“There are only flowers on the branches of the tree,” Ailith explained. “The names would not fit.” I noticed, though, that a crown of gold thread had been stitched at the top. Even in miniature, the royal lineage must not be forgot. I traced the branch where Ailith and her sibling had been commemorated. Three blossoms hung there and I thought at once of the unpicked place in the tapestry downstairs.
“You are clever, Lady Julia,” Ailith told me. “That was my sister, Wilfreda. We do not speak of her, and I beg you not to ask Mama about her.”
I stepped back, embarrassed to have caused her distress. “I am sorry. I did not mean to pry.”
Ailith smiled her serene smile. “All families have skeletons in the cupboard. Some of them are bound to come tumbling out. I do not mind talking about her. The doll’s house was hers, a gift from our father. When she left, I begged Mama for it. It is the only thing of hers that was not destroyed.”
She paused and went to the writing table, opening the drawer. She extracted a few notebooks, identical to the one I had found in Redwall’s study. “Here. I should like them back when you have done with them.”
“Of course. I shall take excellent care of them, I promise.”
She smiled again, this time indulgently, as an adult will to a precocious child. “I know you will. There is something else I should like you to see.”
She reached into the drawer again and withdrew a photograph in a small leather frame, the sort of thing a traveller might carry. She put it into my hands and I stared at the photograph. It was of a man, dressed in travelling clothes, an exotic background behind him. It was Cairo, the minarets just visible through the latticed window. There were a few potted palms at his elbow, and a great stuffed crocodile at his feet. But it was not the props that had captured my attention. He was the most beautiful man I had ever seen. There was an elegance, a perfection to his features that was unrivalled. The lips, beautifully moulded, were slightly curved into a smile of invitation to the viewer. The bones, carved with a master’s hand, spoke of centuries of good breeding. His was the sort of face that would have been beautiful even in extreme old age. Even in death.
I turned to Ailith and she was not looking at the photograph. She was studying my reaction to it.
“A very handsome man. Your brother, I presume?” The question was unnecessary. The resemblance was profound. They might have been twins, the similarity was so great.
“That was taken in Egypt,” she told me. “He had been gone from home almost thirteen years by then. He wanted us to see how he had changed. He ought to have cut his hair.” I turned back to the photograph. True, his hair was overlong, curling at his collar and temples, but I understood why he had not cut it. It would have been heresy to spoil those silky locks.
“Was his colouring the same as yours?” I ventured.
“Oh, yes. The same gold hair and blue eyes. All Allenbys are the same, save for Hilda. Her colouring is so dull. You might have seen Redwall’s portrait, had Mama not burned it. An excellent likeness, although I think this one is better.”
I blinked at her. “Lady Allenby burned his portrait?”
Ailith retreated a little, stepping back and smoothing her cuffs. “It was an unhappy reminder to her. The artist who painted it is the man who ran away with my sister.”
She had resumed her cool façade, and I knew the time for confidences was at an end. I rose and gathered up the notebooks.
To my surprise, she handed me the photograph. “You might like to keep this while you work on his things. Perhaps it will help you to remember that although he was not always a gentleman, he was always a great man.”
If I was startled, I tried not to show it. The mysteries around Redwall Allenby continued to deepen, I thought as I slipped the photograph into my pocket. I moved to leave the room, then paused, my hand on the knob.
“I am truly sorry for your loss, Miss Allenby. I know what it is to love a brother, and I can only imagine how difficult this has been for you.” As much thought as I had given to drowning my brothers when we were children, I would have been bereft at the loss of any of them. Even Bellmont.
She inclined her head, and did not reply.
Perhaps it was all the talk of loss and regret, but I felt the atmosphere of the house was thick with ghosts that afternoon, and I hurried from Grimsgrave and across the moor to the one place I knew could soothe my restlessness.
Rosalie opened the door as I smoothed my windblown skirts. She had tied a bright patchwork apron about her waist and was holding a spoon.
“I hope I have not disturbed you,” I began.
She waved me inside. “I was working in my stillroom. Come, lady.”
She beckoned me to follow her through a tiny door into a room no bigger than a pocket handkerchief. It was lined with shelves, each neatly stacked with dark glass bottles, closely stoppered and labelled with names like Syrup of Poppy and Remedy for a Toothache. There were jars of unpleasant-looking, desiccated things and bunches of herbs and grasses hanging in plaits from the beams, so low they brushed our shoulders as we moved.
There were cans of oils for making her embrocations, tins of powders, and a very fine set of scales. Bowls for mixing, various wooden implements, and a wickedly sharp knife marked with the initials RY were tidily arranged to be close at hand. The knife was a pretty thing, but no lady’s trinket. I touched a finger to the carved initials and wondered what exotic second name her parents had given her. Yolanda? Yasmine? I moved on to peruse the rest of the shelves as Rosalie took down a bottle and a sturdy stoneware bowl. She retrieved a tin of goose fat, an assortment of bones and motioned for me to hand her a small, pointed silver spoon and the knife marked with her initials. She drew it from its sheath, exposing a long, sawlike blade. I pulled a face as I looked at the macabre collection.
“Today I am to mix St. Hildegard’s ointment,” she told me.
I leaned over her shoulder to watch her work.
“St. Hildegard’s,” she said, drawing me around to stand next to her. “This is an ointment for swollen joints. It soothes rheumatisms. The receipt is a very old one. It is from Germany, and it is very specific.”
Through the course of the next half hour, she never referred to a book or scribbled bit of paper. The receipt had been committed to memory, and I watched carefully as she assembled the mixture. She measured by the palmful, four parts gin to two parts goose fat to two parts deer marrow. Extracting the marrow was the most tedious part, requiring patience and no small skill in order to keep the mixture free of bone slivers. It was messy work and the smell was appalling, but she seemed pleased with the salve she produced.
“Now, for this to work, it must be rubbed firmly into the swollen joints. The rheumatic must sit in front of an elmwood fire. Raw quince is the best food for drawing out the pain of rheumatism, but if that is not to taste, then a pudding or pie of quince or even quince wine will work as well.”
She spooned the salve into a fresh jar and sealed it. Together we tidied up the stillroom and as we worked, I ventured a question.
“Rosalie, Miss Ailith has told me of the customs of the moor. Have you ever heard the bell that tolls under Grimswater?”
To my surprise, she smiled. “I would have thought you immune to village superstitions, Lady Julia.”
I shrugged. “This superstition is not confined to the village. The folk at Grimsgrave claim to have heard it.”
“What makes you think the Allenbys are any more sensible than the villagers? They have been here for too long. It is not good for the blood of a family to be unmixed. They have dwelt here on this moor, marrying their cousins and producing beautiful children for a thousand years. They ought to have travelled, married fresh blood and learned a little of the world.”
“Sir Redwall travelled,” I pointed out. “He went to Egypt.”
She tipped her head, her bright gaze searching my face. Then she smiled. “No, lady. I do not mean only the travelling that takes a man into a new country. I mea
n the travelling that takes a man into a new place here.” She touched her heart lightly. “Too many Englishmen go to a new country and bring with them the same clothes, the same tea, the same food, the same books. They try to bring England itself with them, and then they are dissatisfied when they are foreigners in a foreign land.”
“True enough,” I admitted, “but Gypsies marry their own and keep their own ways, in spite of their travels.”
“When have your kind ever wanted to share our ways?” she asked without rancour.
“I suppose you are correct. I should be quite hopeless at that sort of thing. What I know of Sir Redwall suggests a man who would like his comforts. But I wonder what caused him to leave Grimsgrave and venture abroad when no one else in his family had ever done so. Was it purely the love of Egyptology?”
“Who can say? It was a difficult time in the village, and the Allenbys were not very popular just then.”
“The village?” I prompted.
“Those who do not farm here used to work the mines. Lead mostly, a little silver. The last mine on Allenby land played out shortly before Sir Redwall left. Folk did not take it well when he closed the mine and refused to survey for another vein. He ought to have paid for someone to look properly, but he would not. He claimed he had no money, then left for Egypt, sending back a stream of expensive artefacts. He was not received warmly when he returned.”
“What happened?”
“He were pelted with rotten eggs when he came, and folk chased him from the village clear out onto the moor, throwing stones and threatening him.”
I stared at her, aghast. “Their own benefactor?” I could scarcely fathom it. The relationship between the largest house in the area and the country folk was a throwback to the feudal age, with protection in difficult times and opportunities for work provided by the big house, and strong backs and willing workers provided by the villagers. It was astonishing to me that the relationship could have broken down so completely at Grimsgrave, but then northerners had a reputation for the sort of independence southerners would never countenance.
She shrugged again. “He denied them work, took food from their children’s mouths. He was no benefactor to them. When he closed the mine and refused to survey for another, it caused a great deal of suffering. The estate began to fail, and he sold off some of the farms. He turned out the farmhands, sending them back to their homes, and sent the maids home as well. Many of those young people had depended upon their wages at Grimsgrave Hall to sustain entire families with their fathers out of work and younger brothers and sisters to feed. But the Allenby fortunes were in decline. Sir Redwall had spent himself into oblivion, and when he realised what he had done, he turned his face to the wall and died.”
I thought of the handsome, charismatic face in the photograph and shook my head. “It seems impossible,” I murmured.
“Do not think a handsome face may not hide a weak will,” Rosalie advised me. I thought of my late husband and was forced to agree.
“What of his sister?” I asked suddenly. “The one who eloped with the portrait painter? Miss Ailith told me of her this afternoon. She made her escape from here.”
“Did she? No one knows what became of her. She simply disappeared one night. Yes, the painter left as well, but was he forced to leave? Did he abduct the girl? Or did either of them ever leave that house alive?”
I stared at her, not quite comprehending. “Are you suggesting there has been murder done at Grimsgrave Hall?”
She smiled her enigmatic smile. “I suggest nothing. But Grimsgrave Hall is a house of secrets, and there will be no peace there until every one of them is brought into the light of day.”
It was late when I left her, the shadows lengthening on the moor, the sun sinking below the horizon in a blaze of red and gold. I watched the sunset for just a moment, tearing myself away from the magnificent display when I remembered how long a walk still lay before me across the chilly moor. I set off toward Grimsgrave Hall, but I had not gone more than a dozen steps before I turned back. I stood very still, uncertain of what I had heard. And then, as the brisk moor wind rose, I heard the unmistakable sound of a bell, tolling low and mournful beneath the black waves of Grimswater.
THE TWELFTH CHAPTER
Ay, but to die, and go we know not where,
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot.
—William Shakespeare
Measure for Measure
I was not surprised Brisbane made no appearance at supper, and I was just as glad he did not. I was still smarting over his silly attempt to push me further away, and deeply frustrated that I could not discuss the matter with Portia. I went to bed early with a headache, and woke feeling only marginally better.
The next morning I closeted myself in Redwall’s study directly breakfast was over. I took Grim in his cage to keep me company as usual, leaving Florence curled up in Minna’s apron. It was warm there, and Minna used her for a place to rest her mending, so they were both satisfied with the arrangement. I placed the cage in its accustomed spot on the desk, but this time I opened the door to give him the run of the place. Grim bobbed his head excitedly.
“Mind you don’t upset anything. Some of these artefacts are terribly valuable,” I told him. He hopped out of the cage and began strutting round the room, pausing now and again to peer at something shiny. I slipped Redwall’s photograph from my pocket and propped it on the desk. I told myself it was for a bit of inspiration, for the work could be tedious and grimy, but the truth was there was something arresting about that face, and wherever I turned, his level gaze seemed to follow, the mouth turned up in amusement at something I had done. I put his Egypt notebooks into a drawer to peruse later, and set to work. I had finished the books and was thrilled to be cataloguing the last of a set of delicately-wrought shawabtis. They were tiny statues of servants, waiting to do their master’s bidding in the afterlife. It amused me to see them ranged there, each with slightly different features or a different drape to his linen kilt. The artist had been so skilled, I could almost sense the watchfulness of each, the willingness to anticipate the needs of the master and respond. They were remarkable, and oddly charming.
I had just finished describing the last when Grim put his glossy black head around the edge of the desk and quorked at me.
“Are you hungry?” I rummaged in my pocket for a tin of sweetmeats, tossing him a sugared plum. He tore into it greedily and I threw him another.
“Oooh, that’s for me,” he said in his odd little croaking voice. The first time Grim had spoken to me it had been a revelation, but I was accustomed to him now, and more than once his little sayings had been frighteningly apropos.
“Yes, that’s for you, dearest.” I rose and tidied up the box of shawabtis, then cast around for the next item to be catalogued. There was a couch I had been longing to put my hands on, but the shawabtis had been stacked atop it. Now, if I just shifted a set of ebony chairs, I could reach it properly. It was not an easy proposition. The chairs were precariously balanced and surprisingly heavy, their legs resting on the edge of the couch and braced by the brickwork of the fireplace. The fireplace backed the one in Brisbane’s bedchamber, the two flues sharing a single chimney. I put my back to the brickwork and pushed against the first chair to edge it up in order to get a proper grip on it.
Just then Grim quorked loudly, startling me. I dropped the chair and stepped back heavily, catching my elbow on the side of the brickwork of the chimney breast.
“Damnation,” I muttered, rubbing at my elbow and praying I had not damaged the chair.
Grim tilted his head up at me. “Damnation.”
“Do not repeat that,” I told him severely. “Or if you must, tell people Valerius taught it to you.”
I examined the chair and breathed a sigh of relief. Even after a few millennia in a desert tomb, my clumsiness had not harmed it. The chimney breast was not so lucky. My elbow had dislodged a bit of it, and I bent to retrieve the piece of brick, surprised to fi
nd it was a neat slice rather than a crumbled lump. I moved to fit it back into place, and as I did so, I saw a tiny ring-shaped handle sitting slightly proud of the mortar beyond, just large enough to admit an index finger. I slid my finger inside and twisted.
To my astonishment, the mechanism worked perfectly. The side of the chimney breast swung open noiselessly, and I saw that the brick here was not solid at all. The entire panel was covered in thin slices of brick, a perfect trompe-l’oeil to trick the eye into believing it was as solid as the rest of the construction. It was beautifully done, each part of the mechanism fitting to within a hairsbreadth. A master had been at work here, I mused, but to what purpose?
“Of course,” I murmured to Grim. “The Allenbys are Catholics. It’s a priest’s hole!”
He ignored me and toddled off, quorking quietly to himself, but I was intrigued. I had read of them, these odd little spaces fitted perfectly into Roman households for the purpose of hiding recusant priests. They had been hunted after the Reformation, and for a few centuries after, I recalled. But Catholics had had a stronghold in the north, and many of the manor houses had sheltered the priests who clung to the old ways and refused to recognise the Anglican church.
The spaces were invariably tiny, so as not to attract the attention of the men who searched for the priests. Some barely accommodated a fully-grown man, and there was no question of comfort. Priest’s holes were for survival, and this one was no bigger than one might expect. Fitted directly against the fireplace, it must have been uncomfortably hot, stifling even, although a tiny speck of daylight high in the back wall showed where a supply of clean air might be had. There was even a silver tube still hanging next to the hole, a clever device to enable the priest to draw in the fresh air deeply.
But it was not the accommodations of the priest’s hole that had captured my attention. Wedged tightly into the hole was an anthropomorphic box, the wood gilded and painted, as bright and beautiful as the day an Egyptian artist had last put his brush to them.
Lady Julia Grey 3 - Silent on the Moor Page 14