Lady Julia Grey 3 - Silent on the Moor

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  “Minna is preparing it herself, and Morag is tasting everything before she will permit Brisbane to so much as lift his spoon. Valerius thought it a sensible precaution under the circumstances.”

  I would have laughed at the notion of Morag serving as taster to Brisbane were the situation not so horrifying.

  Grim quorked again and I waved a hand at him. “Good morning, Grim.”

  “Good morning,” he returned politely. “Sweetie.”

  I motioned to the box beneath his cage. “Toss a few of those violet creams in the cage for him, will you, dearest?”

  Portia obeyed, but with an expression of distaste. Grim’s manners were impeccable, save when it came to enjoying his food. He tore at the little sweetmeats savagely, and Portia pulled a face.

  “I always think he’d prefer a nice, juicy mouse,” she commented.

  “By all means, go catch him one. What of Lady Allenby?” I asked finally.

  “Withdrawn to her room. She confessed the deed at once, and took to her chamber. She will see no one, and when Brisbane is recovered, he will take the matter in hand. Hilda is hiding out with her chickens and will not speak to any of us, she is so horrified. Ailith has apologised perhaps a hundred times, and Godwin says he can manage the estate perfectly until Brisbane is fully himself again. They have all been quite human about the whole thing, really. I do rather feel sorry for Hilda. She is quite changed. All her old arrogance is gone. Even Valerius cannot make her talk. He plans to build her a nice new henhouse to make her feel better when Brisbane is recovered.”

  Portia continued to talk, but her words flowed together, soothing and soft, and after a few minutes, I heard nothing more.

  I woke the next morning, feeling as if I had slept a hundred years. I longed for a bath and I was ravenously hungry. Morag carried up an enormous plate of eggs and bacon and devilled kidneys with toast and a steaming pot of tea. There were no mushrooms, I noted with a grateful shudder. I doubted I would ever be able to eat them again. I applied myself with vigour to my breakfast, and by the time I had wiped the last crumb from my plate, I was feeling entirely myself again.

  I washed and dressed and emerged. Lady Allenby’s door was closed, and I wondered if she were still immured in her room. I found Portia with Brisbane. He was propped up in bed, neatly dressed in a clean nightshirt, arms tightly locked about his chest as Portia endeavoured to cut his hair and Valerius attempted to take his pulse.

  “Brisbane, honestly. You look quite a pirate. Now, if you will just let me trim a lock here and there, I can make you thoroughly respectable,” she argued. She advanced toward him with scissors, and he held up a hand.

  “I may not yet have regained my full strength, but if you so much as lay a single blade on my head I will have Puggy stuffed and mounted to hang over my fireplace,” he told her, his eyes glinting coldly. I blinked back sudden tears. I had not imagined it would be so moving to see him alive and in a foul mood, but I had come to accept that I would rather have Brisbane in a savage temper than any other gentleman with perfect manners.

  “Portia, do you mind?” Valerius asked sharply. “I am trying to assess his condition, and you are agitating him.”

  “I would not agitate him if he would give in,” Portia pointed out reasonably.

  “Now, children,” I said briskly. “No need to fuss. Brisbane, if you wish to go about looking like Heathcliff that is your affair. Leave him be, Portia.” She subsided, and Val shot me a grateful look as he applied himself to Brisbane’s pulse.

  I glanced at the hearth where Mr. Pugglesworth was resting on his favourite cushion and emitting foul smells. “Ah, Puggy. I thought I smelled something decaying. Well, I am glad you’ve brought him, Portia. He will be on hand when Florence is delivered of his offspring.”

  I had not had the chance to write the news to her, and Portia blinked at me in surprise. “Mr. Pugglesworth is going to be a father? Are you quite sure?”

  “As sure as ever I would want to be,” Morag told her sourly from the doorway. She entered bearing a tray with a pretty little dish of custard and a soup plate of beef tea. Brisbane looked pointedly at the dark smear on the wall, the souvenir of his earlier displeasure.

  “Morag, unless there is something on that tray I can chew, do not bother to come any farther.” Morag sniffed and put the food on the hearth. Puggy hefted himself off of his cushion and sniffed at the custard before putting his front paws into the dish and lapping it up.

  Val sat back with a decided air of satisfaction. “Strong and steady. Mrs. Smith, I have the utmost respect for your methods.”

  Rosalie was sitting in the little chair by the fireplace, knitting a sock of purple and scarlet wool, Rook curled quietly at her feet, occasionally looking with interest at Puggy’s plate of custard.

  “A bit of beef, well cooked and the broth thickened with blood, that is what you need now,” she told Brisbane. “Do you not agree?” she asked Val.

  He preened a little at her tact. “I will tell Minna,” he said, rising and taking his leave.

  Rosalie stood as well, tucking her knitting into her pocket. “I will tell Minna to bring an egg also, soft-boiled, and a glass of good wine to build your blood.”

  She turned to me as she passed and put a hand to my cheek. “You are well now.”

  “Yes. Thank you, Rosalie,” I told her. I dropped my voice to a whisper. “For everything.”

  “We will talk later, chavvi,” she said. She left us then, and Rook moved to sit at Brisbane’s side, his shaggy head tucked under Brisbane’s hand. Portia settled into Rosalie’s abandoned chair, rubbing at Puggy’s back with her slippered foot. Bits of hair and dandruff littered the cushion and I looked away, feeling rather queasy. Brisbane was watching me closely as he stroked Rook’s ears, and I felt suddenly shy of him. I thought of all I had said to him, baring my soul and telling him things I could not imagine ever saying again in the clear light of day. My cheeks burned and I looked away.

  “It is there, the book with the green kid cover,” he said suddenly, his voice cool. He nodded toward the stack of books that had been tidied into a teetering pile next to the bed.

  I blinked at him. “What is?”

  “The catalogue,” he said with the merest sigh of impatience.

  I retrieved it, willing him not to remember what I had whispered to him in his unconsciousness. I opened it to find a catalogue, perfectly organised and exact in its details.

  “Ah,” I said. “A fair sight better than what I was about, I can promise you. If I may borrow this, I can at least compare the current collection with this and see if anything is missing.”

  He nodded, and as I made to rise, he put out his hand, clamping it tightly about my wrist. “I ought to thank you,” he said softly. “If you had not acted so quickly and so decisively, I would be dead.”

  I opened my mouth, then closed it and shrugged. “It was Minna who found you. And Rosalie who knew what to do. They deserve your thanks, not me.”

  I left him then, clutching the book to my chest like a shield. He had not remembered then, and I was unutterably relieved. And dismayed. I had found the courage to tell him precisely what I felt for once. I did not think I could do so again.

  Portia followed me from Brisbane’s room, cuddling Puggy under her chin. I left the catalogue on Redwall’s desk in the study, and without discussion, Portia and I took up wraps and made our way into the fresh air and sunshine of the garden. It was the warmest day yet during our time in Yorkshire, and I closed my eyes and turned my face to the sun when we stopped to a little bench in the orchard.

  “It was a very near thing for him,” Portia commented.

  I opened my eyes and nodded. “Closer than you know. I thought—”

  “I know,” she said, covering my hand with her own briefly. She stroked Puggy’s ears, cooing to him over his wheezing. “But why? Why should Lady Allenby want to poison Brisbane?”

  I shook my head. “I am not certain, but I think it has to do with this hous
e and with Redwall Allenby. Brisbane knew him when they were boys, and they did not get on. When Brisbane talked of him, there was a venom there, a hatred I have never seen in him.” I quickly explained to her the terms of the sale of Grimsgrave and the precariousness of the Allenby fortunes.

  “But killing Brisbane would not solve her difficulties,” Portia pointed out. “Presumably his estate would pass to his heirs, whoever they may be. Perhaps Monk,” she suggested, referring to Brisbane’s trusted man of affairs and sometime valet. “Good God, where is Monk? Brisbane hasn’t mentioned him, and I didn’t think to ask. He ought to have been here, having a care for Brisbane.”

  “He is engaged upon a case. I do not know where, but I do not think he has been here since Brisbane took up residence at Grimsgrave, although he ought to be,” I finished waspishly.

  Portia shook her head. “Be fair, Julia. Brisbane had no notion he was in danger here, and if he did not suspect, how could Monk have known? Now, who besides Monk might benefit should Brisbane die?”

  I shrugged. “Hortense de Bellefleur. He has paid her an allowance for twenty years. It would be like him to want to take care of her even after his death.” It remained an interesting development that my father’s dearest companion should have been Brisbane’s first mistress. Though Brisbane and Hortense had concluded their liaison before Brisbane had even turned twenty, he still counted her a dear friend, as did I.

  Portia pursed her lips. “I suppose. Or he could leave everything to you.”

  I gaped at her. “To what purpose? I have more money than Croesus. Brisbane knows that. He would not be so senseless. He would leave his assets to those who could best profit from them.”

  Portia and I fell silent, pondering the implications of the attack on Brisbane.

  “Of course,” I said slowly, “there are the Allenby daughters. Ailith claimed she was Brisbane’s first love, and Hilda was quite forthright about her intentions to marry him to regain her home.” Quickly I related the details of these new revelations to Portia.

  She was thoughtful, stroking Puggy’s swayed back. “I wonder. What if Lady Allenby knew of Hilda’s scheme?”

  “I know she did. I told her myself.”

  “Aha!” Portia jumped, unsettling Puggy. He puffed out an annoyed sigh and she settled him down again. “You told Lady Allenby that Hilda meant to marry Brisbane. What if she opposed the match?”

  “But she told me she did not believe anything would come of it,” I argued.

  “So she told you,” Portia echoed meaningfully. “Just because she said it, does not mean she believed it. What if she knew of Hilda’s intentions, and feared that Brisbane would marry her? The Allenbys do not marry outside their own semi-royal blood, do they? Lady Allenby might have viewed such an arrangement as the grossest lèse-majesté. Who is to say what steps she might take to prevent it?”

  “Preposterous,” I said roundly. “She had only to remove Hilda from his house.”

  “Which she has not the means to do,” Portia rejoined.

  “Then she would have been better off waiting until they had married. Then Hilda would have inherited the Hall and the Allenbys would once more be masters of their own domain.”

  “But that would have polluted the Allenby line,” Portia argued. “What if Hilda conceived a child in that time? The Allenby blood would have been tainted with his.”

  Her expression was smug, but try as I might, I could not believe it. “It is madness,” I said finally.

  “And who is to say the old woman is not mad?” she asked. “Think how they live. She is alone up here, with only another old woman and an oafish farm manager for company, and two daughters who are scarcely better than children. Ailith spends all day scurrying meekly behind her mother and stitching at her needlepoint, while Hilda wanders the moors like a madwoman and talks to chickens. They have buried the last male heir of Grimsgrave, and they have only themselves left, the remains of a noble and illustrious family. Isn’t it at all possible Lady Allenby would rather let their name die out than mix it with lesser blood?”

  “It is possible,” I said slowly. “But there is another Allenby still unaccounted for.” I told her about Wilfreda, her quiet, bookish ways, and her desperate flight from Grimsgrave with the artist commissioned to paint her portrait. “Her name was unpicked from the family tapestry,” I finished. “They would rather pretend she never existed than admit she married beneath her.”

  Portia nodded. “Mark me, Julia. Lady Allenby was determined not to let another of her daughters go astray, and her only recourse was to attempt the life of the man who attracted her.”

  I shuddered. “It seems so much more terrible, you know. I cannot imagine what a person must think, picking the mushrooms so carefully, wiping them and slicing them and bottling them just so, placing them carefully upon someone’s plate, all the while knowing what you mean to do with them. No one quite in her right mind could do such a thing.”

  “Well, I have always said northerners were not trustworthy,” she reminded me. “And Yorkshire folk are the maddest of the lot.”

  I thought of Deborah at the inn, and gentle Mrs. Butters, and Godwin, rough but kind for all his country ways. “Oh, I don’t know,” I said finally. “I think people are much the same wherever you go. Some of them good, some of them clever, and some of them with the devil in them.”

  “The trick is learning to distinguish the difference,” my sister added.

  “Indeed. There is one more thing,” I began, and told her about the mummified babies I had discovered in the priest’s hole. She gaped at me, horrified.

  “Julia, that is beyond belief. Why on earth would Redwall Allenby have such things? And why keep them squirreled away behind the chimney?”

  “Probably because they are so horrid. If you had mummy babies, would you advertise the fact?”

  “But that is precisely the point. If I were the type of person to keep mummy babies lying about, I shouldn’t think I would mind if people actually knew it,” she pointed out.

  Puggy let out a great, flatulent noise and I turned away. “But what sort of person collects mummified babies in the first place?” I asked.

  “We are arguing in a circle,” Portia noted with maddening logic. “Mummified children are collected by the sort of people who would collect mummified children.”

  “I feel a headache coming on, Portia. We have established that Redwall Allenby had rather peculiar tastes. Now, we must determine why. Were the mummies merely a curiosity, like the baboon and the cat? Or were they collected for a more sinister purpose?”

  Portia arched a cool brow. “Like what?”

  I began to tick the possibilities off on my fingers. “Medicinal properties, public demonstration, speculation…”

  My sister waved a hand. “Your cart has galloped apace of your horse. Let us begin at the beginning. Medicinal properties?”

  “Mummy dust has been used for medical compounds for centuries to cure a variety of ailments. One of the more disgusting facts I have recently learned.”

  Portia pulled a face. “You mean people eat them?”

  “Drink them, actually. A pinch of mummy dust in an embrocation of other assorted ghoulish ingredients. Just imagine how much power a superstitious peasant mind might attribute to powdered mummy.”

  “I suppose,” she said slowly. “It was not so long ago that desperate syphilitics tried drinking from virgins’ skulls to cure their affliction.”

  “Yes,” I said lightly, trying not to dwell in the long shadows of previous investigations. There were things I had learned that I had never told my sister, and never would.

  “Public demonstration,” I continued. “Remember the unrolling we attended at the Duchess of Ottley’s? It was grotesque, but I am told the scientist who procured the mummy was paid a fantastic sum for the evening’s entertainment, particularly because the mummy was red-haired and therefore a rarity. Imagine how much more might be demanded for unrolling a pair of children.”

 
Portia shuddered. “Go on. You said speculation.”

  “Hm, yes. The unlikeliest of all,” I told her, “but entirely possible. What if Redwall looked at his coffin, empty and therefore less valuable? And what if he then decided to fill it, and thereby increase its value? Procure a pair of mummified children and etch some appropriate inscription into the cartouche. It would be a very simple matter to find another buyer then, one who would be willing to pay a great deal more than Redwall would have had to put up in the first place.”

  “Possible,” Portia said. She lapsed into silence then and I considered my theory. It fitted very well with what I had learned thus far of Redwall Allenby’s character. Opportunistic, resourceful, perhaps a little weak, and entirely ruthless when it suited him. I could well imagine him piecing together a superbly-fashioned hoax to fleece an unsuspecting lamb of a buyer. I made a note to delve further into Redwall Allenby’s notes and diaries. Whatever became of the Allenby ladies at this point, I would finish this investigation, I promised myself.

  “What will become of Lady Allenby?” I asked suddenly. In spite of her attempt on Brisbane’s life, I hated to think of her turned over to the authorities to hang for her crime. She was so old, so fragile. But even as I thought it, I pictured her gnarled hands cupped tightly over the head of her walking stick, her firm carriage, her indomitable will, and my pity withered a little.

  Portia shook her head. “Brisbane has not spoken of it. It is for him to say, you know. Perhaps he will not tell the authorities at all. She is very old.”

  Much as I did not like the idea of Lady Allenby in the hands of the law, I did not like the notion of Brisbane settling his score himself any better. His notions of justice were usually quite sound, but I wondered at his ability to remain impartial where the Allenbys were concerned.

  “I must ask him.” I rose then and Portia and I made our way back toward the house. The empty east wing cast long shadows over the grass, stretching out to meet us. Or capture us, I fancied. I could not imagine ever feeling entirely comfortable in the house again, and although I still admired the elegant lines and solid workmanship, it would always hold horrors for me. I was so reluctant to return to it that we walked the long way round the pond, watching the wind stir the reeds and ruffle the surface of the black water.