by Tamara Berry
Yes, I’m sure. I recall looking back with regret—and, apparently, prescience—as Birdie and I walked up those hidden stairs, the boat already heading out on its seaward journey.
But “It’s possible,” is what I say. It seems rude to harp on clothing and toiletries when the poor woman is going to have to wash all these dishes in cold water.
“Aye, then. I’ll round up all the candles I can find and make sure we’ve fires laid in the grates.” Elspeth looks around the room with satisfaction, apparently finding nothing amiss with the upturned plates and Birdie looking like a drawn puppet at the head of the table. “You just leave this here when you’re done with breakfast. I’ll take care of it, and don’t you worry.”
On that comfortable pronouncement, she bustles back out the way she came, leaving the four of us standing in a state of suspended animation. Once again, it’s up to me to dispel it.
“Should I put this down?” I ask as I hold the candelabra level. Several drips of wax have already started running down the tallest taper, so I’m careful not to jostle it. “Or did we want to discuss the, uh, curse in another room?”
At fresh mention of the curse, Ashley and Sid share another of those wary, shifty-eyed glances. It’s based mostly in fear, I know, but there’s a mulish look about Ashley’s mouth that forces me into an executive decision.
No way am I allowing us to lose this momentum. Real or not, we’re making progress here.
“We’ll take this up to my room,” I say with a nod. “I always perform a protective chant before I go to sleep in a new place. It won’t have worn off yet, so that will be the safest place.”
The amount of relief that crosses their faces is enough to make me laugh out loud. Unless you count the conversation I had with Birdie last night, there’s been nothing done inside that room worth note. The only chanting I did was counting sheep while I fell asleep.
“Thank you, Madame Eleanor,” Sid says with real feeling. She reaches over and squeezes my hand. It has the effect of tilting the candelabra and covering my fingers with cascading hot wax, which instantly hardens. “Oh, dear. I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry about all of it, actually. When I wrote to Nicholas asking for help, I didn’t think—”
Another bolt of lightning zigzags across the gray sky. Sid’s jump is less pronounced this time, but there’s no doubt that she’s feeling uneasy. “I didn’t think it would be like this,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper.
“I did,” I reply. I feel a bit like Elspeth, with her hearty cheer and maternal clucking, but what else can I do? Sid might be a beautiful, wealthy woman with a literal castle at her feet, but I’m starting to realize that she has all the fortitude of a caterpillar. “Dealing with supernatural entities was always going to be a bit dark, you know. If it were all puppies and rainbows, anyone could do it. Believe me when I say this is nothing compared to some of the cases I’ve seen.”
I hand her the candelabra before she can ask me to elaborate. Some of the cases I’ve seen would make her blood curdle.
“After you,” I say with a gesture toward the doorway. “I’m just going to grab the table salt before I go. For extra protection.”
Sid and Ashley accept this as a perfectly rational way to conduct business and head out the main door, allowing it to swing shut behind them. Salt won’t protect us against anything but garden slugs and low blood pressure, but what they don’t know won’t hurt them.
“Salt won’t be enough to protect us from Gloriana’s Curse,” Birdie says, repeating my thoughts almost verbatim. “Nor will your chant. What else do you have?”
I turn to look at her. She hasn’t moved from her spot at the head of the table, where she stands like a statue presiding over the ruins of our meal.
“What else do I have?” I echo, blinking. There’s a chance that Ashley and Sid are still near enough to overhear, so I answer with, “There were all kinds of supplies in my bags—sage smudging sticks and the like—but who knows where those have gone.”
She snorts. “Sage smudging sticks? Do you have any idea what we’re dealing with?”
To be perfectly frank, no, I don’t. Nor am I unduly worried. Curses are, in my experience, nothing more than a guilty conscience working overtime. I once cured the village butcher by making him take a fresh roast to the neighbor whose tulips he drove over with his delivery truck. I told him that it was the blood of animal sacrifice that countered the curse, but I suspect it had more to do with the Sunday dinner the family enjoyed at his expense.
“I’m hoping that Sid and Ashley will tell me about it as soon as we’re safely huddled in my room,” I say. “Which we should probably do soon, or they’ll think we’ve been swallowed by the evil entities plaguing the house.”
Birdie doesn’t move. “But you knew.”
“Is that a no? You don’t have to come with me. I can handle it on my own.”
“Gold coins,” she says. “Last night you mentioned gold coins. You knew what the heirlooms were.”
It had been my intention to abandon Birdie to her mystical hysterics, but something about the serious note in her voice stops me in my tracks. She’s no longer speaking in that foretelling, melodious way. She sounds, well, human.
“I guessed what the heirlooms were,” I counter. A pang of uneasiness settles in the pit of my stomach, since it wasn’t my guess so much as Winnie’s, but I do my best to ignore it. “Let’s call it a strong feeling and leave it at that.”
“I don’t believe you. No one could have guessed that.” There’s nothing of a question in this remark. It’s not an accusation, either, but I still don’t like it—mostly because she’s right. There’s nothing natural about the way I came by my information.
Just like there was nothing natural about my vision of Harvey’s death.
Partially to cover my discomfiture, and partly because I’m starting to grow weary of all this tiptoeing around, I turn to her with both a question and an accusation.
“It doesn’t matter what you believe, because it’s the truth,” I say. “But I have the oddest presentiment that you were expecting the heirlooms to be something else. Diamonds, perhaps? A stamp collection worth a ridiculous sum that the family, in their gratitude, would have no choice but to share with you?”
My attempt at unsettling her falls flat. Her attempt at unsettling me, however, is much more successful.
“Someone in this house is going to die,” she says. Once again, she seems to be speaking from a normal place—a human place—and she looks almost defeated as the words leave her mouth. She seems much older and less imposing than she did a few minutes ago. Even her eyebrows look droopy. “No good can come of searching for those heirlooms, Madame Eleanor. You already know that. You felt it the moment we stepped onto this island.”
It’s not my custom to fidget or squirm or do any of those things that unconsciously reveal my inner workings, but I find myself picking at the hardened wax on my hand. From this angle, it appears to have formed a sinister sneer in the center of my palm—a sneer that’s warning me, mocking me.
I crush my hand around it, cracking the wax to pieces. I don’t believe in reading candle drippings any more than I do tea leaves. In fact, not believing in things is what makes me ideally suited to a job like this one.
“No good can come of leaving those poor people to their fears, either,” I say as I send wax crumbles to the ground. “Not when they’ve already suffered so much loss. Come on, Birdie. There’s no such thing as curses. You know that as well as I do.”
The speed with which she resumes her earlier posture is almost ludicrous. Before I can do more than blink, she’s standing rigid and domineering once again. Even her feather, which had been showing signs of wilting, pops back up to its former glory. “I know nothing of the sort. I can see now why Glenn wanted me to be here. Someone is going to have to protect this house—protect this family. You obviously have no idea what you’re up against.”
On the contrary, I’m starting to develop
a very good idea of the obstacles in my path. Or, I should say, the obstacle in my path.
She’s about five foot ten, dripping in jewels and feathers, and has snatched the salt cellar from the table before I have a chance to realize what she’s doing.
Chapter 6
“Protect this hearth and defend this reign. Dispel all evil and malign each bane.” Birdie lifts the salt cellar to her lips and blows, sending a spray of crystals all over the floor of my bedroom. “In safety’s honor and security’s name.”
She uses the scoop in the salt cellar to dump a line across the doorway. Ashley and Sid watch, fascinated, as she does the same around the windows and the fireplace hearth. I can practically see their fear melting away, their uneasiness ebbing with each mess Birdie makes. It doesn’t occur to any of them that I’m going to have to clean that up later. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years of visiting other people’s houses, it’s that as much as they love the spectacle of protective measures, they don’t love walking barefoot on salt in the weeks and months to follow.
To be fair, it’s a good chant. Rhymes always go over well with clients, and the fact that we’re standing in a dark, heavily brocaded room lit by candle and firelight only adds to the ambience. Birdie couldn’t have created a more fitting environment had she set it up herself.
Then again, she might have set it up herself. I’m not saying she can control the weather, but there is a chance she can control the questionable infrastructure that keeps this island running. I’m not putting anything past that woman.
“There. That should keep us protected for another hour, at the very least.” She sets the salt down and seats herself in the same wingback chair from last night. She looks as much at home now as she did then. “Between dear Ella’s little spell and my more powerful invocation, no spirit will be able to break through.”
I’d like to ask why Birdie’s nonsense is any more powerful than my own, but that would only be giving her what she wants. There’s no doubt in my mind that she has an answer ready—and that it’s designed to make me look as small as possible.
Instead, I install myself with my back to the door, standing guard over the room and ensuring that I can watch for any tricks Birdie might be inclined to play. “Now that we’re all wrapped up in safety’s honor, why don’t you start from the beginning?” I say.
Sid and Ashley share another one of those worried looks, but Sid eventually nods and lowers herself to the bed. I didn’t make it up after I awoke this morning, but it’s as tight and tidy as if it belongs in a hospital. Elspeth must have been through here while we were at breakfast.
“If you’ve already heard of the curse, there’s not much to tell.” Sid waits until Ashley installs himself by the fireplace before continuing. He leans an elbow on the mantel but is careful not to dislodge the salt. “It’s been part of our family history for as long as I can remember—centuries, in fact.”
Birdie nods as if this makes perfect sense. Which, considering that she already knows what Sid is talking about, is probably true. I’m the only person in the room who’s never heard of Gloriana or the havoc she seems to have wreaked upon this family.
Sid plucks at an invisible string on the blood-red bedspread. “Of course, it sounds outrageous to anyone hearing it for the first time, but you have to remember that we grew up with these stories, were reared by them. Every Stewart is. It’s the price we pay for all this.”
The all this is encapsulated with a grand sweep of Sid’s arm. It covers the entirety of my room and the valuables contained within it. At first appraisal, I’d put the furniture alone at no less than ten thousand dollars. I can’t imagine what the entire estate must be worth.
Or, rather, I can imagine it. That’s the problem. If I can accurately sum up this family’s value at a glance, then Birdie can, too. There’s a fortune to be made here, and I don’t just mean in finding the missing family heirlooms.
“Curses aren’t written in stone,” I say, determined that no one will be making any fortunes under my watch. I was called here to help Nicholas’s friend as a favor, and that’s precisely what I plan to do. The line between me and Birdie White might be a thin one, but it’s a line all the same. “In blood sometimes and, in your case, gold, but they’re not irreversible. I take it to understand that this Gloriana of yours put a curse on some coins that belong to your family?”
“She’s not our Gloriana,” Ashley says with what I detect is a note of lofty disdain. It’s followed almost immediately by another of his quotations. “ ‘That greatest Gloriana . . . that greatest Glorious Queene of Faerie lond.’ ”
Although I’m starting to get the feeling that Ashley is much better read than I am, I recognize the line from Edmund Spenser’s most famous work. If I remember my reading of The Faerie Queene correctly, Gloriana is used to refer to no less a personage than Queen Elizabeth I.
“Wait—this curse was put on your family by Queen Elizabeth ?” I ask. I pause only to cast a glance between the siblings before speaking again. “As in the Queen Elizabeth? The one with the big white ruff and lead poisoning?”
My irreverence isn’t appreciated. I cough and attempt to put on an appropriately sober mien, but the damage has already been done. Once upon a time, I was exceptional at playing this game, at pretending to be serious about the idea of laying imaginary ghosts to rest. But that was before Winnie showed me that real ghosts aren’t all that emotionally invested in the living.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude. It’s just that I’ve never worked with so . . . illustrious a spirit before. My most famous ghost to date has been a man said to have once shaken hands with JFK.”
“I’ve worked with such ghosts,” Birdie says. Birdie lies, I should say, but I can’t confess to being surprised. She’s the exact sort of person who would claim to have connected with the most famous English monarch in history. She and the queen probably have regular chats about imprisoning their enemies and the best methods to get beheading bloodstains out of silk. “And the queen’s not the one who put the curse on the gold. It was cursed when it was given to her. I have that correct, yes?”
This question is directed at Sid, who nods both her agreement and appreciation at finding at least one of her mediums to be sympathetic.
“No one knows where the curse first came from,” Sid says. “Some claim it was a spell put on the gold by a priest who sold his soul to the devil. Others say it was the blood of the men who died while mining it. All we know for sure is that the ship that first brought the treasure to England crashed and sank when it was only a few klicks from shore.”
“Every man, woman, and child on board died at sea,” Ashley adds. “The only thing they were able to recover was the gold.”
I nod my head in understanding, since that’s obviously what’s expected of me. What I think—but don’t dare add—is that a great number of ships crashed and sank in the glory days of Elizabethan seafaring. And considering how many of those were carrying pillaged Spanish gold at the time, I imagine that recovery of the cargo was prioritized over saving lives.
Unfortunately, as much as it would help them to hear this, rational discourse is obviously off the table.
“The gold was a worth a fortune, even back then,” Sid says. “But every time the chest was opened, something terrible happened. Ships sank. Battles were lost. Entire families were torn apart. Eventually, the queen had no choice but to get rid of it. It was too risky to keep, even riskier to spend. She put it on the next ship out of England.”
Now it’s Birdie’s turn to fall into quotation. “ ‘He who looks upon Gloriana’s Burden will suffer and repent.’ ”
Sid nods eagerly and pushes back a lock of hair that’s come loose from her careful chignon. “You have heard of it.”
Birdie scoffs and casts a very obvious look at me. “Every good medium makes it her business to know such things. If it’s cursed, haunted, or possessed, I know of its existence. What I don’t understand, however, is how the gold
came to be in your family’s possession. I thought it disappeared after it was stolen by pirates.”
“It was,” Sid says. She speaks like that’s the final word on the subject, as if the mention of pirates is the clincher to an argument no one knew we were having. “We stole it.”
What happens next will forever cause me to feel a pang of equal parts anguish and embarrassment. I’m not, by both personal and professional necessity, a jumpy person. I’ve been known to chase down criminals and chastise ghosts to their faces. I can watch a horror movie from start to finish without covering my eyes. But when a voice from the doorway says, “Oh, dear. Have you been spilling the family secrets without me?” I have no choice but to turn around.
That’s when I scream.
It’s mostly the fault of poor lighting. The room is visible enough, what with the curtains thrown open and the fire flickering in the grate, but the hallway is as dark and gloomy as any interior castle passage without electricity can be. The man standing in the doorway is equally dark. He’s dressed in a long black overcoat that reaches all the way down to his toes. His boots are black, his hands are encased in black gloves, and even his hair, which clings in damp curls to his head, appears to be of a deep, rich midnight.
However, none of that is what causes my lamentable lack of restraint. That, unfortunately, comes from the black eyepatch covering his right eye. It’s so rare that pirates manifest in front of me while they’re under discussion that I’m taken completely by surprise.
“Otis!” Sid’s shriek is equal to my own, but hers takes on a much more rapturous guise. It’s accompanied by her springing to her feet and greeting the man with outstretched arms. “We had no idea you were coming.”