by Mia Marlowe
He gave her the best smile he could muster. “I shall endeavor to accommodate you. However it’s hard to appear giddy on the moment. Remember that all the other mediums have proved to be frauds.” But even as he said the words, Camden began to sense the presence of a psychic entity beyond the signatures of power he associated with Vesta, Miss Anthony, and Lord Badewyn. It gave him hope that the Welsh medium wasn’t just another in a long list of pretenders.
When Lord Badewyn knocked on the door of a humble dwelling, Camden’s heart was pounding in his chest. Finally, he’d learn why his beloved Mercedes had died, but as he neared what looked to be the end of his quest, doubts began to fray his last nerve. The answers he received might be harder to live with than his questions.
There was no response at the door, so Badewyn knocked again, harder this time.
“Come, then, why don’t you?” said a harried voice from within. “Doors were meant to be opened, you know, and I trust you’ve a free hand. Heaven knows, I don’t.”
Lord Badewyn lifted the rope latch and they all filed into the one room cottage.
In the past when Camden had sent his Extraordinaires out to assess the abilities of other self-proclaimed mediums, they often reported that sessions took place in an almost theatrically staged room. The chambers proved to be riddled with secret panels. Lord Stanstead had even discovered clockwork devices hidden beneath floorboards that were designed to make furniture appear to move of its own accord.
The humble cottage they found themselves in bore no resemblance to that sort of trickery at all. There was a spinning wheel and a three-legged stool by the hearth. A large pot of something savory bubbled over the low flames. The floor of the cottage was of packed earth, but it still looked as if someone had troubled to sweep it. No occult symbols festooned the walls. Instead, there were pegs at intervals draped with drying herbs. A string bed with curtains pulled to one side stood in a corner and a stack of blankets at its foot suggested that pallets for a number of children were made out each night.
There were only two people in the cottage at present. One was an exceedingly ordinary-looking peasant woman, bony fingered and long nosed. The other was a wiggly child with a wooden bowl on his head. The woman wielded a sharp-looking pair of shears trying, without much success, to give him a haircut.
Despite her unassuming appearance, so much psychic energy emanated from her that Camden’s legs nearly buckled. If the waves of power washing over him were any indication, this medium was the genuine article.
“Make yourselves at home, if you please,” the woman said. “I’ll be with you in a trice if this wee fiend will only settle.” Then she turned her attention back to the squirming child. “Keep still, Isaac. ’Tis a well known fact that fine folk like these eat wriggly boys for supper.”
The woman winked broadly over the boy’s head at Camden. Apparently, the duke and his party appeared sufficiently hungry to the boy, for her threat cured him of the fidgets. He sat still as stone for the duration of the haircut. When she was finished, she removed the bowl and gave the boy a kiss on the crown of his ruddy head.
“Take that poultice of herbs we made this morning for Goodwife Argall and see that she gets it. ’Twill do her sore hip a world of good,” the woman said, giving the lad a light smack on the bum as he skittered away to collect the medicine from one of the pegs. “Tell her we expect one of the piglets when her sow farrows on the morrow. Doesn’t have to be the pick of the litter. The runt will be fine.”
Once the boy let the door bang shut behind him, she fixed Camden and his companions with a direct gray-eyed gaze. Not at all cowed by their obvious wealth compared to her poverty, she walked toward them. Then she stopped before each one, looking intently at them in turn as if assessing their worthiness to be in her home.
“Welcome,” she finally said, directing her speech to Camden, though he had given no indication that he was the leader of the group. In fact, he’d been the last one through the door when they entered. “I am Glenys, the Witch of Gryffydd.”
“Surely you’re not a witch,” Camden said.
“No, but that’s what you’re thinking I am, isn’t it?”
It was. The biblical Witch of Endor had come up when he was talking with Lord Badewyn and the association had stuck in his mind. He bowed apologetically to her. “You have me at a disadvantage, madam. I cannot divine the secrets of your heart, but you seem to have a window on mine.”
The woman scoffed. “If that ain’t the fanciest string of words I ever heard, well, I’d hope to shout!” She heaved a sigh. “Let’s get to business then before Isaac comes back. I love the boy something fierce, but he’s a whirlwind with feet, that one. Don’t any of the dead take to him much. Too lively, I guess.”
“So you do claim to communicate with the departed?”
“I make no claim about it. I simply invite them in. If they want to come, they come. If they don’t, they don’t. But when they trouble themselves to visit me, it wouldn’t be polite not to talk to them, would it?”
“Hmph…I suppose not.” Glenys wasn’t at all what he expected. There was no show. She was all matter-of-fact business. And since he’d thought of business… “How much do you charge for your seances?”
She shook her head. “It don’t work that way. ’Tis not my seance, you see. The departed decide whether anything happens at all. Then once we’re finished here, only you can decide what the time has been worth to you.”
“That seems fair,” Camden said. “Perhaps you’d be so good as to explain how the process does work, then.”
“’Tis easy as pie. I invite a soul to visit, but I don’t command. Whether or not they deign to grace us with their presence is up to them entire. To our sorrow, we are creatures with free will. We make our own choices in life. It stands to reason we will in death, too, or we wouldn’t still be ourselves now, would we?”
That was as original a bit of philosophy as he’d ever heard. “What must we do?”
“Do? Why, nothing, of course. If you’re too busy doing, you’ll never hear the soft voices of those who’ve gone before. But I suppose it would help if you was to make yourselves comfortable-like. You, there.” She pointed to Lord Badewyn as if he were a lackey to be ordered about instead of a baron who controlled a goodly portion of the land in this part of Wales. “Fetch the chairs from around the table and bring them closer to the fire. Then you can all take a seat.”
Badewyn moved quickly to obey and soon he and the women were seated in a half circle facing the flames. An empty chair was left for the duke.
“I’d prefer to stand if it will not disrupt the proceedings.” Camden narrowly resisted the urge to pace. He didn’t think he could sit if his life depended upon it.
“Suit yourself.” Glenys sank onto the stool by the spinning wheel. “Somehow, I didn’t expect you would, Your Grace.”
Camden had not introduced himself. “You know me?”
“How could I not? ‘Dreamer,’ says the rain. ‘Leader,’ says the wind. ‘Powerful wizard,’ say the small Voices only I can hear. That’s who the Duke of Camden is.” She cocked her head thoughtfully. “I’ll add Man of Sorrows on my own account. I see the grief etched in every line of you. It’s been a number of years since your loss, but your heart still bleeds.”
Camden didn’t deny it. He tried to keep his mourning private, but it was plainly evident to the witch of Gryffydd.
“You’ll be wanting to speak to your wife, then,” she said. “May I have her name, so I can invite her proper-like?”
“Her Grace, the Duchess of Camden.”
“No, not like that, all formal and stiff. The dead care nothing for such things. They stay away in droves when we try to force the silliness of the living on them,” Glenys explained. “Speak plainly. What did you call her when your two heads shared a pillow?”
Heat crept up Camden’s neck. He valued his privacy above all things. Glenys’s question allowed him none, but he trusted everyone in his present company. V
esta was the keeper of so many of his secrets, he knew she’d keep these proceedings confidential. Badewyn and Miss Anthony could be counted upon to hold their tongues if he asked them not to divulge what they saw and heard here. Unbending a bit before his associates—he didn’t think of anyone as his friend—was evidently what it took to speak to his dead wife. Very well. “When it was just we two, I called her ‘my little heart,’ but her Christian name was Mercedes.”
“Is Mercedes, you mean,” Glenys said. “She may have left her house of flesh behind, but the part of her that is real, the part that goes on into eternity, is still known by the name she bore in life. But before we start, I must warn you that the dead don’t spare the feelings of the living. You may hear things you’ll wish you had not.”
“I consider myself warned. Proceed.”
Glenys closed her eyes and breathed in a deep, regular rhythm. Camden had expected some sort of mystic chanting or at the very least a spell to be recited, but the medium seemed content just to sit quietly. As he watched her, some of her relaxation seeped into him. He found himself matching her breath for breath. Anxiety sloughed off him with each exhalation. Camden stared into the fire, almost mesmerized by the flickering light. He was going to see Mercedes, his wife, his love, his little heart.
What was there to fear?
“Mercedes, your Edward is here, the one who called you his little heart,” Glenys said softly. Camden’s gaze cut sharply to the medium. He’d not given her his Christian name, yet she knew it. “He has traveled a great distance to see you, though not so far as you will travel should you choose to meet with him here. Be welcome, spirit. We wait for you to come to us. Do not tarry, pray, but come and ease Edward’s heart with your presence.”
Then Glenys fell silent and her chin dropped to her chest.
Lord Stanstead had told Meg once about a Cornish medium he’d assessed for His Grace. After a great deal of fiddling about, the charlatan had finally faked a trance, altered her voice, and tried to imitate the dead. When Glenys’ head finally came up, Meg expected her to speak for the duke’s wife, but instead, the witch gazed silently upward.
Meg did the same. A hazy apparition was forming on the underside of the thatched roof. It coalesced into the likeness of His Grace’s dead wife. Meg recognized her from the portrait hanging above the mantel in the duke’s study. The ghost floated down to hover, her spectral toes only an inch or so above the floor, between the duke and the fireplace. The spirit’s flowing robes undulated in a breeze Meg could not feel.
“Edward.” A disembodied voice came from the apparition, though her pale lips did not move. The ghost merely smiled at him for a moment, and then her expression went as flat as an unpainted canvas.
“My little—” The duke took a step toward her but then he seemed to remember that they were not alone and stopped himself. “Mercedes.”
“I think of you often, my dear one,” the ghostly voice came again. “You spent so much time in your study when we were together, it is there that I imagine you. Fretting and planning for your precious Order and the governance of your estate, mindful of so many things at once you can’t think properly on any of them. Settle now, darling. I would that you could be at peace, my love.”
Meg wondered if she’d ever be able to publicly call Samuel “my love.” Probably not even if I was dead.
“Are you…at peace?” His Grace asked.
“There are few things from life that remain to me here. Regret is one of them. I’m as much at peace as I can be after what I’ve done.”
“What did you do?” Camden demanded, then moderated his tone to a more conciliatory one. “Please, I must know. Does it touch upon the circumstances of your death? It has been many years, but some details are still knife-sharp in my memory. It wasn’t long after your confinement with our child. You told me you meant to venture out, to visit a friend, you said, but I forbade it. Surely, you understand I only ordered you to remain within Camden House for your health’s sake. You hadn’t even been churched yet and still you… Why did you disobey me?”
The apparition faded a bit, but then brightened. “Probably because you ordered me not to leave our home. I could never abide being told what to do. If your memory is as sharp as you say, you must remember that fault in my character. I wasn’t a child, Edward. You shouldn’t have treated me like one.” Her mouth sagged in a mournful expression, then returned to stoic blandness. “For what it’s worth, I wish with all my heart I had not left home that night.”
“Tell me, love. I need to know what happened.”
“The telling would be hurtful to you and I would not be the cause of more grief.”
Apparently the medium was wrong in this case. The duke’s wife did still seem to have a care for his feelings. Mercedes must have been a tenderhearted person. Meg found herself wishing she’d known Her Grace in life.
“Nothing could hurt me more than losing you,” the duke said. Meg’s chest constricted in sympathy with him. “Not knowing is driving me mad. Tell me what happened and why, I beg you. Even if it hurts.”
The apparition drew itself up into the exact position, gesture, and expression as the Mercedes captured in the portrait. “You love this painting, don’t you?”
“You know I do.”
“You won’t once I tell you.” She dissolved into a formless blob with only two dark holes for her eyes and another where her mouth should be. “Shame is another thing which remains with me. You see, my darling, I took the artist who painted that portrait to my bed. We became lovers right under your nose.”
The duke’s face paled and he looked as if someone had punched him in the gut. “But how could you do such a thing? You were increasing when that painting was commissioned. You told me so.”
“It’s true. I was a few weeks gone with child before the painting began. Never doubt that the boy is yours. But after you learned I was bearing your child, you began to treat me as if I were made of spun glass.” The apparition glowed a soft blue, a deeply melancholy shade. “You abandoned my chamber and held yourself aloof from me. I missed you in my bed. It was so lonely.”
“I restrained myself so that I would not injure you or the child. I wish you knew how much it cost me not to come to you by night.” His Grace’s lips went white. Meg wasn’t sure if it was from anger or embarrassment. Probably both. “It was for the sake of the child.”
“For the sake of your heir, you mean.” The ghost’s color changed from blue to smoldering orange. Meg felt the heat of resentment roiling off Mercedes. “I began to feel I was only a means to an end for you. Alberto saw me as a woman, someone to be cherished for myself alone. Not merely a thing designed to produce a baby.”
“I never meant to make you— You must believe I did not think of you like that.” Then he went on more softly. “But I didn’t tell you what I thought, what I felt, did I?” His Grace’s fingers curled into fists, but Meg suspected his anger was directed at himself. “How long did this…affair go on?”
“About three months. It ended when the painting was finished and Alberto moved on to his next commission. I put away thoughts of my lover and focused on bearing you a healthy son. You were so happy during the months of my confinement. Even though you didn’t show it in our marriage bed, you seemed to love me all the more as my time approached.”
“I did love you. I still do.”
“But I began to wonder if you only loved me because of little Henry.”
“Never. I wish I’d…oh, never mind. It can make no difference now. I cannot change my past mistakes any more than you can.” The duke’s head dropped to his chest. “How did you die, Mercedes? We were never able to discover.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Come, you must know,” His Grace urged. “Why did you go to Cheapside with our son?”
“I shouldn’t have taken him with me.” The ghost’s orange tint faded and she pulsed that soft blue again. “But I couldn’t bear to leave Henry behind. A note came from Alberto, summon
ing me to come to him. I don’t remember what the missive said exactly, but I was desperate to see him. I like to believe it was to tell him I would never see him again, to show him my son as proof that I belonged with you, Edward. But I own myself a weakling in matters of the flesh. I might have tumbled into bed with him again. I simply don’t remember.”
The duke’s eyes narrowed. “Is he the one? Did he hurt you?”
“Truly, the events of that evening are shrouded in mist. Everything seems so long ago. When you’re living life it all feels so dreadfully important, but the truth is, only a few things are.” The hazy form shimmered. To Meg, it almost appeared as if the ghost of the duke’s wife was shivering. “It was terribly cold. I remember that.”
“It was January and very bitter,” Camden supplied, clearly trying to aid her memory. “You had speech with this artist, this Alberto. What did you talk about?”
“I think we spoke. It seems he wasn’t pleased with me. Yes, that much is clear in my mind. There was some matter of money to be paid, I think.” The apparition began to take shape again. Meg recognized her as the woman in His Grace’s prized painting again. “Oh! Now I remember. He had a nude model in his studio and I suspected she was warming his bed as well. We quarreled, him and me.” She loosed a tinkling laugh. “What a strange thing to fight about. Do you think that might have been it?”
“Then what happened?”
“I remember falling. I remember holding Henry close, shielding him with my body.” The ghost of Mercedes reached out her hand, but stopped short of touching His Grace. “You look sad, Edward. How much sadder it must have been for you when I was found dead.”
“I grieved for you both, though I’m ashamed to admit that sometimes I forget what our son even looked like.”
The apparition glowed warmly, a woman’s shape in alabaster. Meg could make out her delicate features. She almost seemed to take corporeal form. “How can you say that? You must know what Henry looks like. He didn’t die with me. I made sure of it.”