Silent On The Moor Part 26

"It must have been quite a wrench for you when he left," I hazarded.

Again, that slow secret smile. "A wrench? Lady, I gave him the money."

My expression must have betrayed my surprise for he gave a roar of laughter, startling the dog. "We are not like gorgio folk," he reminded me. "A boy is a man when he can keep a wife. And Nicholas had wit. I knew he could survive." He shook his head. "Lady, you look doubtful, but I tell you the truth. Nicholas was more of a man at ten years old than I was at twenty. He took care of himself because he was forced to it. Life for a poshrat in our tribe is not easy, particularly if his father is the gorgio parent. He would never have been fully accepted."

I recognised the word poshrat. It meant a half blood, and it was never used by the Roma as a term of affection.

"You mean your own people did not consider him one of them?"

"Never," he said flatly. "This is why marriage between your people and mine is not encouraged. Life is very hard for the children, more so if the mother is Roma. It is her duty to keep the blood pure and not marry outside of her own people."

I gave a sigh of exasperation. "And so the children are punished, when it is through no fault of their own that their blood is mixed?"

He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "It is the way. I am not so particular. If the boy was born to my wife's sister, he is a Rom, that is my way. But I am only one man in the tribe. I cannot change the old ways, and I would not want to. I did what I could for him, and I helped him to leave. I never told Rosalie, but believe me when I say it was the best."

"I suppose it was," I said slowly, thinking of the life Brisbane had made for himself.

John-the-Baptist must have intuited my thoughts, for he threw his arms wide. "You see what he is now? A gorgio lord, even if he does not bear the t.i.tle. He owns land and the other gorgios treat him with respect. It is not our way, but it is the gorgio way. If he must live in their world, he must be better than they are."

I took his point, but there was no possible reply to such a statement. Brisbane, as a half blood, would always be judged by a different standard, by both his Gypsy family and the English he lived amongst. It struck me as a formula for an incredibly difficult and lonely life.

"My tea is ready," he said. "I leave you now." He lifted his cap to me and I offered my hand.

He smiled in surprise and took it. His own hand was wide, the fingers long as suited a violinist.

"You are a lady of many surprises," he observed, giving me a mischievous smile. "I wonder what secrets you know."

"Not as many as I would like," I told him truthfully.

He laughed again. "Do not wish to know what is hidden," he advised me. "Things that are kept in locked cupboards are not worthy to be seen."

He left me then, whistling for Rook to follow. The dog gave me a mournful look and trotted obediently away. As they moved, I heard the sound of the Grimswater bell, beckoning faintly. John-the-Baptist did not turn, but Rook p.r.i.c.ked up his ears and paused a moment, then put his head down and followed his master.

"I will see at least one mystery in this place solved," I muttered, gathering up my skirts and picking my way hastily over the moor toward Grimswater. The ground was softer here, the mud clutching at my shoes and hems like soft, grasping fingers. I jerked myself free time and again, never quite making headway as I zigzagged over the ground, searching for a safe, dry path.

I thought that keeping to the low clumps of moor gra.s.ses would ensure safe footing, but no sooner had I stepped upon a promising bit of gorse than the ground gave way beneath me and I sank nearly up to my knees in squelching black mud.

"d.a.m.nation," I said. I wriggled my legs but they were stuck fast in the mud.

I heard a voice behind me.

"Lady Julia, are you quite all right?"

I glanced over my shoulder. G.o.dwin was bounding toward me, light-footed as a damsel, springing from tussock to tussock until he reached me, not even breathing heavily.

"G.o.dwin, thank G.o.d. I am quite stuck," I told him, looking ruefully at my legs.

He clucked at me and bent swiftly to remedy the situation. He looked up at me, his hand poised near my leg.

"May I?" His lips were twitching with amus.e.m.e.nt, and I thumped him on the back with a fist.

"Yes, you lummox. I don't care about propriety just now. Get me out!"

He bent again to his task, wrapping his hands firmly about my stockinged thigh and pulling slowly and evenly until the leg came free with a sickening sucking sound. There was a gush of black water and the hole filled again, swirling peaty mud about my other leg.

"Do not put tha' foot down again," he warned. "Thee'll only be stuck fast again. Wrap your arms about my back and keep tha' foot free of the ground."

I obeyed, but in spite of my little lecture about propriety, it was an awkwardly intimate position to occupy. His back was broad and warm under my arms, and I could feel the play of the heavy muscles as he gently worked my leg free. There was another great sucking sound as the earth rendered up my leg, dripping filthy water from my sodden boot and stocking.

G.o.dwin turned and scooped me up easily. "Put tha' arms about my neck. I'll carry thee to solid ground, and then we'll see if thou're hurt," he said, cradling me gently as he had the pups. We had not far to go, and I did not argue with him. It was rather pleasant being taken care of, and so long as I did not make a habit of it, I did not see the harm.

In a very few minutes we had regained the path. He set me gently on my feet and spent quite a long time examining my ankles and knees for injury, feeling both carefully with surprisingly deft hands.

Finally I twitched my skirts down with a brisk gesture. "I think that will do, G.o.dwin," I told him repressively. "I am quite all right, and I thank you for your timely rescue. I might have been stranded out there for hours."

The prospect was not an enticing one, but what he told me next chilled my blood.

"Tha' might not have survived at all," he said, his expression sober. "There are mires on the moor, and some of those spots have no bottom, nought but pools of mud tha' go on forever, right to the centre of the earth. Sheep have been lost on the moor before, and people, too, from time to time. Did no one say thee must keep to the path?"

I thought I remembered Ailith saying something of the sort, but I could not recall. "Perhaps. I had no idea it was all that dangerous. Thank you for intervening. My thoughtlessness put you at risk, and I am sorry for that."

He flushed with pleasure and embarra.s.sment. "'Twas nothing. I've known these moors from boyhood. Besides, I would have done it twice over to save thee. I want you to think well of me, my lady."

He ducked his head, almost bashfully, and I gave a little cough, uncertain how to respond. Whatever admiration G.o.dwin harboured for me, surely he knew nothing could come of it.

But perhaps I could use it to my advantage, I thought suddenly. I reached into my pocket and drew out the object I had been carrying.

"G.o.dwin, do you recognise this?" I opened my palm, and lying flat, glowing burnished gold in the morning sun was the amulet of the ram.

His eyes widened and his tanned face went white to the lips. He took a step backward and looked at me in horror.

"Where did you get tha'?"

I held his gaze with my own. "I think you know where I found it. And the other, just like it."

He shook his head, angrily, as a child will. "I have never seen tha' before."

I took a step closer, raising my palm to his eye level, forcing him to see it. "G.o.dwin, you are not that accomplished a liar. You have seen it. Tell me where."

He shook his head again, and when he spoke, his voice was clipped and completely lacking in the warm northern burr to which I had become accustomed. "I have never seen it before. And I have work to do. You can find your own way back to the Hall."

I stared after him as he broke into a run, taking the moor path in great, loping strides. I shoved the amulet in my pocket, nearly ripping the seam in my frustration. I had mishandled the situation badly. It had not occurred to me that he would be so horrified by the sight of the amulet. I had thought to surprise him, to startle him into telling the truth. I had not counted on his abject terror at seeing it.

I turned my steps toward Grimsgrave Hall, determined to find answers at last.

Not surprisingly, Brisbane was out when I arrived back at Grimsgrave. There was no sign of G.o.dwin either, and I went to my bedchamber to freshen up a little. Grim quorked at me from his cage, but whether it was a greeting or a scolding, I could not tell.

I opened the little door of the cage and clucked at him, encouraging him to come out, but he merely fixed me with a cold, beady eye.

"Good morning, Grim," I said formally, but he continued to look just over my shoulder, ignoring me with all the cool hauteur of a fine gentleman. A scolding then.

"Very well, sulk if you must. I am going to have a think," I told him. I reclined on the bed, hoping a few moments of meditative silence would help me to put the pieces together.

Still, nothing seemed to fit quite properly, and after a quarter of an hour I gave up and got something to read. Redwall Allenby's travel journals would be just the thing, I decided. He had left for Egypt just after the mine had collapsed and shortly after the disappointment of unrolling the ruined mummy. It occurred to me that he might well have alluded to his experiments in his first journal, and I opened it, skimming the spiky letters in faded brown ink. His writing style was painfully pedantic, with regular, dutiful recordings of what he ate, how long he slept, and even his toilet habits. I cringed a little as I skipped over them, searching for some mention of anything of significance.

But there was nothing, I soon realised. I reached for the next journal, and the one after, and these were more detailed, but just as disappointing. His travels had broadened to the Americas, to other parts of Africa and Europe as well as he trailed each new purchase related to Egyptology. He seemed to make many varied and interesting acquaintances, but none of his connections deepened to friendship, and there was a distinct air of superiority when he spoke of them. He was the worst kind of traveller, I reflected sourly. The ent.i.tled Englishman, considering himself lord of all he surveyed, and looking down on everything and everyone with marked contempt.

But as the journals went on, I noticed one change. There was frequent mention of money troubles, of requests on the part of his mother for funds for Grimsgrave, and his repeated annoyance that he should have to maintain an estate he no longer occupied. His spending was curtailed, expenses were curbed, and at last, to his outrage, he was obliged to accept a post with an expedition if he hoped to return to Egypt for the 1884-1885 season.

"The Evandale expedition," I murmured, tracing his endlessly dull recitation of the facts surrounding the equipment of the party. There were lists of supplies, innumerable complaints about poor accommodations and slights to his dignity. I skipped over the greater part of them, turning a dozen pages at a time. The first thing of interest was a tiny set of sketches, not very well-rendered, but perfectly recognisable. One was a ram of Osiris, the other the tyet of Isis. Underneath were scrawled the words, Seven Days. Something stirred in my memory, but only distantly. I turned the page, reading as Redwall railed against the members of the expedition, lambasting Lord Evandale for a fool, and naming the Comte de Roselende as his greatest enemy.

I have known him from childhood, and although I have the power to inform Lord E. that he has accepted employ under a false ident.i.ty, I have said nothing. I have seen his black eyes upon me, and I know he realises I have recognised him. I have him in my power, and he wonders, even now if I mean to do him harm. He is a fool. I do not care what becomes of him. He is less than the dirt beneath my feet. Petty revenges will not distract me from my true purpose here: I will make great discoveries this season, discoveries which will ensure the recovery of my fortune, and the Allenby name.

I sat up as I read the words. Redwall Allenby rarely noticed anyone whose path crossed his. The fact that he found an enemy in Egypt was highly interesting. That was the season of his disgrace, I realised quickly, the last season he had spent in Egypt before returning home to England, and a premature death. He had been wrong not to fear his enemy. Whoever he was, Redwall had apparently estimated him badly.

I turned the page to read more, but it was blank, and in its place was clipped a photograph, smudged and grimy, but still clear enough. It was a group photograph, the Evandale expedition in that fateful year when Redwall Allenby was disgraced and drummed from Egyptology forever. I found Redwall at once, in the back of the group, tall and handsomely blond, perhaps only a slight twist of the lips betraying his annoyance at not being seated next to Lord Evandale in the front of the group. Lord Evandale's feet rested on a stuffed lion, and his expression was one of jovial bonhomie. Clearly he was no enemy to Redwall; he had not the temperament for it, and his face was like a child's, open and guileless. He was obviously delighted to be financing an expedition, and he had gathered his staff about him like an indulgent parent. I studied the other faces carefully, but none were familiar, save one. The man standing next to Redwall Allenby. He was muscular and well-formed, perhaps an inch taller than Redwall. He sported a luxuriant black beard, and across his firm waist stretched a watch chain, its slender length hung with a coin struck with the head of a Gorgon. The reverse of the photograph was labelled in Redwall's familiar hand, and I only turned it over to confirm what I already knew. Redwall Allenby had identified the tall, dark man beside him as St. John Malachy-LaPlante, the Comte de Roselende. But of course, I knew him as Nicholas Brisbane.

THE TWENTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER.

Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all.

-William Shakespeare.

Henry VI, Part 2.

I stared at the photograph for a long time, feeling oddly light, as if my head was stuffed with cotton wool. I had known Brisbane loathed the Allenbys. He had even told me himself that he had been in Egypt, masquerading as an Egyptologist. Why had I not connected the points sooner? Brisbane had been the instrument of Redwall Allenby's disgrace and destruction.

Sickened, I closed the journal, shutting Brisbane's clever, calculating face away. I turned onto my side, thinking hard. The feud between their families was an old one. Sir Alfred Allenby had been responsible for seeing Brisbane's mother put into gaol where she died. Did Brisbane hold the rest of the Allenbys accountable for what one of them had done?

He must have, I thought fiercely. He had insisted upon Lord Salisbury purchasing Grimsgrave Hall for him when a dozen other properties might have done just as well if not better. Properties in excellent condition, near to his business interests in London, properties with no ghosts or scores to settle. But Brisbane had chosen none of them. He had insisted upon having Grimsgrave, knowing the Allenby women would be at his mercy, dependent upon him as completely as Mariah Young had been upon the clemency of Sir Alfred Allenby.

And because Sir Alfred had shown no mercy to her, none would be given to the Allenbys, I realised with horror. Brisbane had marked his time, dangling the promise of a snug, pretty cottage in front of them, but forcing them to live under his roof, beholden to him. Until from frustration or anger or thwarted pride, Lady Allenby had attempted his life, giving him the perfect pretext to send her away. That he had not had her hanged ought to have given me a flicker of hope, but it did not. Brisbane was a subtle and clever man with a fair measure of hot Gypsy blood. He had been schooled in blood feuds since childhood. If he wanted an enemy to suffer, a quick snap of the hangman's noose would be too quick, too easy. How much more terrible to be immured in the stone walls of a convent, knowing nothing more of the outside world, but remembering every day that one's child and one's beloved home were still in the hands of a sworn enemy.

The very notion turned my stomach to water, and I was glad I had not eaten dinner. I relived every moment I had spent with Brisbane since I had arrived at Grimsgrave, every anguished glance he had given me, every time he had demanded my return to London. He did not want me to witness what he had become, to know what monstrousness he was capable of. How many times had he warned me he was bedevilled? And fool that I was, I had not listened. I had believed the pa.s.sionate kisses, the warm, demanding hand in mine, and I had not believed him capable of real evil. But then, the poets tell us love is blind, I thought bitterly, and for all his sins, I loved him.

And as soon as I had constructed the case against him, I demolished it. "No," I told myself firmly, "it is not possible. He is no monster." I had known Brisbane in many and varied circ.u.mstances, and even though I knew him to be clever and dispa.s.sionate enough to be the architect of a revenge scheme, he was not vicious. I would not believe, even if I heard it from his own lips, that he would truly harm the Allenby women for the sins of their kinsmen.

But I had to know precisely what his intentions were toward Ailith and Hilda, and the only way to bring an end to the matter was to clear away all of the mysteries in that gloomy house. There was a legacy of pain and treachery in that place, and there would be no future for any of us if I did not expose it at last.

I closed the cage on Grim and hurried out of the room. The door to Ailith's room was closed and I tapped on it, shifting my weight impatiently. She called for me to come in, her voice serene as ever.

She was sitting on the floor, arranging dolls in her dolls' house. I went to her and knelt, startling her.

"Ailith, I wanted to talk to you, about Redwall and Brisbane-"

I broke off as I looked at the dolls in her hands. A pair of babies, tightly swaddled, with identical shocks of golden hair, hair identical to that shorn from the mummified babies in the study.

I rocked back on my heels, thinking hard. "They were yours," I said flatly. "The babies were yours."

She did not look at me. She merely continued to fuss over the tiny dolls, stroking their silken locks. "Yes. They were taken away from me as soon as they were born. I never even held them."

She laid them into the pair of cradles in the nursery she had so lovingly prepared. I felt a rush of horror and sympathy for her. She had given birth to children she had never even been permitted to hold. I thought of Lady Allenby and her flinty pride, Redwall and his horrible experiments.

"Were they stillborn?" I asked her, keeping my voice low and gentle.

She shook her head, her golden hair falling free. It was the first time I had seen her without it bound tightly into a coronet. She looked younger, and terribly vulnerable.

"No. They were alive when they were taken from me. I heard them cry."

"Who took them?" I asked, although I thought I knew the answer.

Her head came up then, her eyes flashing with anger even after all the years that had pa.s.sed. "She took them. G.o.dwin knows. He was there."

She ducked her head again and busied herself with tidying the little nursery of make-believe. I could not quite take it all in. It had been G.o.dwin after all who was the villain. Father to illegitimate children, doubtless goaded by Lady Allenby, he had been a party to giving them to Redwall to be immured forever, burying their secrets and shame with the bodies. Little wonder he had behaved so strangely when I had confronted him with the ram amulet. It must have been like seeing the very ghosts of his children resurrected. I wondered what would become of Ailith should the truth be revealed. I knew Brisbane would not deliberately harm her, but I could not say with perfect certainty that he would help her either. Perhaps the enmity between their families ran too deeply for that. No, it would be left to me to save her if I could.

I put an arm around her, noting that she had lost weight. She felt little more than skin and bones. My pendant slid out from my neckline and her eyes fixed on it, watching it swing back and forth, like a sleepy child watching a candle flame.

"That is Medusa, is it not?" she asked, putting out a finger to touch it.

I tucked it away and gave her a patient smile.

"Ailith, I wonder if you would not like a little rest. Perhaps we could go away. A trip to the seaside. Would you like that? I have a fancy to see Whitby. It would be such fun if you came as well. And Hilda and Portia. We could invite them, and make it a little party of hens, what do you say to that?"

Ailith shook her head. "There is no money for such trifles," she said sadly. "There is no money at all."

"Oh, do not mind about that. I will make all the arrangements. You must come as my guest. Would you like to visit the seaside?"

She nodded slowly. "Someone will have to mind Hilda's chickens. You will tell her to find someone to mind the chickens, won't you?"

Her gaze was flat and childlike. I coaxed her toward the bed. "Of course. Why don't you lie down now, and I will settle everything. Have a nice rest, and we can be gone in the morning. I will even have Minna pack for you. You need do nothing at all."

She climbed onto the bed and lay atop the coverlet. Her eyelids drooped, but then flared open. She put out a hand to mine.

"You are so very kind, Lady Julia," she murmured.

"It is nothing," I told her. "Rest now, and do not worry about anything."

She nodded and turned onto her side, curling into the pillow. In one hand she clutched the little pair of dolls with the bright gold curls.

I hurried from her room to the poultry yard. Hilda was pouring out fresh water for the chickens who were clucking irritably at her feet.