“Do not forget what you came for, chavvo,” she said, proffering a bottle. It was filled with a thick red syrup and tightly-stoppered by the look of it, doubtless one of her remedies, but I was more intrigued by their conversation. Try as I might, I could not remember what the word chavvo meant. Magda, my Gypsy laundress, had been rigid upon the point of never teaching me a word of her language. I would have given my right arm to know it now, I thought bitterly.
Brisbane turned back to take the bottle from her, slipping it into his pocket. At that moment, Rook bounded from the cottage, thrusting his great head under Brisbane’s hand. Brisbane smiled and rubbed the dog’s ears, murmuring something I could not hear. He straightened after a moment, then turned to Rosalie.
“Parika tut,” he told her. She nodded, and he paused, turning to look over the moor toward the crossroads and the path back to Grimsgrave. “You ought not to live here alone. Are you not frightened of the mullo?”
She gave him a little shove and laughed. “Kakka, chavvo. I have no reason to fear the mullo, do I?”
“I suppose you don’t at that,” he replied. He turned on his heel and left her then. Rook followed him as far as the gate, whining a little when he was left behind. Rosalie stood watching Brisbane until he had taken the turning at the crossroads and began to descend down the moor, his black coat billowing in the wind.
“Aren’t you cold out there, chavvi?” she asked, turning to the shrubbery where I was hiding.
“Not a bit,” I told her, rising and brushing the leaves from my hair. “I dropped my ring. I was looking for it.”
She laughed, clicking her fingers for the dog to go inside. “You are a bad liar, my lady. Come inside and I will make tea to warm you.”
I gave up the pretence then and followed her inside, stamping my feet to restore the circulation.
The fire was blazing merrily as usual, and the air smelled of spices and something sweet as well. I sank into a chair by the fire and something tightly coiled within me seemed to relax.
“Roses,” she told me, putting her hands under my nose. I breathed deeply, feeling a rush of summer as I inhaled.
“But roses will not be in bloom for more than a month,” I protested. “The scent is too pure to be dried rose petals.”
“Not dried,” she corrected. “The oil from the rose. Very difficult to extract, and very costly. I made my perfume today, always in spring, just before John-the-Baptist returns.”
“Oh, do you expect him soon?”
She shrugged, shifting the long, dark ringlets over her shoulder. They looked darker now, perhaps a bit less silver than had been there before. I wondered if she used more than just perfume to enhance her attractions.
“A few days, a few weeks. It does not matter. He will come. Always with the spring.”
Rook padded over and laid his head on my knee, gazing up at me with adoring eyes. I laid a hand on his rough head, and to my astonishment, felt a hard lump rise in my throat.
Rosalie came then and put her own hand on my shoulder.
“You are lonely today,” she said softly. “Rook has a gift for sensing it. Let him comfort you.”
She moved away then, discreetly, to gather the tea things, and I laid my face against the lurcher, wetting his fur with my tears. I was lonely and feeling appallingly sorry for myself. It was not a state to which I was accustomed. I had been lonely for the better part of my marriage, but I had never acknowledged it. I lived then wrapped in cotton wool, seeing the world through misty glass, a pretty specimen pinned to a collector’s card.
But Edward’s murder had stripped the scales from my eyes, and I saw things clearly now. I was no longer sleepwalking through my life, and I wondered sometimes if it was worth it, to feel so sharply the bad as well as the good. I was capable of happiness now, real happiness, and passion as well, I thought with a rueful memory of Brisbane’s strong arms. But I was capable of despair as well. I missed my sister; Brisbane was being thorny. The moor was a lonely, isolated place, and there was little warmth and comfort for me there.
“This cottage sits at a crossroads,” Rosalie said, bringing the tea things to the table. I lifted my head, drying my eyes quickly. “It sits at a crossroads for you as well,” she added.
“How so?” I peered at the plate of oatcakes she had brought to the table. Plain and good as earth; with butter and honey they were delicious.
“Because you must decide. You have been drifting, one foot in the past, one in the present. But you must step forward into the future, or you will linger in limbo forever.”
She handed me a cup of steaming tea and I gave her a repressive look. “I thought limbo was a Catholic notion,” I told her.
“I do not speak of your soul, lady. I speak of your heart, of yourself. You do not wish to be as you were, but you are not entirely who you will become. It is difficult to be a stranger to yourself, is it not?”
I put the cup down, untasted. “Are you quite certain you do not practice the fortune-teller’s arts, Rosalie? You have assessed me quite accurately.”
She shook her head, smiling, her coins jangling at her ears. “It does not take a crystal ball to know you. I see people, lady. That is my gift. So many come to me because they are troubled. Would they come to me if they were perfectly happy? No, they come because they know Rosalie can see them for what they are, and can help them see which paths lay before them.”
I sipped slowly at the tea, feeling it warm me through to my bones. “You do not give them a little nudge down the right path?”
“Who is to say what is the right path? If a girl comes to me because she carries a child but has no husband, I will offer her pennyroyal to shed the child from her womb, or raspberry leaf to strengthen the womb to carry it. The choice is entirely hers.”
I toyed with an oatcake, turning over her words in my head. “I wonder. I have been stubborn, bullheaded even, and I wonder if I ought to have gone back to London with my sister.”
“You doubt yourself. That is the surest way to misery,” Rosalie advised. “Do not waste, lady. Eat the oatcake or give it to the dog. Do not crumble it to bits.”
I began to nibble it, licking the honey from my fingers. My manners when with Rosalie were appalling, but perhaps that was part of the pleasure I took in her company.
“How am I to know, then, if I am on the right path? I have made myself miserable, and perhaps another as well.” I thought of Brisbane with a guilty pang.
Rosalie was thoughtful for a long moment, sipping at her tea whilst I made a mess of the oatcake. “If I would know someone, lady, I do not listen to what they say. I watch what they do. Tongues lie, bodies do not.”
I laughed aloud. “That seems a very simple formula. Too simple. It cannot possibly be correct.”
She shrugged again, her expression pitying. “Why must you gorgios always make things more complicated than they are? Be simple, lady. Nature is simple. And we are not so far removed from the savages we once were.”
I shook my head, scarcely believing that an uneducated Gypsy woman was lecturing me on what, with a little judicious handling, might well be a corollary to Darwinian theory.
“Perhaps you are right,” I said at length.
She smiled, baring those beautiful white teeth.
“Perhaps. Remember, lady. If you would know a person, stop your ears to their words, but mark their actions. Think on what I have said, and you will know what to do.”
I looked up at her, startled, but she rose then and went to freshen the pot of tea. I looked into the fire, considering carefully what she had said and stroking Rook’s ears. He gave a little sigh of contentment.
“Would that everyone were as easy to please as you,” I murmured into his fur. He did not reply.
* * *
The afternoon was drawing to a close as I left Rosalie, and the long purple shadows of Thorn Crag were lengthening across the moor. Just as I reached for the latch of the garden door, Godwin pushed it open from the other side.
> “Lady Julia!” he cried. The wind must have risen a little, for the bushes behind him fluttered. I rubbed my hands over my arms, raising the blood. “May I have a word?”
I longed for the fireside after my chilly walk, but Godwin’s habitual good-natured expression was serious.
“Of course.”
“I have just learned that you have been working in Redwall’s study.”
“Yes, I have. I was hoping to write a catalogue of his Egyptian collection. It will help to sell the things when the time comes.”
He shook his head, his dark gold curls waving about his ears. “You ought not to be there alone. I carried them in when they arrived, and I know how heavy they are.” He brought his head closer to mine, lowering his voice. “Thee must not hurt thyself. Thou’rt too delicate for such things.”
I stared at him, taking far too long to realise this was north country wooing at its finest. He reached for my hand, and I pulled it back, giving him my cheeriest smile.
“You are very good to be concerned, Godwin, but I am quite careful, I promise. I will call if I have need of you,” I told him, making a note never to rely upon him if I could help it. His demeanour had always been friendly, but this impertinence was something new.
He was not abashed. If anything, my cool amiability seemed to amuse him. He smiled, and dropped his eyes to my lips, then lazily moved his gaze back to my eyes. “You do tha’,” he said, then stepped back to let me pass. I did so, keeping to the edge of the path so I would not brush against him.
He sloped off the opposite direction then, whistling a little tune. Just then Brisbane stepped onto the path, arms folded over his chest, his expression inscrutable.
“If you want to rendezvous with the hired help, Julia, you ought to make quite sure you are alone,” he suggested.
“Do not be foul,” I said irritably. “I have no greater interest in Godwin than you have in Hilda Allenby.”
His brows rose and he blinked at me. “Hilda?”
“Yes,” I said, matching the coolness of his tone. “I am reliably informed that she means to marry you. So once more, I find myself offering you my heartiest felicitations on your upcoming marriage,” I added, alluding slyly to the entanglement he had suffered during our last investigation.
“I would sooner cut off my own head than marry Hilda Allenby,” he said flatly.
“Oh, I know that, but the lady in question seems most insistent. I suggest you look carefully under your coverlet before you get into bed. She has rather medieval ideas about compromised honour.” I bit back a smile. In spite of our recent difficulties, teasing him was a delicious pastime.
But Brisbane was not laughing. He reached out and gripped my arms, his face a breath from mine. “Why do you not leave?” I noticed his pupils then, and I reached a hand to brush a fingertip over his brow, ignoring the question. We knew well enough the answer, the both of us.
“You have been dosing yourself with an opiate,” I said softly. “The migraines are returning.”
“More vicious than ever,” he said, grinding the words between tensed jaws. “I cannot sleep now but I have dreams—” He broke off and passed a hand over his brow, catching my hand in his, crushing it.
“What sort of dreams?” I dreaded the reply. I knew only too well what grim horrors stalked his dreams, and I knew it was his desperate attempts to push these visions away that brought about his virulent headaches.
“Death,” he said finally, his eyes never wavering from mine. “Every time. I see it coming, and there is nothing I can do to stop it.” He closed his eyes and gave a little groan, pulling me to him. His heartbeat was slow and steady, dulled by the opiate he had consumed. “You must go, Julia. I know I cannot command it. I have known since the first moment I met you, you cannot be ordered to obey. But I can ask you, beg you, on bended knee if I must. Leave this place,” he said harshly, his fingers biting into my arms.
I thought of Rosalie’s words then, and I realised that all the while Brisbane had been telling me to go, he had been pulling me closer to him.
“You impossibly stupid man,” I told him. I put my arms about his waist, and we stood thus, clinging together for a long time, the air turning purple around us as dusk gathered in the ruined garden.
At length he pulled away and rubbed his thumbs over my cheeks, catching my tears. “That’s the second time today,” I said, feigning cheerfulness. “I am becoming a regular blubberpot.”
“You will not leave me, will you?” he asked at length, his tone resigned. I studied him in the fading violet light. The strong, almost arrogant planes of his cheekbones, the aggressive nose, the seductive underlip, its fullness offset by the purposeful, even cruel upper lip. There was just enough light left to see the tiny scar on his cheek, white and curved as a crescent moon.
“I cannot envisage any circumstances under which I would,” I told him.
And I could not have imagined then that I would be packing my trunk the very next evening, determined never to see him again.
* * *
I catalogued for the better part of the next day, doggedly recording various items of what I assumed was funerary equipment. I found an embalmer’s kit, a set of canopic jars, and a great bag of something that resembled salt. There were a few nasty bits of mummies, but nothing so horrific as the babies in the priest’s hole. There was a cat, stuffed into a peculiarly long, thin coffin, and a baboon with a menacing mask complete with elongated, sharp teeth. I marked them down and put them aside as quickly as possible. Now that Brisbane knew what I was about there was no need to conceal my work. I was able to move more rapidly through the collection, taking notes and writing out descriptions. The papyri were too fragile to handle, at least for my clumsy and uneducated hands, so I left them and moved on, endeavouring to do as little damage as possible.
After several hours, I was dusty and filthy, but surprisingly absorbed in the work. Not for the first time I reflected that one of the primary components of happiness was a worthwhile occupation, a thought that would likely horrify my brother Bellmont.
But Brisbane would understand. He had established himself in trade out of necessity—his noble Scottish relations not being inclined to support him—but I had seen him often enough on the trail of an investigation to know that work was not only an obligation for him, it was a pleasure of the most satisfying variety. And I took great satisfaction myself in the thought that my little scribblings might well be the foundation of restoring the Allenbys to solvency. There was still the matter of Brisbane to get round, but I would deal with him when the time came.
In the afternoon, I took my tea in the workroom, feeding bits of crisp shortbread to Grim and sipping at my tea as I wondered about the infants’ coffin. It had occurred to me that Sir Redwall must have had a reason for secreting the babies in the priest’s hole.
Why, I wondered, would Sir Redwall go to the trouble to hide the coffin? He had displayed the others, the mummies of baboons and cats and whatever else lurked beneath the dustsheets. Why secrete this coffin, then? And if Redwall had purchased it, why was there no bill of sale amongst his papers? Was that the reason for hiding it? Had he obtained it illegally? Or were the babies themselves contraband? There were no laws that I knew of preventing him from taking them out of Egypt so long as they had been purchased, but what if they had been stolen instead? I made a note to search his papers thoroughly for a bill of sale for the little mummies, and his diaries for a clue to where he had obtained them. In the meantime, a closer look at the coffin itself would not go amiss, I decided.
I rose and went to the panel, working the mechanism and steeling myself for the task ahead. I scrutinised it carefully, looking it over without expectation of what I might find. I knew too little about Egyptology to draw any proper conclusions, but it seemed to be precisely what it appeared: an authentic coffin, earlier than the Greco-Roman period judging from the lack of portrait mask, and in very good shape aside from a piece of crushed wood at the top. It had been proppe
d just below the hole provided for ventilating the priest’s hole, and it looked as though moisture had dripped down, corrupting the wooden case. On the front, a cartouche was engraved with a series of hieroglyphs, a funerary inscription, no doubt, perhaps a sort of incantation for the afterlife.
I fetched the knife again from the desk and applied myself to the lid. It took several minutes and a great deal of effort to pry it open, but at last it came free, and I wrestled the lid aside. I peered more closely at the mummies. They seemed in exquisitely good condition.
Swallowing down my squeamishness, I peered more closely at the tiny, linen-wrapped forms. Someone had taken exquisite pains to make certain these children were suitably prepared to enter the afterlife, I reflected. I realised then more than just the coffin was damaged. From the little neck down, the upper mummy was undamaged, beautifully wrapped and perfectly dry. The head was a different matter. The bandages had rotted away where the coffin was pulpy, and I felt my stomach churn as I put out a hand to touch the shredded linen. I meant to tuck one of the bandages in more securely, but it was rotten and fell away in my hand. I saw the top of the child’s head, and jerked backward, dropping the linen scrap.
Instantly, I replaced the lid, working feverishly until the babies were tucked safely behind the panel, hidden from sight, but not from memory. I knew I would never forget what I had seen, so long as I lived. I had endured a postmortem with Brisbane, examining the body of a man who had had his head crushed by a candelabrum, but nothing could have prepared me for the shock of what I had seen in that small coffin. The skin had dried and darkened, pulling taut across the baby’s brow in a grotesque imitation of life.
But it was not this that had shocked me. Just above the brow I had seen the child’s hair, beautiful hair, perhaps an inch long. It had been loosely curled from the damp, and was gold—the bright, pure gold of a blond child.
THE SIXTEENTH CHAPTER
Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles.
Silent on the Moor (2019 Edition) Page 18