by C. S. Harris
“Some, yes. But without encouragement, few stayed around for long.”
“Do you remember any who were more persistent than the others?”
Tennyson thought about it a moment. “Well, I suppose Childe held out longer than most. But— Good God; no one could suspect him of such a deed.”
“Childe? You mean, Bevin Childe?”
“Yes. You know him? Frankly, I would have thought if anyone had a chance with Gabrielle, it would be Childe. I mean, the man has both a comfortable independence and a passion for antiquities that matched her own. She’d known him since she was still in the schoolroom—indeed, he claims he first fell in love with her when she was little more than a child in pigtails and a torn flounce. But she would have none of him.”
“How did he take her rejection of his suit?”
A touch of amusement lit up the barrister’s haggard features. “Frankly? With incredulity. No one could ever accuse Childe of having a low opinion of himself. At first he was convinced she was merely displaying what he called ‘a becoming degree of maidenly modesty.’ Then, when he was finally brought to understand that she was not so much shy as merely disinterested, he credited her lack of enthusiasm to an imperfect understanding of his worth. I’d never before realized what an insufferable bore the man could be. I’m afraid he made quite a cake of himself.”
“When did he finally get the hint?”
“That his suit was hopeless? I’m not certain he ever did. She was complaining about him shortly before I left for Kent.”
“Complaining about his disparagement of her theories about Camlet Moat, you mean?”
“No. About his continued refusal to accept her rejection of his suit as final.”
Chapter 31
Bevin Childe was feeling his way down the unlit stairs from his rooms in St. James’s Street when Sebastian stepped out of the shadows of the landing to grab the scholar by the back of his coat with both fists and swing him around to slam him face-first against the wall.
“Merciful heavens,” bleated the antiquary as his protuberant belly thwumped into the paneling. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. My purse is in the inner pocket of my coat. You’re welcome to it, sir, although I must warn you that you will find there scant reward for this brutish act of violence upon my person.”
“I am not interested in your bloody purse,” growled Sebastian.
“Devlin?” The antiquary went limp with relief. “Is that you?” He attempted to twist around but found himself frustrated when Sebastian tightened his grip. “Good God; I imagined you a cutpurse.” He stiffened with gathering outrage. “What is the meaning of this?”
Sebastian kept his voice low and deadly calm. “I should perhaps have warned you that when it comes to murder, I am not a patient man. And you, Mr. Childe, are sorely trying my patience.”
“There are laws in this country, you know. You can’t simply go around accosting gentlemen in their lodgings. It’s not legal. It’s not right. It’s not—not the done thing!”
Sebastian resisted the urge to laugh out loud. Instead, he leaned into the antiquary until the man’s plump face was squished sideways against the elegantly paneled wainscoting. “You didn’t tell me you were a suitor for Miss Tennyson’s hand. A disgruntled and annoyingly persistent suitor.”
“Well, it’s not the sort of thing a gentleman does go around talking about, now, is it? I mean, a man has his pride, don’t you know?”
“So you’re saying your pride was offended by Miss Tennyson’s rejection of your suit?”
Childe quivered, as if suddenly becoming aware of the pit yawning at his feet. “I don’t know if I’d say that, exactly.”
“Then what would you say? Exactly?”
“Women such as Miss Tennyson must be delicately wooed. But I’m a persistent man. I’ve no doubt my suit would eventually have prospered.”
“You’ve no doubt.”
“None.” Childe’s voice had grown in confidence to the point of sounding smug.
“So you would have me believe you didn’t know she’d recently fallen in love with a dashing young cavalry officer she met at the British Museum?”
“What?” Childe tried again to twist around, but Sebastian held him fast. “I don’t believe it! Who? Who is this man? This is nonsense. You’re making that up. It’s impossible.”
“You’d better hope I don’t discover that you did know.”
Childe blanched. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” said Sebastian, shifting his grip, “that there is a certain kind of man who doesn’t take kindly to the realization that the woman he’s decided to honor by making her his wife has scorned his courtship not because she was shy and needed to be ‘delicately wooed,’ but because she quite frankly preferred another man to him. What does it take to drive a man like you to violence, Childe? Hmm? A threat to your scholarly reputation? Or an affront to your manhood? How would you react, I wonder, if the very same woman who’d humiliated you as a suitor then threatened to destroy your credibility as an antiquary? Would that be enough to compel you to murder?”
Perspiration glistened on the man’s forehead and clustered in droplets on the end of his nose. A foul odor of sweat and fear rose from his person, and his voice, when he spoke, was a high-pitched crack. “This is madness. Miss Tennyson and I disagreed about the authenticity of the cross in Gough’s collection; that is all. My credibility as an antiquary was never threatened in any way.”
“Then why—”
Sebastian broke off at the sound of the street door opening below. Men’s voices, slurred by drink, echoed up the stairwell. He loosed his hold on the antiquary and took a step back.
“I’m not through with you. When I find out more, I’ll be back. And if I discover you’ve been lying to me, I can guarantee you’re going to regret it.”
Sebastian returned to Brook Street to find Hero perusing an improving pamphlet written by one Ezekiel Smyth and entitled Satan, Druidism, and the Path to Everlasting Damnation.
“Good God,” he said. “What are you reading?”
She laughed and cast it aside. “Believe it or not, this piece of sanctimonious drivel was written by George and Alfred Tennyson’s aunt, Mary Bourne.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Oh, but I am. She also attends a weekly Bible study class with one Reverend Samuel at the Savoy Chapel. Another member of the study group is none other than Lady Winthrop.”
He reached for the pamphlet and flipped through it. “Now, that’s interesting.”
“It is, isn’t it?” She looked over at him, her eyes narrowing. “You’ve split the shoulder seam of your coat; what have you been doing?”
He glanced down at his coat. “Ah. I hadn’t noticed. It could have been when Lieutenant Arceneaux tried to draw my cork for insulting the honor of the woman he loved—”
“How did you do that?”
“By asking if he lay with her. He says he did not, incidentally.”
“Do you believe him?”
“No. He did, however, provide me with one bit of information which proved to be valuable: It seems Mr. Bevin Childe was a suitor for Miss Tennyson’s hand—an annoying suitor who refused to take no for an answer. According to Hildeyard, the man has been in love with Gabrielle since she was a child.”
Hero stared at him. “Did you say, since she was a child?”
“Yes; why?”
But she simply shook her head and refused to be drawn any further.
Thursday, 6 August
By 9:50 the next morning, Hero was seated in her carriage outside the British Museum, a sketch pad open on her lap and her pencils sharpened and at the ready.
She had no illusions about her artistic abilities. She was able to draw a fairly credible, easily recognizable likeness of an individual. But her sketches were competent, nothing more. If she were a true artist, she could have sketched Bevin Childe from memory. As it was, that was beyond her.
And so she waited in the cool m
orning shade cast by the tall fronts of the town houses lining Great Russell Street. At exactly 9:58, a hackney pulled up outside the Pied Piper. His movements slow and ponderous in that stately way of his, Mr. Bevin Childe descended from the carriage, then stood on the flagway to pay his fare.
He cast one disinterested glance at the yellow-bodied carriage waiting near the museum, then strode across the street, his brass-handled walking stick tucked up under one arm.
Within the shadows of her carriage, Hero’s pencil scratched furiously, capturing in bold strokes the essence of his likeness.
As if somehow aware of her intense scrutiny, he paused for a moment outside the museum’s gatehouse, the high points of his shirt collar digging into his plump cheeks as he turned his head to glance around. Then he disappeared from her view.
She spent the next ten minutes refining her sketch, adding details and nuances. Then she ordered her coachman to drive to Covent Garden.
The man’s jaw sagged. “I beg your pardon, m’lady, but did you say ‘Covent Garden’?”
“I did.”
He bowed. “Yes, m’lady.”
Chapter 32
Sebastian was alone at his breakfast table reading the latest reports on the Americans’ invasion of Canada when a knock sounded at the entrance. He heard his majordomo, Morey, cross to open the front door; then a dog’s enthusiastic barking echoed in the hall.
Sebastian raised his head.
“Chien! No!” someone shouted. “Come back!”
Morey hissed. “Sir! I really must insist that you control your— Oh, merciful heavens.”
A scrambling clatter of nails sounded on the marble floor in the hall, and a familiar black and brown mongrel burst into the room, tail wagging and tongue lolling in confident expectation of an enthusiastic reception.
“So you’re proud of yourself, are you?” said Sebastian, setting aside his paper.
“Chien!” Lieutenant Philippe Arceneaux appeared in the doorway. “I do most profusely beg your pardon, my lord. Chien, heel!”
“It’s all right,” Sebastian told the anxious majordomo hovering behind the French officer. “The Lieutenant and his ill-mannered hound are both known to me. And no, you are not to take that as an invitation to further liberties,” he warned as the dog pawed at his gleaming Hessians. “Mar the shine on my boots, and Calhoun will nail your hide to the stable door. And if you think that an idle threat, you have obviously not yet made the acquaintance of my valet.”
“He might be more inclined to believe you,” observed Arceneaux with a smile, “if you were not pulling his ears.”
“Perhaps. Do come in and sit down, Lieutenant. May I offer you some breakfast? And no, that question was not addressed to you, you hell-born hound, so you can cease eyeing my ham with such soulful intent.”
“Thank you, my lord, but I have already eaten—we have both eaten,” he added, frowning at the dog. “Shame on you, Chien; you have the manners of a tatterdemalion. Come away from there.”
The dog settled on his hindquarters beside Sebastian’s chair and whined.
“Obedient too, I see,” observed Sebastian, draining his tankard.
“He likes you.”
“He likes my ham.”
Arceneaux laughed. Then his smile faded. “I have brought him with me because I have a request to make of you.”
Sebastian looked up from scratching behind the dog’s ears. “Oh?”
“It seems to me that if I could take Chien up to Camlet Moat, there’s a good possibility he might pick up some trace of Alfred and George, something to tell us where they’ve gone or what has happened to them. Something the authorities have missed. He was very fond of the children.”
Sebastian was silent for a moment, considering the implications of the request. “Sounds like a reasonable idea. But why come to me?”
“Because I am not allowed to journey more than a mile beyond the boundaries of the city. But if you were to square it with the authorities and go with us…”
Sebastian studied Arceneaux’s fine-boned, earnest face, with its boyish scattering of freckles and wide, sky blue eyes. “Why not? It’s worth a try.” He pushed to his feet. “See what you can do to keep your faithful hound out of the ham while I order my curricle brought round.”
A bored clerk at the Admiralty, the government department in charge of all prisoners of war, grudgingly granted permission for Arceneaux to leave London in Sebastian’s custody. As they left the crowded streets of the city behind, Sebastian let his hands drop; the chestnuts leapt forward, and Chien scrambled upright on the seat between the two men, his nose lifted and eyes half closed in blissful appreciation of the rushing wind.
Sebastian eyed the mongrel with a healthy dose of skepticism. “Personally, I wouldn’t have said he numbered any bloodhounds amongst his diverse and doubtless disreputable ancestry.”
Arceneaux looped an arm over the happy animal’s shoulders. “Perhaps not. But the boys used to play hide-and-seek with him, and he was always very good at finding them.”
Sebastian steadied his horses. “When you drove Miss Tennyson and the lads out to the moat last week, did you take Chien with you?”
“I never said I—”
“Just answer the bloody question.”
Arceneaux let out a huff of resignation. “We did, yes.” A faint smile of remembrance lightened his features. “Chien leapt into the moat after a duck and then rolled around in the loose dirt beside the trenches. Gabrielle told him he was not welcome up there ever again.”
The Frenchman fell silent, his grip on the dog tightening as he stared off across the sun-drenched fields, his own thoughts doubtless lost in the past. It wasn’t until they had reached the overgrown woods of the chase that he said, “I’ve been thinking and thinking, trying to come up with some reason for her to have taken the boys there again this past Sunday.” He shook his head. “But I can’t.”
“Did you know that Bevin Childe had in his possession a lead cross that was said to have come from the graves of King Arthur and Guinevere?”
“Mon dieu. You can’t mean the Glastonbury Cross?”
“That’s it. Childe claims to have found it along with a box of old bones amongst the collections he’s been cataloging at Gough Hall. But Miss Tennyson was convinced it was a recent forgery.”
“Is that what she was talking about? But…if that’s all it was, why wouldn’t she have told me?”
“I was hoping perhaps you could help explain that. I gather the controversy surrounding the discovery of Arthur’s grave in the twelfth century is considerable?”
Arceneaux nodded. “The problem is, it all seems just a shade too tidy. At the time, the Anglo-Norman kings were facing considerable opposition to their attempts to conquer Wales, and much of that resistance used Arthur as a rallying cry. The country people still believed in the old legends—that Arthur had never really died and would one day return from the mystical Isle of Avalon to expel the forces of evil.”
“With the Normans and the Plantagenet kings being identified as the forces of evil?”
“Basically, yes. The thing of it was, you see, there was no grave anyone could point to and say, ‘Here lies King Arthur, dead and buried.’ That made it easy for people to believe that he hadn’t actually died—and could therefore someday return. So the grave’s discovery was a true boon to the Plantagenets. They could then say, ‘See, Arthur is dead. Here is his grave. He’s not coming back. We are his rightful heirs.’”
“Why Glastonbury Abbey?”
“Well, at one time the site of Glastonbury actually was a misty island surrounded by marshland, which helps give some credibility to the association with Avalon. But what makes the monks’ discovery particularly suspect is that at the time they claimed to have found Arthur’s grave, the abbey church had just burned down and their chief patron and benefactor—Henry the Second himself—had died. They needed money, and what better way to increase their pilgrim traffic than with the discovery of the burial
site of King Arthur and his queen?”
“In other words, it was all a hoax.”
“It’s tempting to see it that way. The problem is, if it was simply a scheme to increase the abbey’s revenue, then the monks didn’t do a very good job of advertising their find. And the way the burial was described—sixteen feet down, in a hollowed-out log—sounds oddly appropriate to a sixth-century burial. One would have thought that if they were manufacturing a hoax, the monks in their ignorance would have come up with something a bit more…” He hesitated, searching for the right word.
“Regal?” suggested Sebastian, guiding his horses onto the narrow track that led to the moat.
“Yes.”
“I’m told the cross disappeared during the Commonwealth.”
“It did, although it was reportedly seen early in the last century.”
“In other words, Bevin Childe could conceivably have found the Glastonbury Cross amongst the collection he’s been cataloging—leaving aside the question of whether it was actually manufactured in the twelfth century or the sixth.”
“Theoretically, I suppose he could have.”
“So why was Miss Tennyson convinced it was a recent forgery?”
Arceneaux looked out over the shady glade surrounding the moat. “I don’t know. I gather Childe believes the cross to be genuine—at least to the twelfth century?”
“So he claims.”
“Where is it? Would it be possible for me to see it?”
Sebastian drew up near the land bridge to the island, the horses snorting and sidling nervously. Tom jumped down and ran to their heads.
“Unfortunately, no. Childe claims Miss Tennyson threw it into Gough Hall’s ornamental lake the Friday before she died.”
“She did what?”
Sebastian dropped to the ground, his boots sinking into the soft earth. “I gather she had something of a temper?”
“She did, yes.” Arceneaux climbed down more carefully, the dog bounding after him. “But it still seems a strange thing to have done.”