by C. S. Harris
“You mean, back when it was still crawling with smelly monks who delighted in burning witches and heretics and thought women the spawn of Satan?”
She laughed. “Yes. Then.”
Watched by half a dozen or so interested ewes, they crossed the meadow toward the ruins, the morning sun drenching the timeworn walls with a rich golden light. Most of the scattered outbuildings—the gatehouse and infirmary, guesthouses and mill—had long ago been reduced to unrecognizable piles of weed-choked rubble. But nearly the entire west end of the church with its three processional doorways and huge rose window was still intact, along with large stretches of the main mass of monastic buildings.
While Hero poked around the outside the complex, Sebastian went to stand in the church’s ruined central portal. The roof was long gone, leaving the once elegant interior open to the blue, cloudless sky. A row of weathered columns marched along the south side of the nave, separating it from the aisle, and tall pointed arches still marked the crossing. He drew in a long, slow breath and felt the haunting, melancholy beauty of the place call to something deep within him.
“I’d like to have seen Emma Chance’s drawings of this place,” he said when Hero came to stand beside him. “I’d think an artist could easily spend days here.”
“Is this the last thing she drew, do you think?” Hero asked, her gaze on the weathered carvings of saints and sinners that decorated the deep portal.
“I suppose she could have done some sketches down by the river after she left here. We still don’t know exactly when or even where she was killed.”
They picked their way across the ruined interior of the church, to an opening that led to what would once have been the cloisters. Substantial sections of the chapter house, refectory, and dorter that had once clustered around the cloisters remained, along with sections of the cloister’s exquisite fan vaulting.
The monastery might have been founded in the eleventh century, but it appeared to have undergone a massive rebuilding during the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, with little of the earlier Norman work remaining. The steady stream of pilgrims attracted by the miraculous powers of St. Hilary’s Virgin had brought great wealth to the once humble priory. For the greater glory of their God and as an inspiration to his followers, the monks had rebuilt their church to soaring new heights and adorned it with magnificent carvings and frescoes and glorious stained-glass windows. They’d filled their library with illuminated texts and adorned their altars with precious plate of silver and gold. And for the old and sick, they had built a two-story infirmary and a lepers’ hospital.
Sebastian’s own belief in the religious instruction of his youth hadn’t survived the ugly realities of war. But that didn’t alter his respect for the centuries of tonsured men who’d once devoted themselves to a spiritual life of contemplation and prayer and service. And he found himself wondering what it must have been like for those nameless, humble men to stand and watch, helpless, while those who claimed to worship the same God destroyed everything they’d worked so hard to build up in his name.
Much of what was valuable—starting with the lead from the roofs—would have been stripped and sold. But far more would have been left to the destruction of the elements. The beautifully carved wooden rood screens and misericords had probably been broken up for firewood by the poor, while the library’s ancient, beautifully illuminated manuscripts were hauled off by the cartload to soapmakers or torn up to line workmen’s boots and furnish a bountiful supply of rare, soft rags for the village jakes.
That’s what haunts this place, he thought. It’s the despair and anguish of the monks who poured their energy and joy, their very lives, into this monastery, only to see it destroyed. And he wondered, when they watched the windblown rain ruin the frescoes and carvings left open to the sky, when they heard the screams of their brethren burned alive for choosing devotion to God over duty to king, did they still believe in their god? Somehow, he suspected they did.
But he couldn’t help but wonder about the greedy, powerful men who’d torn the lead off the monastery’s roofs and sold it. How could they still claim to be good Christian men even as they pocketed their ill-gotten silver? And he found his gaze straying up the hill, to where the massive Tudor chimneys of Northcott Abbey rose high above the leafy treetops of its vast park.
Hero said quietly, “I thought I’d feel her here. But I don’t.”
“No. The past is too strong here,” he said, conscious of a welling of frustration tinged with what he recognized as anger directed toward himself. Nearly three days had now passed since Emma Chance’s death, and he was no closer to understanding what had happened to her than he had been standing in the water meadows on that first misty morning.
What he needed, he realized, was to talk to someone who knew the village well yet remained apart from it. Someone who combined an insider’s knowledge and understanding with an outsider’s perspective.
Someone like Ayleswick’s new schoolmaster.
Daray Flanagan was sitting on his front stoop when Sebastian walked up and introduced himself.
The Irish schoolmaster’s feet were bare except for his darned socks, and he had an apron tied over his clothes as he worked at blacking a pair of worn boots.
“You’ve caught me at a most ungentlemanly occupation,” said Flanagan, grimacing down at his dirty hands.
“Boots are important,” said Sebastian.
“That they are.” Flanagan reached for a rag and began polishing his left boot. “You’re here about the murders, I take it? Don’t know how much I can help you. Only spoke to the unfortunate young gentlewoman briefly when I saw her painting one time. And I can’t say I recall encountering the fellow from London at all.”
Sebastian propped one shoulder against the cottage’s dark, half-timbered framing. “Why do you think they were killed?”
Flanagan shook his head as he blew out a long, sorrowful breath. “I’d have said I understood this place and the people in it fairly well by now. But . . . it’s obvious I was mistaken.”
“Any chance it could have something to do with the presence here of Lucien Bonaparte?”
Flanagan slanted a sideways look at him. “Never tell me you’re thinking Bonaparte killed them.”
“Not personally, no.”
“So one of his servants? Is that what you’re suggesting?” The schoolmaster rubbed the toe of his boot in thoughtful silence. “Why would he?”
“I suppose that would depend on why Emma Chance was here.”
Flanagan was no fool; he understood immediately what Sebastian was suggesting. “You’re saying she could have been sent to spy on him?”
“It’s possible.”
Flanagan shifted his attention to the boot’s heel, his jaw set hard. “Me, I wish the French bastard had never come within a hundred miles of Shropshire. I’ve had more than enough of the French and their killing to last me a lifetime—and then some.”
Technically, Bonaparte was Corsican, not French. But Sebastian simply said, “How well do you know Lady Seaton?”
Flanagan’s face creased with amusement. “How well you think I know her, then? Her being a grand lady, and me a poor Irish schoolmaster? Or were you thinking she invites me out to Sunday mass at her little private chapel there at Northcott Abbey?”
“You’re Catholic?”
“I was. My father used up all his savings to send me to the seminary to be trained as a priest.”
“What happened?”
“The Revolution happened.”
At the time of the French Revolution, Catholic seminaries were illegal in Great Britain and Ireland; as a result, anyone wanting to become a priest was forced to study on the Continent. Sebastian said, “I take it your seminary was in France?”
Flanagan reached for his second boot and said simply, “Nantes.”
Sebastian studied the Irish
man’s inscrutable profile. He now understood Flanagan’s earlier passing comment about the French and their killing.
A beautiful, ancient city at the mouth of the Loire River, Nantes had been the site of one of the most horrific episodes of the Revolution. The revolutionaries had slaughtered so many of the city’s inhabitants that Madame Guillotine quickly proved inadequate. In the end, thousands of men, women, and children—most guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time—were stripped naked and thrown into the river to drown.
“You managed to escape before the worst of the Terror?” said Sebastian.
“No, I wasn’t that wise. But I was one of the lucky ones: the troop of soldiers they sent to our seminary gave us a choice: renounce our religious vows and join the army, or be drowned in the river.” Flanagan’s eyes narrowed with something that looked like amusement but was not. “Guess which I chose?”
“I doubt anyone could blame you for that.”
“You don’t think so? M’father never forgave me. Died cursing me, or so I’ve been told. Having a son who was a priest—or at least a martyr—was supposed to be his ticket into heaven, and I let him down. I’ve always wondered what he’d done that was so bloody awful he figured he needed my help staying out of hell.”
“How long were you with the French army?”
“Two endless years. I suppose I could have tried to make a break for it sooner, but I figured all I’d succeed in doing would be to get myself shot as a deserter. So I waited until we were down by the Swiss border, then just walked across it one dark night. Almost starved to death before I found an English family in Geneva willing to take me on as a tutor for their son.”
“Did you ever go back to Ireland?”
“Never did, no.”
“Because your father was dead?”
Flanagan gave a short laugh. “No. Because my mother is still very much alive. Would break her heart, it would, to know I’ve lost my faith. And I couldn’t hide it from her. I suppose there are some as can witness such things and retain their belief in a benevolent, all-wise God. But I fear I’m not one of them.”
Flanagan had given up on his boots. For a long moment the two men simply shared a silence, their thoughts lost in a painful past.
Flanagan said, “Course, the French are all good Catholics again, now that Napoléon’s been cozying up to the Pope.” He eased his right foot into its boot. “Amazing what a difference twenty years and a shift in official policy can make.”
Sebastian watched Flanagan reach for his second boot and asked again, “Who do you think killed Emma Chance?”
The schoolmaster hesitated, that pinched look back around his eyes. “I knew one of the men in charge of the drownings in Nantes: a lawyer by the name of Renard. If anyone had asked before the Revolution what manner of man I thought he was, I’d have said he was gentle, devout, kind. Yet he personally supervised the murder of thousands of men, women, and children. Thousands—some no more than babes in arms. He herded them naked and begging for mercy onto barges, and then he towed them out into the middle of the river and drowned them. I’m told it’s a hideous way to die, drowning.”
“Like suffocating,” said Sebastian.
Flanagan turned his head to look at him, his face held tight and flat. “Twenty years ago, in Nantes, I couldn’t begin to understand how Jacques Renard could do the things he did. And I can’t understand here, today in Ayleswick, how someone I know could have murdered that beautiful and talented young woman. Yet someone did.”
“There aren’t many men could do such a thing,” said Sebastian. “Hold a woman down for three to five minutes and watch her slowly die.”
Flanagan grunted. “You think so? If there’s one thing the French Revolution and the noyades of Nantes taught me, it’s that most people’s capacity for evil is infinitely greater than we’d like to believe.
“Infinitely,” he said again, then slipped his left foot into its boot and stomped down hard.
Chapter 25
Archie arrived home from his expedition to Ludlow early that evening. He was hot, dusty, tired, and cranky.
“Two blasted days!” said the Squire, hunching forward on his bench to prop his elbows on the boards before him when he and Sebastian compared notes over a couple of tankards of ale in the Blue Boar’s taproom. “I spent the better part of two days interviewing everyone from the Feathers’ innkeeper to the ostlers and scullery maids. And I didn’t learn a blessed thing.”
“I take it Emma Chance left no permanent address with them either?”
“No. Which is strange, don’t you think?”
“Yes.”
“She was there five days. The chambermaids say she must have done a fair amount of shopping, for she had any number of boxes and parcels delivered from dressmakers and milliners and such. But beyond that, no one could tell me anything.”
“How did she arrive there? By the mail?”
“If only! That would at least have given us some indication of where she’d traveled from. But she came in a gig, and no one was familiar with the lad who drove her. He simply let her off and went away again.”
“And she traveled without her own abigail?”
“She did. Told some tale about the girl breaking her leg, which is why she needed to hire a new one.”
Sebastian swiped a thumb across the condensation on his tankard. “I’d say you learned something.”
Archie stared at him. “I did? What?”
“You learned that she went out of her way to disguise who she was and where she’d come from.”
“I suppose I did. But . . . why? Why would she do such a thing?”
Sebastian took a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and slid it across the table to the young magistrate. “The chambermaid found this list of names when she was cleaning Emma Chance’s room.”
Archie frowned as he ran through the list. “Good God; I’m on here.” He looked up at Sebastian. “Why is my name here? And why has it been crossed out? Mine and Samuel Atwater’s. Samuel Atwater? What does it mean?”
“I’ve no idea. But it’s an interesting collection of individuals. The only one I’ve yet to speak with is young Lord Seaton, who isn’t here.”
Archie nodded. “He’s gone to Windermere.” He read through the names again, his frown deepening.
Sebastian said, “Tell me about him.”
“Crispin?” Archie looked up. “We were great friends as young lads. But the Seatons are Catholic, you know. So while my father was able to send me to Eton, Crispin had to go to Stonyhurst.” Catholics were forbidden to attend schools such as Eton and Winchester or Oxford and Cambridge. It was only in the last two decades that they’d been allowed to establish their own educational institutions; before that, they’d had to send their sons and daughters to the Continent. Archie shrugged. “We sort of went our separate ways after that.”
“What’s he like?”
“Well . . .” Archie shrugged again with all the discomfort of one little given to analyzing his fellow men. “My father always said he was an idealistic dreamer with more passion than sense. But then, my father could be a bit harsh in his judgments.” He set the list aside. “Crispin’s been gone for at least a fortnight. So why is his name on this list?”
Sebastian took a slow sip of his ale. “Have you spoken to Higginbottom?”
“About the postmortem, you mean?” Archie turned a bit pale. “I stopped by there on my way back from Ludlow. He’s a sadistic bastard, isn’t he? Showed me her heart and lungs and wanted me to see the rest of her, but those bits were enough for me, I’m afraid.”
Sebastian said, “I’d be interested to take a look at the clothes she was wearing when she was killed.”
“I can ask Nash to pick them up in the morning when he collects the body for the inquest.” Emma Chance’s inquest was scheduled to begin at ten th
e following morning. Because the coroner and a fair number of the jurors would be coming from Ludlow, the county was saving money by scheduling Hannibal Pierce’s inquest directly after hers.
As a witness to the death of Pierce, Sebastian had received an official summons from the coroner requiring him to give testimony. But without any suspects, neither inquest was likely to be more than a necessary formality to be gone through before the bodies could be released for burial.
Archie hesitated a moment, then said, “Why do you want to see her clothes?”
“They might tell us something. I doubt Higginbottom paid much attention to them.”
Archie chewed thoughtfully on the inside of one cheek. “Did Higginbottom tell you she was still a maiden?”
“He did.”
“It happens sometimes, I suppose. Doesn’t it? With a marriage of convenience or . . . or some sort of physical irregularity, perhaps?”
“Perhaps,” said Sebastian.
The young magistrate blinked. “But you don’t think so?”
“Very little about Emma Chance seems to add up.” Sebastian drained his tankard and set it aside. “I suspect if we could figure out why, we’d be a fair ways toward discovering who killed her—and Pierce.”
Archie scrubbed his hands down over his face. “I still can’t believe there’ve been two murders in the village in less than a week. What the devil is going on around here?” His gaze met Sebastian’s, and Sebastian read in his troubled gray eyes another question, one the young Squire couldn’t quite bring himself to voice:
Is it going to happen again?
That night, long after they made love, Hero was aware of Devlin still lying awake beside her.
After more than a year of sharing this man’s life, she knew how personally he took each murder, knew the way he came to live and breathe each investigation. But she’d never known him to be as troubled as he was by this one. She suspected it had something to do with his own reasons for coming to this village. But it also had something to do with the village itself.