by Elsa Hart
CHAPTER 14
The house was being prepared for the following day, when Sir Barnaby’s body would return to it. A subtle battle was in progress between Lady Mayne and Martha, with the widow issuing instructions from the confines of her shrouded room, and the housekeeper resisting almost all of them. Their most heated debate was over the appearance of the landings, through which the guests would have to pass to reach the master bedroom. Lady Mayne, citing the incompatibility of vulgar objects with pious reflection, wanted the objects on the landings moved into rooms where mourners would not see them. Martha argued that Sir Barnaby would never have condoned the rearrangement.
Lady Mayne, preoccupied with plans for the funeral to be held at the estate in a week’s time, had yielded on the matter of the landings. The objects could remain where they were as long as they were covered in black silk. Martha had acquiesced to the compromise, but not before making dire predictions of boot heels and buckles catching on the black garlands, dragging them down, and pulling the contents off the shelves with them.
Martha had a point, thought Cecily, as she carefully avoided the heaps of cloth pooled treacherously in the dark recesses of the staircase. Many of the shelves were already partly covered. She passed the skeleton of a rat standing on its hind legs, its little bones wired together, its hollow cavity of a nose lifted to sniff the air. A corner of black silk was draped over it as if the skeletal creature had donned death’s hooded cloak.
There was a table at the center of the library that had not been there before. Meacan was seated at it, her left elbow propped on its surface, her head resting heavily on her hand. Her other hand held a pencil poised over a page half-filled with writing. One of the blue-bound registers was open beside it. The rest of the registers were piled in crooked stacks on either side of her.
“The table is an improvement over the floor,” said Cecily.
“It’s one of the items John had to move from the carriage house,” said Meacan.
“A more suitable surface for writing than the painted coffin would have been,” said Cecily.
“The coffin is in the dining room,” said Meacan. “And I will tell you, it is a strange thing to enjoy a mince pie in the company of a pharaoh.”
Cecily crossed to the table. “How are you progressing?”
Meacan cast a critical look at the open register and fanned its pages. “I am empathizing with Athena when she was trapped inside Zeus’s skull.” With a sigh, she sat up straighter and stretched her arms. “And you? What brings you into the head of the late Sir Barnaby Mayne?”
“I thought I might assist you,” said Cecily.
“By all means,” said Meacan, gesturing to the chair opposite her. “Join me in the labyrinth. I assume, given your predilections, you’ll want to begin with the items designated for the Plant Room. He used HS to indicate them in the registers.”
“Hortus siccus,” murmured Cecily. “The dry garden.”
Meacan nodded. She indicated a pile to her right. “The first volume should be there somewhere.”
Cecily found it and sat down with it at the table. “I thought, instead of the plants, I would begin with the objects Sir Barnaby kept in his study.”
Meacan’s eyes narrowed. “Why the study?”
Cecily didn’t answer. She had already opened the register. She slid her finger slowly down the column on the far right of the page, in which Sir Barnaby had recorded the location assigned to each object. She stopped when she came to a small astrological symbol. “This must be it,” she said. “The sign for Leo, a pun on his name.”
Meacan, who had been frowning at Cecily, now looked thoughtful. “Wait,” she said. “Don’t tell me. Leo. Mayne. The lion. Aha! The lion’s mane. Leo. The den of Mayne. But you still haven’t told me why you want to inventory the study.”
Cecily took a sheet of paper and pencil from the stationery box. “Simple curiosity,” she said. “His private study must have been where he kept the objects that were most precious to him.”
Meacan absorbed the answer with a slight frown. Then she shrugged, took up her pencil, and returned her attention to the volume open before her.
Cecily’s task was not a difficult one. Compared to the column containing a description of each object, which over the years had become dense with annotations and corrections, the column containing their locations was decisive and clear. She had no trouble identifying each appearance of the sign of Leo as she ran her finger down the page. Each time she saw the symbol, she copied the details of the acquisition onto her slowly lengthening list.
Sir Barnaby’s study was smaller than the other rooms in the house, which meant that he had been obliged to consider carefully which objects deserved a place there. Cecily observed that often weeks or months passed before he added another article to its cabinets. She pictured him opening crates and sorting through bulk purchases, occasionally coming across an item that captured his imagination so thoroughly that he decided to keep it close: an opalized fossil of a nautilus shell, a skeleton of a bat, the hand of a mummy. As the years passed, more and more of these objects demonstrated his intensifying interest in occult studies. She began to see constellated rings, scrying glasses, beryl crystals, and grimoires.
Meacan’s silence did not last long. As she came across names of collectors who were familiar to her, she would snort, and periodically offer a derisive anecdote. Cecily, only half listening, learned of Mr. Doddle, who was so remiss in returning borrowed books that the other collectors had made a collective decision to shun him, and of Mr. Wake, who was so offended by Mr. Atlee’s criticism of his theories concerning the taming of beasts through music that he hired an arsonist to set fire to Atlee’s collection. She learned also of Mr. Brome, who bragged of his drawers of carved Egyptian gemstones at every society meeting until the day it was discovered that a number of them were forgeries made of glass, and of the great feud between Plessey and Poff over the definition of a bezoar.
Eventually, Meacan’s head began to nod, her chin slipping from her hand and startling her into wakefulness. After two hours, she declared she needed sustenance if she was to survive the tedium, and left in search of an unguarded pastry. Cecily, alone in the quiet with the great elephant skull, moved quickly through the registers.
She was nearing the end of a volume in which there had not been a single mark of Leo when suddenly she halted in surprise. Before her, the little symbol, written in Sir Barnaby’s small, controlled hand, filled the column from top to bottom, accompanied each time by the letters EWC, which in other rooms stood for East Wall Cabinet. She turned to the next page, and the next.
The pattern continued on for twelve pages, and included more than three hundred objects. It was not only their location that they had in common. Each object had been added to the register on the same day, the first of September, 1699—almost four years ago—and each object was attributed to the same source, indicated by a single word: “Rose.”
Cecily had encountered nothing similar in any of the registers. Where Sir Barnaby had acquired items in bulk, as he often did by purchasing or being given entire collections, he had separated them by subject into their appropriate rooms. Shells were kept with shells, books with books, serpents with serpents, and so on. That was not the case here. Every single object whose source was identified as Rose, be it shell, bone, stone, or coral, was kept in Sir Barnaby’s study.
Overcome with curiosity, Cecily closed the register and left the library. She descended the dark, draped stairwell and entered the study. The open shelves seemed strangely familiar now that she had read descriptions of many of the objects on them. There was the bottle, its thick glass clouded and broken, the pink coral adhering to it in a tight embrace. There was the jasper cup, cool and translucent. There was the crystal ball, the silver talisman engraved with characters of Jupiter, and the mirror of black obsidian.
She crossed the room to the three closed cabinets set against the east wall. One by one, she gripped the handles, pulled, and ex
perienced something she had not yet encountered anywhere in the house. These cabinets were locked.
CHAPTER 15
A stream of mourners ascended along the black-bound bannister to view the body of Barnaby Mayne and pay their respects to his widow. It was not a smooth stream. Progress was slowed by the many visitors who lingered at paintings and partially covered shelves, craning their necks and straining their eyes to see all they could of the collection. Those who tried to lift a corner of cloth in the hope of glimpsing a rarity were firmly redirected by the servants and by Meacan, who had been conscripted to help patrol the premises.
Over the course of the morning, Cecily discerned certain words and phrases repeated like birdsongs within the general murmur of the crowd.
“Inwood, yes, yes, all of it.”
“No trace of Dinley.”
“Stabbed through the heart.”
“Look here beneath the cloth—a skull, yes, but of what?”
“Isn’t it wondrous?”
“Vulgar excess.”
“Essential contribution to science.”
“He looks almost alive.”
The last impression was one Cecily shared. Sir Barnaby, lying in his coffin, did look as if he might supply one of the rare confirmations that a delayed burial could save the life of the seeming-dead. His presence still commanded. His expression remained authoritative. It was not impossible to imagine that only time was needed for that remaining spark of life, too small to be perceived, to catch fire again and rekindle the blue eyes now hidden behind waxen lids.
Lady Mayne appeared more at ease now that black hangings covered every shelf in her room. A silver candlestick and the flame rising demurely from its candle provided the only gleam of light in the chamber. As she accepted Cecily’s condolences for a second time, her eyes moved over Cecily’s shoulder to take in with apparent gratification the long line of visitors still to come. Cecily didn’t know whether the widow was more satisfied by the evidence of her husband’s popularity or by the victory of social convention over the silent dominion of the shelves.
Cecily allowed the current of visitors to move her out of the room and back onto the stairs. When she reached the first-floor landing, she slipped into the library, where she found Giles Inwood standing alone at the table looking down at the open registers. He greeted her with a smile and an informal bow of his head, communicating friendship with the ease that appeared natural to him.
“Mr. Helm is much improved,” he said. “Between John’s infusions and the pleasure of your company, I anticipate a speedy recovery.” His gaze shifted over Cecily’s shoulder to the door. Cecily had pulled it closed, but the murmur and shuffling of mourners on the landing were still audible.
“There is a considerable crowd,” said Cecily.
“I would not have expected anything different,” said Inwood. “Sir Barnaby was one of the greatest among us. Of course, he would never have permitted so many in the house at once.”
“Martha is doing everything in her power to protect the objects and preserve the order of the cabinets,” said Cecily.
“I do not doubt it. She has been devoted to the collection since the beginning.” Inwood looked thoughtful. “Perhaps she and her husband would consider an offer of employment in my own home. The transfer of the collection will be a mighty undertaking. Her assistance would be invaluable.”
“I am not certain she understands that the collection is no longer Sir Barnaby’s,” said Cecily. “She speaks as if she is still receiving his commands.”
Inwood’s expression was serious. “But it is his, Lady Kay. It always will be.” Dropping his eyes to the table, he touched a finger lightly to an open register. “Mrs. Barlow has devised a sound strategy for the inventory. Thorough, disciplined, and lacking unnecessary complexity.”
Cecily concealed the pleasure the praise afforded her. “I will convey the compliment,” she said. “I was surprised, though, when I heard that Lady Mayne had ordered an inventory. No matter the method, it will require significant time to complete, and I had the impression Lady Mayne was eager to relinquish responsibility as soon as possible.”
Inwood’s gaze remained lowered so that Cecily could not see his expression. “Some caprice is always to be expected from the bereaved,” he said. “But tell me how your work is progressing. Have you located the books and specimens you require?”
His interest appeared so genuine that Cecily allowed herself an extended answer. Inwood was knowledgeable. They spoke for some time about the differences between the Polium species of Smyrna and those of France, and about the uses of Origany of Crete by doctors on that island.
“I hope you know the Mayne plants, in addition to my own small collection, will be available whenever you have need of them,” said Inwood. “Will you come to the tour of my collection next week?”
“I assumed you would be obliged to cancel it.”
Inwood sighed. “Alas, I cannot. I have made commitments to my guests.”
As Cecily promised she would attend if she could, she reminded herself that she had not sought him out merely to make conversation. She moved to the side of the table where she had been working. “With regard to the inventory,” she said. “I wondered if you have a key to the cabinets that are locked.”
Inwood raised a quizzical brow. “I haven’t seen or heard mention of any keys to the cabinets. I never knew Sir Barnaby to lock any of them. He valued their accessibility, within the secure walls of the house, of course.”
“Thus far I have found only three that I cannot open,” said Cecily. “In the study. According to the registers, they are the cabinets containing objects Sir Barnaby acquired from someone called Rose.”
“Ah, that must be John Rose,” said Inwood, moving around the table to join Cecily at the register she had opened to the relevant pages.
“You know him?” asked Cecily.
“We all knew of him,” said Inwood. “A traveler and a collector of some renown, especially in his youth. For a short time, I did know him better than most.” There was a thoughtful pause before Inwood continued, speaking slowly as a person does who is describing one memory amid a crowd of others. “I was traveling in the West Indies—four or five years ago—I was in Jamaica when I heard that John Rose was staying in a nearby town. I had always admired him, and enjoyed hearing of his adventures through Sir Barnaby, with whom he corresponded often over the years. I went to visit him. Sadly, I soon perceived that he was in no condition to receive me as a guest. Rather, he was in need of all the professional skill I could offer.”
Inwood drew in a deep breath and let it out again slowly. Cecily imagined she saw in his eyes the wide blue sea, the crashing waves and haze of hovering insects, the suffering man. She remembered the date in the register, four years earlier. “There was no question of his ever returning home to England,” said Inwood quietly.
Cecily allowed the moment of silence to rest between them before she spoke. “But his collection came here.”
Inwood nodded. “In its entirety, I believe. I don’t know when they agreed that Sir Barnaby would assume Rose’s collection into his own in the event of Rose’s death, but I believe the agreement was a long-standing one. Not unlike the one made between Sir Barnaby and myself.” Inwood seemed to perceive Cecily’s surprise, and smiled. “It is not such a coincidence, I assure you, Lady Kay. The self-importance of our little community has the effect of making it appear larger than it is. We collectors are all connected in one way or another. Each of us friends or enemies with the others. And we do what we can to preserve our efforts for posterity.”
“Have you any idea why Sir Barnaby would have kept the cabinets locked?” asked Cecily. “When they were already secure in his private study?”
“I cannot think why,” said Inwood.
There was a knock on the door and Meacan appeared. “There you are,” she said, seeing Cecily first. Her eye flickered to Inwood. “Ah,” she said. “Mr. Inwood. May I beg your assistance? One of th
e drapes has fallen and movement up the stairs has come to a standstill around a small sculpture of a somewhat priapic nature.”
Inwood, looking slightly bemused, followed Meacan out. Cecily was about to go after them when her eye caught movement outside in the garden. She moved closer to the window and peered through the thick glass and gathering mist. A man in a coat and wig was striding between the neat parterres toward the back wall. As she watched, he disappeared into the carriage house.
The resolution of his movement suggested that the man was not simply a stray mourner exploring the garden. He had gone to the carriage house with a purpose, and Cecily wanted to know what it was. To avoid the crowd, she went through the nearest connecting door to the adjacent house, which was supposed to be closed to visitors. Judging from the traces of mud on the stairs and floors, new since that morning, Martha’s policy had not been entirely successful. Cecily wondered how many guests were now boasting to friends about the strange wonders they had seen during their illicit explorations.
By the time she stepped onto the veranda, the man was returning to the house. As he approached along the gravel path, she recognized the elegant tailoring and unremarkable features of Martin Carlyle. When he saw her he paused, then continued forward to join her. Tiny drops of mist silvered the edges of his gray wig and stood on the shoulders of his jacket.
“An oppressive atmosphere,” he said, nodding at the house. “I had to persuade that stern housekeeper to allow me out to take the air.”
“I saw you from the window,” said Cecily. “Going into the carriage house.”
Carlyle shrugged. “I thought I heard a noise from inside.”
“Was someone there?”
“Not that I saw, but I wasn’t going to venture into the dark corners. Who knows where the mad curator may be hiding.”
“Do you really believe he was mad?”
Carlyle did not look as if he cared one way or another. “Dinley? Could be. I don’t know him.”