Lady Anne 03 - Curse of the Gypsy

by Donna Lea Simpson

  “I’m so grateful you’re recovering,” Anne said, leaning forward and putting one hand over the other woman’s, where it lay on the bedcovers.

  “I’ve never been ill like that in my life,” the frail lady said, weakly, laying back against her pillows. Her graying hair was covered in a clean cap, and the room smelled of lye soap, the result of sturdy Dorcas’s hard work. “I don’t know what happened.”

  “I’ve been trying to track down what could possibly be a constant among the three of you that I know are ill: you, Madam Kizzy, and Robbie.”

  Jamey bumbled in that moment with something to show Mrs. Jackson. She examined the caterpillar with every appearance of fascination, and Jamey went away happy.

  “I cannot imagine, milady, what it was that made us all sick. I made a broth the other day, and after that I began to feel so ill.”

  Broth. Anne frowned. Hadn’t the gypsy mother been struck down a second time after consuming some broth. “From what did you make the broth?” Anne asked.

  “Why, it was that terrible catsup … oh,” she said, putting one gnarled hand over her wizened mouth. “I didn’t mean to say that about Mrs. Noonan’s mushroom catsup.”

  Mushroom catsup. “What do you mean, mushroom catsup?” Anne asked.

  Mrs. Jackson hesitantly told the tale of Mrs. Noonan’s failed batches of mushroom catsup, and how no one in the cottage had deigned to taste it but her; when she didn’t like it for a condiment she had turned it into a mushroom broth to drink.

  Anne’s heart thudded heavily. Mrs. Noonan, according to Mrs. Jackson, had picked the wild mushrooms on her own and made a couple of failed attempts at mushroom catsup, disposing of the failures by sending them as gifts to Farfield Farm. And perhaps the gypsy camp?

  Oh, Lord, all this trouble and turmoil, three people almost dead, and it was likely poisonous mushrooms. How many more bottles were there out there? Anne quailed at the thought, but at least it was something she could solve. “Mrs. Jackson, I hate to say this, but I think Mrs. Noonan may have inadvertently poisoned you.”

  ***

  When Anne returned to Harecross Hall it was to find that Mrs. Noonan and her boys had already returned, but, excited about their lessons, they were upstairs in the old nursery playing school. The woman herself was surprisingly sanguine about her boys’ tutoring by Vicar Wadley, and announced that she would be going back tomorrow to oversee their lessons.

  Anne was relieved, but more important, to her, was Jamey’s safety and the apparent recovery of those “cursed” with illness. She invited Mrs. Noonan to take tea in the drawing room and was about to speak of the mushroom catsup when the woman began chattering.

  “I had an interesting conversation with Mr. Wadley’s housekeeper this afternoon, Anne, my dear,” Mrs. Noonan said, and took a long draught of tea. “She told me that the Coopers’ son is the latest to be cut down by this dreadful gypsy illness. Filthy devils, those gypsies; it appears they are spreading their pestilence through the village now, too! Poor Mrs. Cooper … she says her boy was fine one minute, but now is moaning and retching … dreadfully ill! I am so afraid! What if my poor boys get ill? I just could not bear it.”

  “Mrs. Cooper’s son? What is going on?” Anne asked, more of herself than anyone.

  “Just what I said, my dear.”

  “Mrs. Noonan,” Anne commanded, “attend to me!” The woman’s attention had already wandered as she rustled through her sewing basket. “Tell me, did you take any of your mushroom catsup to her?”

  “No, of course not,” she said. “I do not visit with Mrs. Cooper.”

  Hmm. Well, that theory seemed burst, then. Anne pondered for a moment, then remembered how literal the woman was. “Mrs. Noonan,” she said, fixing a firm look on her, “what I mean to say is, has Mrs. Cooper received any of your mushroom catsup from any source?”

  “Well, when you put it that way, my dear, yes! I sent some along with a knitting pattern. Just a little treat for those poor folks. Some of the batches weren’t quite right, you know, but were certainly good enough that I didn’t wish them to be wasted.”

  “Oh, Lord!” Anne took her through every step, where she gathered the mushrooms, what they looked like. She fetched a book on fungi from her father’s library and patiently went through it with Mrs. Noonan until they had traced what mushrooms she had used. One variety was indeed poisonous, and it appeared to be random chance how much of each any one person consumed, which, Anne supposed, explained why some who consumed the mushroom catsup or its broth escaped with no ill consequences and why others had become deathly ill.

  When Anne finally was satisfied that the catsup was made with poisonous mushrooms and told her cousin the truth, Mrs. Noonan was so horrified and tearfully apologetic that Anne didn’t have the heart to do more than order her to write down every single person to whom she had given the catsup so they could remove the tainted condiment from the hands of those who could suffer so badly. Farfield Farm, Mrs. Cooper, the gypsy encampment: all had been the victims of Mrs. Noonan’s “lady of the manor” generosity.

  Luckily, Wroth Farm was the only other recipient—Anne suspected that Mrs. Riggle, the wife of the Wroth Farm manager, would have thanked Mrs. Noonan and thrown the stuff out rather than eat anything not canned by her own capable hands—were the only others. Anne sent a note immediately to all the places, Wroth Farm as well, telling them what the source of the poison was and how to get rid of the stuff.

  And so was explained the gypsy curse. Mary, when told, was chagrined and embarrassed. Robbie had been poisoned by the gypsy mother, yes, but at the same time as she was poisoned herself, by taking the broth both had consumed.

  Anne, needing a calming influence after an hour spent with the distraught Mrs. Noonan, climbed the stairs to her father’s library, entered, and flung herself into the chair beside his desk. She told him what had happened that day, though it was a highly sanitized account. He sat at his ease in his favorite chair in his library with his port beside him, the pool of light from his lamp glowing ruby in the glass. When she was done with her relation of the day’s events, he appeared troubled.

  “Papa, what is it?” she asked.

  He gazed steadily at her, light glinting on his spectacles, and said, “Anne, dear, you’ve not told me all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know you are trying, for whatever reason, to save me from the truth, but it will not do.”

  His gravity worried her. Ever since the attack that left him, for a time, confined to his bed after her mother’s departure two years before, she had worriedly watched him for signs he was ill. It was the biggest reason for the break with her mother, why she kept their relationship distant and cool. How could her mother abandon him like that? It was unconscionable.

  “I don’t know what you mean, Papa,” she said, her tone unusually hesitant.

  “Annie, you try to protect me from the truth, and it will not do. Tell me everything, please.”

  “Papa, I’ve told you the truth. Jamey is safe now and Grover is in the marquess’s keeping. Those afflicted by that so-called gypsy curse are recovering, we know the source of the illness, and I hope that the complaints about the gypsies are over.”

  He gazed at her sadly over his spectacles. “Annie, stop.”

  She shook her head. “Stop what?”

  “Stop trying to protect me from the exigencies of my position.” He sighed heavily, staring at her. “I had a very interesting conversation with Mrs. MacDougall while you were gone performing what ought to have been my task, saving my son from harm.”

  “Mary? Why would she come to you?”

  “She didn’t, my dear. I asked her to see me. I had questions and felt she was eminently suited to answering them.”

  “Oh.”

  “I have much respect for Mrs. MacDougall. She may be without education, but in matters of the heart and of the family, I trust her judgment. Her loyalty to you is unblemished. I understand that you were worried when I becam
e ill last time, but I didn’t understand before my conversation with her to what depth it had affected you.”

  “Papa,” she began, her voice choked with tears.

  “No,” he said, holding up one hand. “Hear me out. You’re a good daughter, but I have been a neglectful and selfish father.”

  The tears started in her eyes despite her best effort to blink them back. “No, Papa!”

  “Yes, Annie,” he insisted. He reached out and took her hand. “You’re young yet, only …” He paused.

  He’d forgotten her age. “Twenty-four, Papa.”

  “Yes, yes, of course, twenty-four. I remember well being twenty-four. I was … where was I? Well, I do believe I was in Greece doing research on the remnants of the Ionic dialect for a paper I was preparing for the Greek language club at Oxford. That was about the time that the news found me … the news that my father, along with my brother Harold, had been killed, and I was the earl.” He paused and stared at his port.

  He had always avoided speaking much of that time, and Anne had the impression it was very painful for him. “Papa, please, don’t—”

  “Let me finish, my dear.” He met her gaze steadily. “I feel your overprotectiveness toward me is my own fault. I have never explained some things to you.”

  “Things?”

  “I fear you blame your mother for my illness of two years ago.”

  “If she had not left—”

  “Annie, just listen for a moment! I wish to explain some things to you. The match with your mother was never a love match; it was arranged by our mothers. Several years had passed after I became earl and, as I showed no sign of finding a wife on my own, my mother conferred with her friends, and found Barbara. She was very young, just seventeen, poor child. I was already an old fogey to her, a stodgy thirty-year-old, while she was little more than a child.”

  Anne, intrigued by this glimpse into the past, asked, “Did … do you love her, Papa?”

  “She was enchanting. Such a sweetly pretty little thing. But I did not have the foggiest notion how to treat her. I fear I was heavy-handed and even cruel.”

  “No! Never cruel.” She leaned on the desk and gazed into his eyes, so like her own, gray with coal inclusions flaring from the pupil.

  His glasses were pushed down on his nose and he gazed at her over the gold rims. “I don’t mean deliberately cruel, but through neglect. You know how I get wrapped up in my studies.” He sighed heavily. “The important point I am trying to establish, Annie, my dearest, is, I don’t know if your mother will ever come back to Harecross Hall, but her leaving was not entirely her fault. I gave her reason, over the years. I was distant, and distracted, and she needed more from me. She wanted to go to London and attend the Season, but I held her back. I failed her in so many ways, large and small.”

  “But that was years ago. She should have gotten over it by now! And she never came back to Harecross Hall when you were ill.”

  “Did she know how sick I was?” When Anne shook her head no, he said, “You see, we never really gave her a chance, did we, you and I? Over time, I fear that we shut her out. When I look back now, I remember our conversations, our walks, our talks, but never one involving your mother.”

  Anne remained silent this time. She picked up the beautiful walking stick she had had made for him by a blind carver in Cornwall. It was a work of art, with Irusan’s great shaggy head for a knob, glowing emerald chips for eyes. She reflected, her father’s words resonating in ways she would never have expected. Had she indeed done her mother an injustice? She set the cane back in its spot, leaning against the desk.

  “But that was not what I wanted to say. Anne, my dear child,” he said, rubbing her palm. “I was so happy when you went north to Yorkshire to visit your friend, little Lydia Moore. You’re so young, you need to get about more. And I was equally pleased when you went to visit Miss Pamela St. James. I remember her fondly, the poor young lady, so ill when she stayed here.” He roused himself. “But I am wandering from the topic again. Annie, I will not have you waste your youth looking after me,” he said, shaking her hand lightly, patting it with his. “I hadn’t even considered that that is what you were doing until something came to my attention. I have heard that the Marquess of Darkefell has asked you to marry him, and that you have refused.”

  Anne could think of nothing to say, so startling and unexpected was her father’s interference in her life.

  “I do hear bits and pieces, sometimes when people think I am not attending,” he said, with a humorous glint in his eyes, as he eyed her expression. “I spoke to Mary about that, and many other things. She’s a remarkably perceptive woman, your maid, and thinks that the Marquess of Darkefell would be an admirable match for you. Beyond the mere superiority of his estate, she thinks him a fine man of good character and tells me that she believes he loves you.”

  Anne felt a rosy blush rise in her cheeks.

  “My dearest Annie, if you have rejected the marquess’s offer of marriage out of some mistaken feeling that you must stay at Harecross Hall and care for me, I won’t have it. I’ll move to Bath and live with the viscountess and your mother before I let you do that.”

  Anne burst out laughing at the idea of her father, her mother, and her maternal grandmother all living together in the exquisitely stuffy, overheated and rocaille extravagance of the viscountess’s townhome. It was a delightfully idiotic image.

  Her father gazed at her fondly. “Do you love this man?”

  She caught her breath. “Y-yes, I do.”

  “Then what else is there, my dear?” he said, patting her hand and releasing it.

  “Papa, thank you for your consideration. But there is something else, beyond my worry for you, that keeps me from accepting his lordship’s offer.”

  He waited.

  “You may think me foolish,” she said. She paused, ordered her thoughts, then began: “I am my father’s daughter. I remember the tales you have told me about your travels, your work with languages, and how you had to give up much to return to take the earldom when your father and older brother died. All you wanted was to make your mark on the world with language study, and yet you were forced to become the earl and inevitably to involve yourself in the mundane tasks of hops farming, caring for tenants, and running the other industries Hareham requires.”

  “My dear, if I gave you the impression I resented that necessity, I was wrong!” He paused and frowned. “Yes, I wanted to remain in Greece to study, then go on, to Italy and the Orient. I was absorbed in my work. But … and this is difficult to explain … I think now if I had continued the way I was going, I would have become one of those rootless, soulless expatriates, the ones who long ceaselessly for England when they are gone, but cannot stay in one place when they come home. I would have been dissatisfied.”

  He took up her hand once more, squeezed it and released. “Annie, my dear, the best years of my life were when I came home, married Barbara, and we had Jamey and then you. I could never regret that, even if your mother and I no longer see eye to eye. I do love her, in my way. I fell in love with her as she lay on our marital bed and bore Jamey with a stoicism that amazed and overwhelmed me. And I love you two, my son and daughter, with all my heart. Annie … you’re the light of my life, but that light will be dimmed if you give up all for me. That would not make me happy.”

  She was speechless. How could she say a word with tears in her eyes?

  “And so I don’t want you to put off your life in trying to improve mine. Do not delay the sweetness of love, if you have found it. Does that address any of what has concerned you?”

  “I understand what you’re saying. But, Papa, I think marriage is quite different for women.” She struggled with a way to say it, rubbing her palms along the wooden arms of the chair. “I have so much that I wish to do and see yet, but am so confined by my sex. And I fear losing myself. I don’t quite know how to explain; you will be known and remembered by all of Kent for your innovation with the hops harves
t, and your title as earl … you are James, seventh Earl of Harecross.”

  “One in a long line, my dear, and not a particularly distinguished one.”

  She shook her head, frustrated by her inability to explain properly. “It sounds so dry when I put it this way, but I long to do something, to make a mark. If I simply marry and have children, what will there be to commemorate my progress through this life, beyond their names etched on tablets? Mother of the next Marquess of Darkefell?” She paused and stared at the lamp. “I will fade to nothing but a querulous society wife, whose name is a footnote in the biography of my husband’s life.”

  “My dear, you will never be a footnote. You are too strong, too vital. You will make your mark, married or not.”

  “But I want to make my own choices, live my own life! Papa, Tony is a man, not a mouse. He’s a good man, but not a patient one. He’s far too strong to ever allow me to put him second to my own ambitions.”

  “Good. The one who loves you should be so selfish, to make you pay him mind, to keep you focused on what is important in this life, and that is people, not things, not places, not accomplishments, even. I learned that too late in life and I will not have you repeat my mistakes. Do you love him?” the earl again asked.

  “Yes.” She felt that tingling warmth in her toes as she thought of Tony and his kisses. “Oh, yes, I love him very much, I’m afraid.”

  “Then you will never put him second, but if he loves you, then he will never put you second, either. Together you will find a way. Talk to him. Tell him what you have told me. And if there is any question of him misunderstanding you, then send him to me. Though he frightens me a little, for he is a very intense young man, I will set him straight on the excellent qualities of my daughter and how he will never, in my eyes, quite deserve her love.”