by Sandra Heath
Theo halted in the middle of the yard and glanced all around. She had been here, he had spoken to her! He ran his hand through his hair.
Chapter 12
When Conan’s lady, whom he now began to think of as his Lady of the Ribbons, made her getaway without him discovering her identity, he had returned a little disconsolately to the taproom. He longed to know exactly who she was, for shabby cloak or not, the rest of her clothing he’d glimpsed was of good quality. He regarded himself as her accomplice-in-crime, and as such would at least have liked to know her name. He smiled ruefully, for he was in love with a shadow.
He took his refilled jug of mead back to the corner table, and watched Taynton continuing with his landlordly duties. It wasn’t long before the squirrel’s disappearance was noted, and to Conan’s amazement it was as if someone had stolen the crown jewels! The landlord was beside himself, and every traveler in the room watched openmouthed as he sent maids and waiters scurrying in all directions to look for it. Then he dashed outside, shouting to the rest of his men. There were curious murmurs from the diners, and after a minute or so Taynton returned with the squirrel firmly in his grasp. He shoved it angrily back into the cage and closed the door tightly. He checked the catch several times, and then took a length of string from a shelf and tied the door closed as well.
Conan was disappointed to see the creature restored to captivity. He and his Lady of the Ribbons had labored in vain. Well, he for one was not defeated. He sipped the mead, a faint smile on his lips. He would wait until the small hours of the night, and release the squirrel again.
Taynton was at pains to behave as if nothing untoward had happened, but he was considerably rattled. He made much of hanging some tankards on the hooks on a beam, but his glance darted suspiciously around the taproom. Someone had released the squirrel, for the catch was too complicated for the creature to have done it. His eyes went to the corner table, and Sir Conan Merrydown. Oh, yes, there sat the culprit, Taynton thought, remembering how Conan had pinned him in conversation for so long. The landlord’s eyes hardened. He had already vowed to keep a very sharp eye on his two unwanted guests; from now on they would not be able to move without him knowing all about it. Taynton put his hand in his pocket, where Theo’s button lay hidden. He had one belonging forfeited by accident, and now needed the same of Sir Conan Merrydown’s, also forfeited by chance. The rest would be simple.
Theo returned from the stables and resumed his seat with Conan, who immediately noticed the missing button. “You’ve lost a button somewhere,” he pointed out.
“Mm? Oh, I-I hadn’t noticed ... .”
Conan’s brows drew together in concern. “Is something wrong?”
“Yes, as it happens.” Theo poured himself a large measure of mead and drank it in quick gulps.
“Steady, for it isn’t lemonade,” Conan murmured.
“Can we go up to one of our rooms? I need to talk in private before I burst.”
“Of course. You bring the tankards.” Conan got up, took the jug of mead, and led the way out into the hall. Reaching the first room the landlord had indicated, he found by the valise waiting on the large bed that it had been allocated to him, not Theo. He set the jug down on a table, and went to the window to look down into the yard.
The Arrow stagecoach was preparing to depart, late as it happened, and the coachman was shouting into the inn for the passengers to make haste or he’d lose his job. In the stables, Bran’s barking had now subsided into the occasional mournful howl.
After drawing the curtains and lighting a candle from the fire, Conan took off his boots, poured two more drafts of mead, and then sprawled on the bed. “What’s wrong?” he asked Theo, who stood with a hand on the mantel, looking down into the fire.
“I don’t know, and that’s a fact. But something’s wrong, very wrong indeed. Things have been happening, strange things ... ” Theo gulped some more mead.
“Begin at the beginning,” Conan advised. Strange things? He had a few of those to relate himself!
“The beginning? Well, that would be the night I reached London after journeying from Naples. I dreamed of a young woman.” Theo went on to relate how he’d seen the same woman in the fire, how he associated the face with the name Eleanor, and how he’d now actually met Eleanor Rhodes.
“Eleanor Rhodes?” Conan sat up slowly. “She actually said that was who she was?”
“Yes. And there were squirrels everywhere, like attendants. Oh, Lord, it sounds so foolish, but that’s exactly how they behaved. Conan, it was if I were looking at something that wasn’t really there. I could see through her.”
Conan’s mind flashed back to the incident in St. James’s Square, when he’d first seen his Lady of the Ribbons.
Theo continued, describing how Taynton raised the alarm about the missing squirrel, and then Eleanor had fled into the coach house and disappeared.
These ethereal young women had a habit of disappearing, Conan thought, except that his Lady of the Ribbons now turned out to be very much flesh and blood. A very real hand had released the squirrel, and a very real horse had galloped away.
Theo pressed a log down with his boot. “It makes no sense, Conan. I heard them catch her, yet when I looked, they didn’t seem to have her with them. They gave something to Taynton, and that was that.”
“Taynton came in with the squirrel,” Conan said quietly.
“That’s as may be.”
“Theo, the caged squirrel has a red head, green eyes, and a white body. According to you, Eleanor Rhodes has red hair, green eyes, and a white gown.”
Theo stared at him. “Are you suggesting—? Oh, come now!”
“Is it so preposterous? You seem able to accept that voices talk to you, that a young woman can disappear into thin air, and that she has a bodyguard of squirrels!”
“Exactly.” Theo gave a wry laugh. “Don’t you see? It’s because I am losing my mind. I’m seeing and hearing things and that makes me a prime candidate for a lunatic asylum.”
“Then we must both be candidates,” Conan replied.
“What do you mean?”
“You aren’t the only one to see and hear things of late.” Conan told him all his mysterious happenings, and then placed the roll of ribbon on the bed as proof that he had not imagined it all.
Theo’s eyes widened. “Why didn’t you tell me about all this?”
“Why didn’t you do the same thing?”
Theo managed a small smile. “Touché,” he murmured.
Conan drew a long breath. “Theo, I have a feeling that all this is fate.”
Theo straightened. “I just wish it would all go away.”
“Even your beautiful Eleanor?”
“Well, maybe not.” Theo lowered his eyes. “Except that I am here to dance attendance on Ursula Elcester!” Something struck him then. “I’ve just remembered. There was a set of antlers in the stables. They were polished and rubbed with something herbal. I thought they were for May Day dancing because the maypole was there too, but now—
“The figure Gardner saw?” Conan broke in.
“Yes, although why anyone should dress up like that and appear in the middle of the road, I can’t imagine.”
“Nor can I, except ... Well, Taynton and his minions aren’t very happy about poor old Bran, are they? And my name seemed to affect Taynton himself. Come to that, I am still convinced I know him from somewhere. He says we’ve never met, but it’s niggling away at me.”
Theo reached for the jug of mead and filled his tankard again. “This is going to be my last. I’m fuddled and agitated enough, without making it any worse.”
“What are we going to do?” Conan ventured.
“Do? I don’t know. I don’t even want to think about it anymore. Maybe in the morning, when I’ve slept and sobered up.” Theo placed the tankard on the mantelshelf untouched. “Let’s face it. I must forget it all if I can.”
“Forget it? But—
“I must not err from my
uncle’s straight-and-narrow path to Elcester Manor.” Turning on his heel, Theo strode from the room.
Conan gazed after him, and then at the roll of ribbon. Sober or not, everything would still be the same in the morning. Except that the caged squirrel would be free again. Or was it Eleanor Rhodes who would be free again ... ?
He leaned his head against the back of the bed. Theo was right about one thing—it was preposterous. All of it. Yet he, Conan Merrydown, knew he must accept it all as fact. Maybe it was his Welsh heritage, a spark of fatalism handed down to him from his distant ancestors. Whatever it was, he would let everything take its course. But he wouldn’t say anything more to Theo for the time being, for the poor fellow obviously found it all very upsetting. As well he might be, for his feelings toward the ethereal Eleanor Rhodes placed another great strain upon the intended match with Ursula Elcester. Perhaps an insurmountable strain. Heaven alone knew what Miss Elcester’s feelings were toward the union, but from the outset Theo’s attitude had left a great deal to be desired.
If Eleanor were singling Theo out, as certainly seemed to be the case so far, that gentleman showed every likelihood of straying from the all-important straight-and-narrow path to the mandatory marriage.
Chapter 13
Later, when the inn was quiet, Conan was lying fully dressed on his bed, waiting for the right moment to slip down and attend to the releasing of the squirrel. He heard the church bell strike twelve, and then the longcase clock in the inn hall chimed as well. He had ascertained from a waiter that the last stagecoach of the night departed at half past ten, and there wouldn’t be another until five in the morning, when a by-mail would arrive. Outside the night was cold, with occasional clouds obscuring the moon, and down in the stables Bran had at last given up howling. But even as Conan noticed this, the wolfhound suddenly began to bark furiously, as if raising the alarm.
Conan quickly left the bed and went to the window. He expected to see an empty yard, but a group of cloaked figures was gathered there with a muted lantern. About a dozen he reckoned, but Taynton wasn’t among them. Most of them were men Conan had seen working at the inn, but one was a woman. Vera Pedlar stood a little apart. Her head was bowed, and she seemed more subdued than the others, among whom there was a discernible air of eagerness. They were all carrying something that looked like white clothing draped over their arms, and their breath was visible in the light from the lantern. He saw nodding heads and the occasional gesture. Their manner was that of men about to embark on something they found exciting. To his frustration, the squirrel’s cage rested on the ground beside them. It was covered with a cloth, but its shape was unmistakable.
Bran’s barking was silenced on a yelp, and then Taynton emerged from the stable with a short leather strap in his hand, which he casually draped over a nail on the wall. The innkeeper was also carrying white clothing, as well as a long staff or shepherd’s crook and the set of antlers Theo had mentioned. Had he, or one of the others, been the figure Gardner had seen on the road? Bran could still be heard, growling more ferociously than Conan had ever heard him before. If the wolfhound could get at Bellamy Taynton right now, he’d tear him limb from limb!
“If I don’t do it first,” breathed Conan, for he could not abide cruelty to animals! He turned to grab his greatcoat, and strode from the room, meaning to confront the innkeeper. He hurried downstairs, and strode out into the yard, only to find it suddenly deserted. He paused in surprise, for he had fully expected to tackle Taynton about Bran, whose angry growls were again beginning to swell into the occasional bark. Then he saw the lantern. It bobbed briefly beyond the coach house and stables as the innkeeper and his companions crossed the field that descended into the valley.
Conan decided to follow them, for they were clearly up to something out of the ordinary, but first he went to see that Bran was all right. The wolfhound did not seem to have come to much harm, and gave delighted yelps and whines, sensing release was at hand. But Conan had to disabuse him of that notion, for the last thing he required right now was the company of a large, barely controllable hound with a grievance. Bran seemed dismayed that he was going to remain in the stables. His tail sank, and he assumed an air of mournful, dejected reproach that revealed Bran the Blessed, Son of Llyr, to be the Edmund Kean of the canine world.
As Conan left the stable, Bran directed a disgusted wolfhound snort after him. Then a look of bright determination gleamed in his crafty eyes, and he set to gnawing the rope that tied him to the hook in the wall.
* * * *
Meanwhile, Ursula simply did not feel able to sleep, and was sitting up in bed with her mother’s manuscripts spread before her. She was still flustered by her unorthodox visit to the Green Man, and shocked to have recognized the gentleman speaking to Taynton. There was no doubt this time that she really had seen him. He hadn’t been perceived in a brief flash of hallucination or witnessed in a haze of dreamy sleep; he was only too clearly living flesh and blood. And her heart belonged to him. But who on earth was he? She knew she’d never met him, and yet she was almost bursting with emotion toward him. Such emotion, and all of it loving.
Maybe Vera would know his name, if only because of the fuss about the wolfhound—that wretchedly white wolfhound. Why couldn’t it have been brown, or gray? She didn’t know whether to be apprehensive or invigorated by the bizarre events of the last day or so. Maybe she had been delving into ancient Celtic lore for too long and was beginning to let it creep into her everyday life as well! Still, at least she had the consolation of knowing that the squirrel had been set free. She felt good about that—very good.
The eleven o’clock bell at Elcester church drifted across the valley outside. By this time tomorrow night she hoped her first meeting with the Honorable Theodore Greatorex would be over. She hoped too that the dinner she and the cook had decided upon would be a success. There would be Severn salmon, for which a man would ride to Gloucester early in the morning, guinea-fowl, and roast leg of local lamb. She knew that many people regarded the latter as a pale shadow of mutton, but she preferred it, and with all the trimmings considered it to be a very tasty and handsome joint. There would be an accompaniment of salad and asparagus from the stove house, and various vegetables from the kitchen garden or store cupboard, followed by bottled peaches in champagne with cream, then cheese, nuts, liqueurs, and so on. Maybe it wasn’t fashionably French, she thought, and maybe the country cooking would be looked down upon at places like Grillion’s in London, but it was the best Elcester Manor could manage, especially at such short notice. If only the next twenty-four hours were over and done with. By eleven o’clock tomorrow night she would be able to sleep like the proverbial log! At least, that was what she hoped.
With a sigh she collected the manuscripts carefully together, and laid them on the table by the bed. But instead of snuggling down to try to sleep, she got up and went to the window. She was in time to see the lantern bobbing down toward the valley again.
In the space of a heartbeat common sense had departed once more. She flew into the dressing room to don footwear and the first ordinary gown she came to, a simple dove gray fustian. She tied her hair back with the second length she’d cut of lilac ribbon, and left the room with her hooded cloak. But a vestige of common sense remained, for this time she took one of her father’s pistols with her, knowing she’d feel safer that way. He kept two of them in the drawer of his writing desk in the drawing room, both of them loaded. In that room he also kept his glass cabinets of treasured archeological finds, including the recently found gold solidus of Magnus Maximus.
Her heart was beating swiftly as she checked that the pistol was loaded but safe, then put on her cloak and hid the weapon in the inside pocket. There wasn’t a sound in the house as she slipped out onto the upper terrace and hurried down the steps toward the door in the wall of the rose garden. Within a few minutes, as she was making her way quickly along the path across the lower park, it came as hardly any surprise when she discovered two squirrels
were bounding along with her. It was as if they’d been waiting to escort her.
She entered the woods, where the bluebells were again silver in the light of a moon that would be full on May Eve. Beltane, now the day after tomorrow, for she heard the church clock strike midnight. The flowers’ haunting scent seemed to draw her farther and farther along the path toward Hazel Pool, and she could hear the gentle burble of the little stream. A snatch of voices carried on the air, and she halted, remembering what had happened before. There was no gentleman coming toward her this time, but was Taynton nearby? She turned nervously, but the path was clear that way too. Nevertheless, she felt doubtful about remaining on the path. Another path to the right, little used and occasionally overgrown, actually led more directly to Hazel Pool, but wasn’t favored because it did not enjoy the pretty pleasures of the stream. She decided to go that way.
Conan had followed Taynton and his companions to Hazel Pool, which he knew from his dream. It was a small circular lake edged by coppiced hazel trees and surrounded by open glades. Not in the dream were the life-size wooden figures, grimacing and terrifying, that someone had set to guard the approaches! Possessed of leering, grotesque faces like that on the inn sign, they were intended to deter, but Conan was not so easily put off. They made him shiver, nevertheless.
He hid among the hazels, where dog’s mercury and moss grew in the center of the stools. Water trickled softly by his feet, and he slithered a little in the mud and moss. It was when he glanced down to be sure of his footing that he realized the pool wasn’t natural, but formed in the distant past by the deliberate damming of spring water with a low stone wall that was now so overgrown it seemed like a natural bank.
The moon shone on the expanse of water, the surface of which was disturbed now and then by the plop of a fish. And in all the glades around there were bluebells. He had never seen a wood so full of them as this. It was very beautiful in the moonlight, even when intermittent as tonight; in daylight it must be breathtaking. There was no mistake it was the place he had dreamed of and where he had seen someone creep up behind his Lady of the Ribbons.