“Are you hurt?” he asked me in a low voice, never taking his eyes from Ailith.
“Just a bruise, nothing more,” I told him.
“Good.” He tightened his grip upon Ailith’s arm. “If you had hurt her, I would have thrown you off this crag and smiled as I did it. As it is, it will be my very great pleasure to watch you hang.”
He paused and wiped the blood from his face with his free hand. “Ailith Allenby, I am holding you for the attempted murder of Valerius March,” he said flatly.
“And yours,” I told him, prodding him in the ribs. He winced a little, and noticed then the ever-widening red stain on his shirt. “It was she who poisoned you, not Lady Allenby.”
“Yes, I did know that,” he said. He spoke to me, but his gaze never wavered from her face. “That was why I sent her mother away. Lady Allenby was in as much danger from her as I.”
Ailith laughed then, doubling over and screaming her mirth to the teeming skies. It echoed over the moor and rolled back to us. There was madness in that laughter, and I wondered I had not seen it in her before.
“You stupid man, even now you don’t understand, do you? You’re still the filthy ignorant Gypsy brat you always were. I am an Allenby, a daughter of kings. I am not subject to your laws,” she told him, raising her chin high and staring at him with all the disdain of an empress.
She looked at me then and gave me a little smile, and I knew what she meant to do. I could not have stopped her, even if I had wished to. There was no time.
With her uninjured arm, she gave Brisbane an unexpected shove, catching him off guard and rocking him back on his heels. Then she straightened her back and simply stepped off the side of the crag. There was no mad laughter now. There was only the long, deathly drop and the faint tolling of the Grimswater bell through the soft, muffling rain as Ailith Allenby fell to the rocks on the moor below.
THE TWENTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER
Be just, and fear not.
—William Shakespeare
Henry VIII
It was a difficult job getting Valerius off the crag. The wound to Brisbane’s chest was shallow but bleeding freely, making rather a mess of things until I demanded a knife to cut my skirt hem to make a bandage. He handed me Ailith’s knife and I felt my stomach churn at the sight of it. But I put my hand to the grip and sliced through the tweed, hacking off enough cloth to bind Brisbane’s wound until he could be properly stitched.
Brisbane hefted Val onto his shoulders, his teeth gritted against the pain that must have seared his ribs. But he held my brother steady and set his face against the rain and the wind to carry him to Rosalie’s cottage as it was the nearest shelter. Hilda followed, her eyes red with unshed tears. She did not look back at the broken body of her sister.
Without speaking of it, we hurried as fast as we dared to the cottage. John-the-Baptist hastened out to help and he and Brisbane carried Val in between them. Rosalie bustled about, collecting what she would need to nurse them both and to attend to the rest of us.
I sat by the fire, bone-tired and drenched to the skin, pressing a cloth soaked in calendula water to my cheek. Rook the lurcher came to sit with me, putting his head onto my lap. He did not seem to mind when my tears dampened his fur, and I stroked him for what seemed like hours. I kept reliving that terrible moment when I had rounded the boulder on the crag and seen Brisbane, menacing and vengeful, and Ailith, teetering on the edge of the crag, giving every appearance of pleading for her life. It would have been so easy to have made the wrong choice, I reflected. It was only by the smallest chance I had not.
“Lady.” I looked up and there was Rosalie, holding out a warm wrapper of bright scarlet cotton. “I have already made Miss Hilda change. You must get out of those wet things. You will catch your death. I have brewed a posset for you, and John-the-Baptist has hung a curtain. You can change there. Let me look at your cheek.”
Gently, she pulled the cloth away, and peered closely at my face, then nodded. “It will not even swell. I will give you a salve of calendula and thyme. It will help you to heal. Use it often, and there will not even be a scar to remind you.”
I did not think I should require a scar to remind me of the day’s events, but I was too tired to argue.
She coaxed me to stand and I saw that Val had been settled into her little bed, his head neatly bandaged, his tanned face still too white and unnaturally still.
“Will he—” I did not want to ask it.
She patted me. “He will be fine, if God wills. We have done all that can be done.”
Hilda was sitting perfectly still in a chair next to the bed. She was dressed in a bright green blouse and blue skirt, the colours incongruous against the moment. She did not look at me, nor did she speak. She simply sat, staring at Val’s pale face.
I turned then to see Brisbane, stripped to the waist, sipping something that steamed in the cup, something bitter from the expression on his face. His uncle was plying a needle and thin silk thread, neatly stitching up a long, shallow gash across his ribs.
I swallowed hard and Rosalie patted me again. “There is no one with a better hand to the needle than a Gypsy harness-maker,” she told me firmly. She steered me behind the curtain, and when I made no move to lift my hands, she came with me, briskly undressing me and rubbing my skin with a rough towel. My skin was tingling by the time she had finished, and I was warm for the first time since I had seen Val lying broken on the crag. Rosalie helped me into the wrapper, knotting the sash snugly at my waist. She cleaned the gouges on my hands and cheek then, careful not to hurt me. Then she unbound my hair and brushed it until it crackled.
“There. Now for your posset,” she said firmly. She seated me next to the fire again and gave me a steaming cup like the one Brisbane was drinking from. It was bitter, full of tea and herbs and something potently alcoholic. I felt energised and much the better after I drank it.
John-the-Baptist set the last stitch and Rosalie handed Brisbane a pot of salve to daub onto the wound. He obeyed and she bound it neatly with clean strips of white linen while John-the-Baptist brought him a fresh shirt and cleaned the cut to his brow. We looked rather more reputable then, and Rosalie brewed tea and ladled out mugs of hot soup as John-the-Baptist departed to take a message to the Hall.
I had no appetite for soup, but drank my tea, feeling a hundred years old and saying nothing. Hilda was finally persuaded to take some posset, but she drank less than half of it, letting the rest of it grow cold in the cup.
Brisbane did not speak either, and Rosalie asked no questions. She knew the answers would come soon enough, and I almost dreaded the arrival of my sister when we would have to explain what had happened on Thorn Crag.
Rosalie brewed tea for everyone and was just putting out new bread and butter when John-the-Baptist returned with Portia and Mrs. Butters, Minna and Godwin in tow.
I roused from my torpor. “Portia, dearest, why have you brought the entire household?”
She shrugged. “It hardly seems fair to keep them out of it now. It is a family affair, and Godwin is an Allenby.” She took a little stool next to me and dropped her voice. “And apparently Godwin and Minna have an understanding,” she told me, lifting her brows significantly. “We shall have to write her mother.”
I thought of Godwin standing before me on the moor path after he had helped me out of the boggy mud. I want you to think well of me, he had said. And I thought of how badly I had misinterpreted his interest in me. He might well have acted the part of the country gallant, but he did not want me; he wanted my approval of his match with Minna. I shook my head, wondering how many other things I had misunderstood since I had come to Grimsgrave.
Rosalie found low stools for Minna and Godwin, while Mrs. Butters took the last chair at Portia’s insistence. John-the-Baptist stood a little distance apart, but Rosalie came to sit with the rest of us at the table. It was quite a snug fit for the cottage, but I felt comforted at having so many of us there, and I fancied the others felt the
same.
It was Brisbane who spoke first. He looked from Godwin to Mrs. Butters as he addressed them.
“Godwin, Mrs. Butters,” he said softly, “I am sorry to tell you Ailith Allenby is dead.”
Mrs. Butters said nothing for a long moment. Then she nodded toward the cut on his brow, a thin, wicked slash that only enhanced his resemblance to a pirate. “Is tha’ her handiwork?”
Brisbane nodded.
“I am only sorry she harmed you before she died,” Mrs. Butters replied calmly. “I will not pray for her. The devil looks after his own, so the Scriptures tell us.”
I blinked at her and Portia gave a little gasp which she covered with a cough, but not successfully. “I thought that was Shakespeare,” she murmured to me.
Mrs. Butters turned to her, her expression one of mild surprise. “Have I shocked you, Lady Bettiscombe? I am sorry for it. But Ailith Allenby was wicked, through and through. She always was, even as a child, and Redwall was just the same. It was bad blood, you know. A little weakness in a family is a small matter. A tendency to melancholia, or a love of drink, these may be overcome by fresh blood coming into the line. But the Allenbys seldom married outside of their own. They insisted upon maintaining the purest blood in Britain, and they paid for it.”
Her expression took on a faraway look, as if she were telling a faery story to children. “I saw it in Sir Alfred’s mother when I first came to Grimsgrave. She were elderly then and nearly an invalid. But she lived in mortal hatred of cats. Whenever one came to Grimsgrave, she drowned it herself in the pond. I daresay tha’s what gave Lady Allenby the idea.”
“Lady Allenby?” I asked.
Mrs. Butters’ smile was infinitely sad. “The twins, my dear. Ailith’s children. Lady Allenby drowned them in the pond in front of the house, just after they was born.”
Brisbane went a shade paler under the olive of his complexion, and Portia and I exchanged shocked glances, but Rosalie’s expression did not change.
“You knew she had been pregnant,” I said suddenly. “You gave her raspberry leaf tea when I first came here.”
Rosalie nodded. “She bore the twins last year. She was too old to bear for the first time, and the birth tore her womb. It has never been strong since. She used to come to me for remedies. The raspberry leaf was soothing.”
Portia shook her head. “Ailith bore illegitimate twins? And her mother killed her own grandchildren? I cannot take it in. They must have all been mad as hatters.”
“They were,” I said softly, casting a glance at Hilda. She was silent, her head resting against the back of her chair, her eyes closed. I went on. “Mad enough to let Redwall embalm the children and make mummies of them. But he left clues in their wrappings, a pair of amulets, the knot of Isis and a golden ram. They were tokens to symbolise the parents. The knot of Isis stood for Ailith, the tall, golden goddess. And the ram stood for…” I glanced at Godwin, the sheep farmer who had been so poorly used by his cousins. I cleared my throat and proceeded. “The ram was the symbol of the god Osiris, the husband and brother of Isis, and it stood for Redwall Allenby.”
Hilda gave a low moan of disbelief and dropped her head into her hands. Portia stared at me. “Ailith Allenby gave birth to twins fathered by her own brother?”
“Yes,” I told her, gaining confidence as I finally remembered what had stirred in my mind when I had seen the little sketches of the Isis knot and the ram in Redwall’s journal.
“Redwall left a clue in his journal. He sketched the knot of Isis and the ram and beneath it he wrote, Seven Days, the title of an Egyptian love poem.” I paused and cleared my throat, then began to recite.
Seven days since I saw my sister,
And sickness invaded me;
I am heavy in all my limbs,
My body has forsaken me.
When the physicians come to me,
My heart rejects their remedies;
The magicians are quite helpless,
My sickness is not discerned.
To tell me “She is here” would revive me!
I glanced around to see a mixture of horror and revulsion and sadness on the faces gathered in the little cottage. “Egyptian love poems often used the terms ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ when referring to lovers,” I finished. “But Redwall meant them quite literally. He must have begun his seduction of Ailith even before he returned home from Egypt. She was his golden goddess, his sister-queen, and to his mind, she was his only worthy consort.”
“Madness,” Portia breathed.
“But it is true, isn’t it, Mrs. Butters? It makes sense, really. They were always together, thick as thieves when they were children. Only the Allenby pride, twisted to madness by now, would not let them marry outside of their own blood. And Redwall began to study Egyptology. There was a strong precedent there for fraternal marriage. The gods did it, and so did the pharaohs. Cleopatra married two of her brothers. It was a means of keeping the blood pure and the power within the family. And so these two beautiful, mad individuals came together and conceived a pair of twins.”
“Yes, it is true,” Hilda said, opening her eyes slowly. She rose and came to the table, moving as stiffly as an old woman. Godwin stood and she took his seat, leaving him to stand next to the fireplace. She began to speak, and it was akin to watching a purge. The words flowed out, slowly at first, then faster as she released them.
“They were lovers. I saw them at it once, at the chapel by the river. They had always been close, and when he left for Egypt, Ailith was the one he wrote to every week, without fail. I do not know if it was the distance that blunted him to the fact she was his sister, or if it was his illness.”
“His illness?” Portia prompted softly.
“Malaria. He contracted a virulent form of it,” Brisbane put in. “He was dosing himself with quinine, massive amounts.”
“Oughtn’t that to have made him better?” Portia inquired.
“Not the amount he was taking. The cure can be worse than the ailment. He was already suffering from a touch of deafness and spells of dizziness, as well as hallucinations. I warned Lord Evandale that he wasn’t to be trusted in that state. Lord Evandale sent his doctors, but Redwall would have none of it. He was too far sunk into his depravity by then.”
“It was a pretext,” Hilda put in bitterly. “An excuse for him to do what he liked. Mama indulged him so, and Ailith did as well. Only I saw him for what he truly was—a monster. But I never imagined that there might have been children. It is too horrible to be believed.”
She lapsed into silence, and I resumed the thread of my narrative. “I wonder if Ailith was horrified when she realised she was going to bear a child? Perhaps it had all been a dream to her, something not entirely real, a bit of play-acting. A romance of sorts for a girl with a romantic imagination who had never had a lover. And then she knew she would have to tell her mother what had happened.”
“She was not horrified,” Mrs. Butters corrected, her chin quivering with indignation. “She was proud, proud as the devil she was. She actually thought her mother would understand. She and Redwall went to her hand in hand. They wanted to go right away together, to start anew and pass themselves off as man and wife. Lady Allenby persuaded them to stay. She told them Ailith would require nursing after the birth, and tha’ she was the one best suited to do so discreetly.”
“But she did not approve, did she?” I asked.
Mrs. Butters shook her head. “Tha’ was when her religion became an obsession with her. She prayed for hours on her knees, until sores opened and when she could no longer kneel, she lay right on the floor before the Crucifix. She never said, but I think she was praying for God to take the child before it was born. She shut Ailith in her room and told everyone she had taken a bad chill and must not be disturbed. And every day she went on her knees to beg God to intervene. Ailith delivered twins, healthy, beautiful children. It must have seemed to Lady Allenby as if God himself had forsaken her. But she knew what she had to do.”
Mrs. Butters paused in her story, looking into the depths of her teacup. “She took the babies from Ailith. She told her they must be cleaned before they could be swaddled. And she carried them out to the pond and drowned them, praying over them all the while. Then she took them back inside and dried them and gave them to Redwall. She told him sometimes healthy babies die for no reason. He were out of his mind with grief and sickness. He would believe anything she told him. He wanted to preserve them forever. He began to mummify them.”
She nodded toward Godwin. “You knew. Ailith had been able to hide her pregnancy for a very long time. She favoured those wide, old-fashioned skirts, she did. But at the end, you knew she was carrying. You’re a clever lad and you’ve seen enough ewes at lambing to know what breeding looks like.
You listened at doors and peered in windows as well, and you knew what had happened. You went to Redwall and Redwall promised you a sum of money to be quiet, did he not? He also promised to leave you the farm in his will,” she added.
“A promise he didn’t keep,” Godwin put in, his face flushing.
“Did you know about the children, Godwin?” I asked him. I thought of Ailith’s insistence that he had been there, but she had said quite distinctly that “she” had taken her babies. I wondered which version was the truth. Godwin’s eyes held mine for a long moment, then he nodded.
“Aye. And I would not have thought it possible, but Redwall hated me the more for it. The thieving bastard would have cheated me. He meant to take the gardener’s cottage from me, told me so just before he died. He would have turned me out to starve if he’d lived.”
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