Electricity Building tomorrow morning, before George and Clementina’s train arrived, and Mr. Larsen had chuckled at her expression. “But we will see the Midway Plaisance too, my dear, I assure you, and Mr. Ferris’s great wheel. Will we take a ride, do you think? Have you courage enough?” She had returned him a tight smile. Did he consider her a child to be placated by a promised treat?

The giant wheel was visible now above the rooftops, lit by a double row of sparkling lights, an extraordinary sight, and she felt another stab of impatience for the evening to begin. But still they talked . . . What more could be said? There were financial and political catastrophes exploding around them, she had been told, and yet the two men appeared to be calm, so she could only assume that they had suffered no great losses. So why the endless debate?

“It won’t be long now, my dear, I promise you,” Mr. Larsen called across to her. “Keep a lookout. The Wizard said to watch for the magic.”

Mr. Larsen was a banker, one of a very small number of her father’s business associates who visited Ballantyre House, crossing the Atlantic regularly once a year in pursuit of the bank’s business, and Evelyn liked him. He was a genial man, generous of spirit and proportions, and he would discuss books and paintings with her, seeking her opinions, exploring her tastes. But invariably, as she struggled to express views half-formed or ideas newly considered, her father would take him away to spend hours closeted in his study, or out on the terrace with their papers and cigars, locked in endless discussion. Thick as thieves, she once heard the housekeeper remark as she sent afternoon tea out to them.

Not thieves. Oh no. She looked back out across the lake’s gun-metal surface as the familiar sickening sensation churned her insides. Her father was respected throughout the county, a magistrate who upheld the law, dealing out the Queen’s justice to thieves.

And poachers . . .

Quickly she shifted her gaze to the yachts moored close by and began counting their bowsprits—anything for a distraction. Eighteen, nineteen—there must be twenty of them, which, Mr. Larsen said, had formed a flotilla from the New York Yacht Club. And now they rode there, pulling at their warps, tethered like restless thoroughbreds, magnificently en fête, dressed over all with bunting and flags, as sleek as their owners. Glossy paintwork bounced the light to brass deck rails and fittings, scattering it across varnished decks, while the aroma of expensive cigars wafted across the water towards her. Perhaps the same anxious conversations were being repeated there too, punctuated by demands to liveried servants who hid concerns about unpaid salaries behind an unctuous servility.

“Now what is the lovely Evelyn thinking, I wonder?”

She was familiar with the banker’s avuncular gallantry, which was offered with a sparkling eye and traces of the singsong accent of his native Aalborg as he joined her at the rail. She smiled slightly and shook her head.

From the corner of her eye she could see her father, still seated, drawing on his cigar, watching her through narrowed eyes. Was he asking himself the same question—

“I’m trying to make sense of it all,” she said—and that would be the answer she would give him too, if he ever troubled to ask.

“Ah. The sense of it—”

Well-bred laughter floated across the water from the other yachts, and Evelyn gestured towards them. “Where’s the panic and the collapse you describe? The desperation—”

Mr. Larsen grasped the rail and looked gravely across the row of lifting bowsprits to the largest yacht, the Morgan-le-Fey, which rode complacently in their midst. It had led the flotilla through the Erie Canal and belonged to the Wizard, he had told her, who would be their host for the evening.

“There’s panic in the heart of every man out there, young lady,” he said eventually, then pulled out and consulted a pocket watch, its heavy gold chain stretched tight across his corpulent chest, adding, “except in whatever organ provides that function in the Wizard.”

She heard her father laugh. “And I don’t see panic in the eyes of Niels Larsen either, thank God,” he remarked, tipping his head back and blowing blue cigar smoke into the night sky before rising to join them.

“But the money to build the Exposition,” Evelyn insisted, “and these yachts, and the clothes, and the jewels— Where did the money come from, and where did it go?”

“That, my dear,” replied the banker, “is what they are asking themselves.”

And then, without warning, the quiet of the evening was torn apart by a mighty whoosh and the gunfire-crackle of fireworks as a dozen rockets shot into the sky from the bow of the Morgan-le-Fey, blazing trails of light through the blackness. An appreciative sigh spread across the water, and those who had languished on aft decks rose as if called to worship, and within minutes the first of the launches set out.

“The supplicants go to entreat, and the hungry to feast . . .” her father murmured beside her, but panic was choking her senses. At the first salvo she had gone rigid, gripping the deck rail, her eyes screwed shut, her heart had stalled, but it now began to race and her breath came in shallow pants. She forced her eyes open again and stared out across the water, fighting a rising nausea and focussing on the dark shapes of the launches as they cut through the yachts’ reflections, heading for the Morgan-le-Fey. And as the night sky exploded with starbursts and rockets, the air grew heavy with the smell of cordite.



She still felt shaken half an hour later when she was handed up out of the launch onto the deck of the Morgan-le-Fey, flinching as the last of the rockets blazed above her. They were amongst the last guests to arrive, doubtless gaining some mysterious advantage thereby, and the deck of the yacht was already thronged with people. The party goers were stylish, sleek and burnished like their vessels, and were putting on a fine show. Few of them were under forty, Evelyn decided, as she watched them mingling beneath the swaying shadows cast by rows of Chinese lanterns strung between mastheads, accepting drinks and exotic delicacies from servants who glided along the decks to serve them. And in the midst of them all a tall, broad-shouldered man was holding court. He caught sight of their party and beckoned them forward with a lordly gesture.

So this was the Wizard—

His real name was Jeremiah Merlin and he ran a powerful banking empire, Mr. Larsen had explained to her. “A financial wizard of legendary status.”

“Ha!” her father had retorted. “As Beelzebub is legendary, I suppose. And his name’s a travesty.”

“How so?” she had asked.

“The merlin is known as the dove falcon, my dear, but Jeb is more of a vulture, picking over the carcasses.”

Larsen had laughed. “You’ll keep that view to yourself tonight, my friend.”

“If I must.”

And so it had been all civility and good breeding as their host greeted them. “Your first trip to America?” he asked her, touching her hand briefly and turning back to her father before she could reply. “I hear your name mentioned a great deal these days, Mr. Ballantyre—” He let the sentence hang there, to become a question. “There are rumours—” he prompted, his eyes, heavy lidded, shifting between the two men. Her father blandly remarked on the splendour of the yacht by way of response, a deflection which clearly displeased their host.

“Rumours, Niels?” she heard him murmur as they moved away, their place taken swiftly by a thin, anxious-looking man.

“There are always rumours, my friend.” Mr. Larsen took her arm and guided them to a space beside the rail where a dark-skinned servant brought them drinks. Evelyn looked about her, at the almost theatrical swirl of people and lights, and he smiled at her expression. “Extraordinary, isn’t it? Two hundred and ten feet of white pine deck, mahogany fittings and yards of gleaming brass. Schooner rigged, of course”—he glanced up at the masts—“although I’ve yet to see her under sail for more than half an hour; Jeb prefers a twelve-knot cruising speed and knows his engine can outstrip us all. Ten staterooms, I’m told, six bathrooms, a billiard room, a music room, library, and a deck large enough to hold a small orchestra, and still have room for dancing.” He raised his cocktail glass to the light and showed her the etched design of a magician’s wand under an arc of stars, above the shield of the New York Yacht Club. He took a slow drink, looking at her father over the rim. “You’ll have to watch him, Charles.”

“I will.”

“Not a grain of compassion.”

“I’m rather depending upon that.” Evelyn looked up at his quiet words and saw that he was watching Mr. Merlin, who had brushed aside the supplicant who had taken their place, and was shaking another’s hand. “His father was a butcher from Carlisle. Did you know?” And he turned back to lean over the rail in contemplation of the lake water.

The rest of the evening was a deadening succession of polite encounters with business associates of Mr. Larsen’s. To her surprise, many of them knew her father, or at least recognised his name, and she was impressed by the deference and respect they showed him, while he, urbane and assured as ever, politely introduced her to them, his hand under her elbow. And with the same fixed smile she repeated the same answers to the same questions, and found them almost invariably ignored.

At one point a small round man shot across the deck to join them. “Ballantyre! What the devil brings you here?” A large diamond on his little finger caught the lantern light.

“Fraser. Your servant,” he said, and presented the man to Evelyn as another business associate, originally from Perth, with whom he shared common interests on both sides of the Atlantic.

Evelyn found herself briefly under scrutiny, before being asked again if this was her first visit to America,...

Edition details

• Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1473639697
• ISBN 13: 9781473639690
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 336