At that moment I felt an overwhelming urge to throw something heavy at his head. I left him instead. Maiming him would be a very poor start to our betrothal, sham or not.
I lingered in bed the next morning, nursing my physical ailments and hiding from my sister. A spectacular violet bruise had blossomed across my ribs from the blow struck by Ailith’s knife against my corset. Morag helped me to dress, buttoning me into the only ensemble I owned that did not require a corset. It was a casual affair of bottle-green velvet, more suited to entertaining privately at home than being seen in public, but it was the best I could manage under the circumstances.
She told me Valerius had been awake for hours and had taken a nice bowl of beef tea and cursed Portia for fixing a fresh bandage too tightly about his head. In defiance of convention, Hilda had sat with him through the night and had finally retired to her own bed for some needed rest.
Morag said nothing of my erstwhile betrothal so I judged the story had not yet made its way belowstairs. My sister was another story altogether. No sooner had I seated myself at the table for breakfast than she pushed away her empty plate and fixed me with a sour smile.
“I hear congratulations are in order. Shall I buy you a wedding present? What would you like? A nice set of fruit knives, perhaps?”
Mrs. Butters bustled over with a plate of piping hot eggs and bacon, a rack of crisp toast, and a steaming pot of tea. Jetty was weeping quietly into her apron in the corner. Apparently, she had taken the news of Godwin’s betrothal to Minna rather hard.
I took my first exquisite bite of breakfast and savoured it before turning to Portia.
“Don’t let’s be peevish. You always thought Brisbane and I would make a match of it.”
“Yes, well, I didn’t think you would be so furtive about the whole business. Brisbane said you have had an understanding since he left Bellmont just before Christmas.”
My mind whipped back to that last moment, full of unspoken yearning, when we knew we would not see one another for a long time, if ever. I thought of what he had said to me, his lips against my hair, and what he had told me later still, when he lingered at the door. A woman could easily interpret such things as declarations, I reasoned, although I knew perfectly well if Brisbane ever proposed there would be no need for interpretation. He would be forthright as a bull in his intentions.
“Don’t sulk, Portia. You’ve a nasty crease, right between your eyes. It’s aging,” I added maliciously.
Instantly she brightened. “Still, I think you might have told me. When do you mean to marry?”
I shoved another forkful of food into my mouth to buy myself a moment. “We have not really discussed it,” I told her.
“I should think sooner rather than later,” she told me sagely. “Neither of you is very young, after all.”
“I am only thirty!” I protested.
“And Brisbane is nearly forty. If he means to settle down and start a family, he ought to get to it.”
I shoved my plate away, feeling rather desperate to turn the conversation to another topic, any other topic.
“Mrs. Butters, what perfect eggs. So light, I cannot imagine how you do it.”
Mrs. Butters, who had been lingering discreetly in the background, came near with a fresh rack of toast. Portia took a piece and began to break it to bits in a desultory fashion. Mrs. Butters beamed at me.
“Thank you, Lady Julia. I have always taken great pride in my eggs.”
“With excellent reason,” I said, giving her a grateful smile.
Portia, who had been lost in thought, perked up suddenly. “Mrs. Butters, will you stay on now that Lady Julia is going to be mistress of Grimsgrave?”
I groaned, but neither of them paid me any mind.
“I should think Lady Julia would be an excellent mistress,” Mrs. Butters said kindly. “But perhaps she would care to engage her own staff.”
I smiled at her again. “Mrs. Butters, you are tact incarnate. And pay no attention to my sister. No firm plans have been made at present. Nothing will be decided until after the inquest,” I told them both, taking in Portia with a glance.
Portia gestured toward an empty chair. “Mrs. Butters, I should very much like you to take a cup of tea with us.”
Mrs. Butters demurred, as any good servant would, but eventually Portia’s powers of persuasion won out over her diffidence. She retrieved a plain cup, not a prettily flowered one such as those that had been laid for us, and poured out a tiny measure of tea, sweetening it heavily.
“Toast?” Portia offered, graciously waving toward the toast rack.
Mrs. Butters shook her head firmly. “I could not, my lady. Really.”
Portia accepted this refusal and pushed no further.
“Now then, Mrs. Butters, I am very interested in Miss Ailith. There are unanswered questions, you know. And I think you can supply the answers.”
I smothered another groan and took a sip of tea instead. How like Portia to go directly to the horse’s mouth, no matter how discomfited the horse.
“Well,” Mrs. Butters began slowly, “a servant does see rather a lot. And I have been here a very long time.”
Portia nodded, beaming. “Precisely. And a valued member of staff is practically one of the family.”
She was pouring on the cream rather thickly now with that sort of flattery, but Mrs. Butters merely gave her a muted version of her old twinkle and sipped at her tea.
“When did you realise there was an unnatural closeness between Miss Ailith and her brother?”
“Portia!” I scolded. “Is that really necessary?”
Portia flapped her hand at me. “Really, Julia, don’t be so provincial. Mrs. Butters and I are women of the world. We can discuss such things without embarrassment, can we not, Mrs. Butters?”
Mrs. Butters was thoughtful. “I think it was always there, that attachment. Even when they were children, there was something secretive and strange about them. Miss Wilfreda, she was as plain as milk and easy to read as an open book. Miss Hilda was much the same, but she was smart as a whip, and always fretting that she could not go to school. Always hidden away somewhere with a book, she was. But Miss Ailith, she was wild as moor wind and Master Redwall was just the same. Whatever she directed him to do, he did. He was her slave.”
I cocked my head, curious now, in spite of myself. “Do you mean Ailith initiated the relationship, not Redwall?”
Mrs. Butters shrugged. “I do not suppose we will ever know. But I would not be tha’ surprised. I know she was deeply in love with him. She never forgave Lady Allenby for sending him away.”
“But she must have realised, she must have known, what they did together was terribly wrong,” I protested.
“Did she? Miss Ailith always believed there was another set of rules for her, if indeed there were any rules besides her own will. She took what she liked, and when she was done with it, she destroyed it. That was the sort of person she was.”
Mrs. Butters’ eyes grew misty with remembrance. “She loved the little chapel by the river. I think that might have been where those poor babies were conceived. It was Miss Ailith’s special place, you know. It was like a tiny palace, and she liked to pretend she was a queen in the ruins of it. Yes, it would have done very well for their trysts.”
I shuddered. “She was monstrous.”
“Perhaps,” Mrs. Butters said evenly. “She might have been born with a flaw in her character, like a pulled thread in fine piece of silk. Never able to be mended, no matter how much one tries. Or she might have been flawless, and twisted by human hands.”
“Her mother’s,” Portia added.
“And her father’s, and her brother’s as well. Too many people too willing to acquiesce to her every whim. Such indulgence can warp even the best character, while hammering against a strong character will only hone it to its truest self,” Mrs. Butters observed.
I thought of Brisbane, bashed and knocked by every circumstance life could throw at him, and
I thought of the man he had become in spite of the trials he had suffered. And then Ailith Allenby, with such natural advantages and a cosseted upbringing, would have been the agent of his destruction if she could have managed it.
But I dared not say those things aloud. There were too many stories circulating at present, and none of them was the whole truth. The jury at the inquest would be given no hint that anything at Grimsgrave had been amiss. A simple, tragic accident, they would call it, and the case would be closed.
The inhabitants of the Hall knew better. They knew Ailith’s character, and they knew she had intended harm when she set off for the crag. She had hurt Valerius, almost mortally, and attacked Brisbane and myself before falling to her death. Only Brisbane and I knew the full truth, and it was a secret we would hold between us.
As so often happens with my sister, she intuited my thoughts and asked the question I had been hoping would slip her mind.
“Why would Ailith want to kill Brisbane? First the poisoned mushrooms, then following him to the crag? It makes no sense.”
Mrs. Butters looked at me, but I let my gaze slide away as I forked up another bit of breakfast.
“She wanted to be revenged upon her mother for the loss of her children. We discussed that yesterday,” I said easily, passing smoothly over the true motive, the motive I had not even discussed with Brisbane yet, but the reason I believed to be the truth. “Lady Allenby was usually the one who prepared the bottled mushrooms. It would be an easy matter to convince a jury that her mother had wanted to dispose of Brisbane in order to regain control of her property, or some such nonsense. Believe me, Ailith would have given testimony to some plausible motive while weeping crocodile tears over her mother’s fate.”
“I wonder if Lady Allenby did kill Redwall,” Portia mused. “I asked Valerius about quinine this morning. He shouted a bit because his head hurt, but he did say that if Redwall had already been dosing himself heavily with the stuff, it would have been an easy matter to strengthen the dose to a fatal one.”
“Madness,” I muttered. “I cannot believe that elegant old woman was capable of murdering her own son.” But even as I said it, I realised I did believe it. She had taken bold, drastic action when Ailith delivered a pair of incestuous, illegitimate twins. What else might she have been prepared to do to prevent sin and scandal from polluting the atmosphere of her home?
THE THIRTIETH CHAPTER
The gods are just.
—William Shakespeare
King Lear
The inquest proceeded precisely as Brisbane had predicted. The coroner and the men of his jury journeyed out to the crag to see for themselves the location of Ailith Allenby’s death. Then they retired to The Hanging Tree to view the body and conduct the inquisition of the witnesses.
Brisbane was called first, and must have made a tremendous impression upon them. He had dressed carefully in sombre black, but for him the choice was not merely appropriately doleful. Black always lent him an elegant authority, and coupled with his skin, still pale beneath its olive cast, and his imperious black gaze, he was a formidable witness. He took great care when he moved not to betray any sign of the wound he had sustained to his ribs, moving with all the grave dignity of an elder statesman and bearing a striking resemblance to Grim. I noticed that he had permitted a lock of hair to tumble over his brow, neatly obscuring the thin cut from Ailith Allenby’s knife. I was not permitted to hear him give testimony, and I waited in the upper sitting room alone, twisting my gloves into knots as I listened to the low rumble of masculine voices rising and falling through the floorboards at my feet.
At length there was a scratch at the door and the coroner himself appeared. He was an elderly man, with great flyaway tufts of candy floss white hair and the most impressive set of eyebrows I had ever seen. His manner was gentle and very kindly, and he put me in mind of a country parson.
He gave me a rheumy smile and nodded as I rose.
“Lady Julia Grey? Née March?”
“I am she,” I said, my voice holding steady. I put out my hand and he took it in both of his. I offered him a chair next to mine and we settled ourselves. He watched me from under those spectacular brows for a long moment, so long in fact that I wondered if he had fallen asleep. But then he cleared his throat and came to the point.
“My dear, I have never approved of the questioning of ladies when it can possibly be avoided. Now, if you will disclose to me what you meant to tell the jury, I will confirm to them that Mr. Brisbane’s testimony has been corroborated, and there will be no necessity for you to display yourself before the gentlemen of the jury.”
I smoothed my skirts, hardly knowing how to reply. “I am not afraid to do my duty, sir. I am perfectly willing to be questioned before the jury.”
He shook his head, wisps of untidy white hair fluttering about his ears. “Oh, no. I would want no granddaughter of mine forced to such an exigency, and I will not ask it of a granddaughter of Mercutio March.”
I stared at him, a slow smile spreading over my face. “You knew Grandpapa.”
He nodded. “We were at Eton together. Such a character, he was. Oh, he ought to have been too grand to notice the likes of me. He was already the earl, and in command of a great estate. I was sent there on charity subscriptions and wore third-hand clothes. But he stopped me being flogged by one of the older boys, and I never forgot it.”
He paused, smiling at his recollections. “I saw him once, many years later, in London. He was riding past in his carriage, a grand equipage it was, with footmen and plumed horses and his coat of arms blazoned on the door. I was standing on the kerb, waiting to cross. I would never have presumed to make myself known to him, but he knew me. He made the driver stop the carriage and leapt out to embrace me and call me friend.”
He drew a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped at his moist eyes. “He called me friend, Mercutio March, the earl. And I made up my mind that I would never allow any opportunity to do him or his family good pass me by.”
“I see,” I said, folding my hands in my lap.
“Now, I understand Mr. Brisbane is your betrothed?”
“Yes,” I said, my throat going suddenly dry.
“Then we may assume that whatever he told us is what you yourself witnessed and are prepared to swear to?”
“Yes,” I affirmed.
“Ailith Allenby fell from Thorn Crag?”
“Ailith Allenby fell from Thorn Crag,” I echoed.
“And there is no question of suicide?” he asked. I hesitated and he went on, quite oblivious to my pause. “I dearly hope not. Suicide is a dirty and desperate business. One never likes to have a verdict of suicide returned.”
I was struck then by how he had phrased his last question and I gave him a gracious smile and squared my shoulders. “No, sir. There is no question in my mind whether Ailith Allenby committed suicide or not.”
He beamed at me and reached out to pat my hand. “Very good. Now I have only to tell the gentlemen that you have corroborated Mr. Brisbane’s story, and there will be no need for you to be questioned.” He paused. “I do hope you will not think me too forward, but I hope you have had that cut on your cheek attended to. It would be a shame for so lovely a face to be marked.”
I put a hand to my cheek, brushing one gloved fingertip over the souvenir of that fateful day on Thorn Crag.
“Not at all,” I told him, smiling. “You are very kind.”
He was quite pink to the tips of his ears, and it occurred to me that he was really rather flirtatious.
He rose and bowed deeply. “Thank you, my dear lady. You have been most helpful.”
He scurried out then, after several more protestations of goodwill and gratitude on his part, and I was left alone, staring into the fire and reflecting that Brisbane had been quite wrong: even here, in the wilds of Yorkshire, the March name still carried the day.
The coroner’s jury had business yet, and I waited upstairs for Brisbane. A few minutes after the cor
oner left me, there was another scratch at the door, this time it was Miss Jerusha Earnshaw bearing a tea tray. I exclaimed in surprised pleasure to see her.
“Miss Earnshaw! I thought you would have returned to your employer’s house by now.”
She placed the tea carefully on the little table at my elbow and gave me a rueful smile. “I am afraid my mistress is rather given to the habit of gossip. She read about Miss Allenby’s death in the newspapers and wants me to stay until the inquest is finished and I can provide her with the most complete story.”
The words were correct, but there was a thread of disapproval. Jerusha Earnshaw might not mind sharing a titbit or two with me, but she did not much care for gossiping with her mistress.
I looked at the tea tray, puzzled. “There is only one cup. Don’t you mean to join me?”
Her mouth was prim. “I would not dream of imposing, Lady Julia.”
“Don’t be silly. Go and fetch another cup. I would be glad of the company. If you like,” I finished feebly, realising how imperious I had sounded.
But if I had been bossy, Miss Earnshaw did not mind. “I will be but a moment.”
She fetched another cup and returned swiftly. I motioned for her to pour out and she did so with the same deft economy of motion I had come to expect of her. Her gestures, like her words and even her clothing, were just right, never too bold or too retiring. She was an unusually comfortable person to be around, an invaluable quality in a member of staff. For a moment I regretted not having children merely because I could not engage her.
“Miss Earnshaw, I confess, I had an ulterior motive for inviting you to take tea with me, beyond the pleasure of your company.”
She did not seem at all surprised. “You want information.”
“What makes you say that?”
She sipped placidly at her tea, and very good tea it was. Indian, with broad black leaves instead of the weedy dust that is so often used instead.
“You are a naturally curious person, Lady Julia, if you will forgive the observation.”
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