by Peg Kerr
“That will be all for tonight, Mr. Griggs,” the Earl said. “Thank you.”
As the steward gathered up his papers, a knock sounded on the chamber door. Opening the door, a footman stepped aside to let the steward pass through, and then entered and announced, “The Lady James Grey, the Lady Eliza.”
“Stay, Mr. Owen,” the Earl murmured, raising a hand as the other man bowed and stepped back as if to withdraw also. And then Lord Grey froze, his hand still in midair, as his eyes fell upon the slim figure in blue who entered the room a few steps behind his wife.
After a startled moment’s silence, he heard a harsh, strained whisper say, “Anna?” His voice sounded strange and hollow to his own ears, echoing above the dull crashing thud of his own heartbeat. For an instant he thought he saw his first wife’s ghost, with the locket he had given her around her neck, as pale as death—but no. He ran a shaking hand over his eyes, looked again, and saw that it was not. She had the same heavily lidded green eyes, the same curve of the mouth he remembered. But her cheeks and lips burned with red, a sign of blood, of life, and he knew that to be only mockery. His Anna was long dead, dead and buried and turned to dust these many years.
He felt an unreasoning surge of anger, and then remembered and drew in an unsteady breath. This was his daughter. He opened his mouth to speak, but his throat caught. He cleared it noisily and tried again. “Come closer, child.”
Eliza came closer, stepping gingerly, as if picking a path over ice. A strange current of danger thrilled in the air about her. She did not see Robert Owen’s eyes widen at her appearance, or his startled and accusing look at the Countess. Behind Eliza, the Countess remained where she was, her hands folded and her eyes hooded and silent.
Instead, Eliza had eyes only for the stooped figure in the chair before her. Father, she wanted to whisper, but for her, too, words caught in the throat. This gray and shrunken man, with the deep lines furrowing his brow and the palsied frornor shaking the lace of his sleeves, was not the tall and rant father she remembered. Her knees trembled, making her remember her curtsey. “Sir,” she managed to say as she rose The Earl hesitated. “Er... you have had an easy journey?”
“Yes, sir. Mrs. Warren and Mr. Owen did everything they could for my comfort. And my mother-in-law has been most kind in welcoming me.” She longed to say something more to him, but the distant formality in his manner checked her. It hurt her, for she remembered how she had kissed him and clung to him when she had left Kellbrooke Hall ten years before. For the first time, the thought struck her that the Earl had cheated himself as much as his children by sending them from home for so long. Perhaps he would not have aged so if he had kept his family around him.
“Ah,” the Earl said vaguely, and his eyes met his wife’s. Her gaze prodded him in a way he did not understand, and he said, “So what do you think of having a new half sister or brother, hey? Perhaps I shall have an heir at last.”
Eliza would remember that moment long afterward, would spend many long nights lying awake trying to understand it. The strange half-apprehended tension coiling through the room heightened her senses, giving her knowledge, even as she drew breath to speak, that what she was about to say would be fatal. And yet, try as she might, she could not ever imagine stopping herself from saying what she said next, even for the sake of her soul’s own salvation. Sometimes she wondered whether black magic had ensnared her, like the magic that had cursed Cassandra of Troy. Yet each time she rejected the thought, for she had only spoken the truth.
“An heir, my lord? But you have an heir. What of James? What of Henry, Edward, Stephen, and all the rest? You have as many heirs as any man might need.”
Even as Robert Owen’s jaw dropped open, even as he stepped back to be out of the Earl’s sight and to give Eliza a frantic warning hiss, he knew with sinking certainty that all was lost. The only sign of satisfaction the Countess allowed herself was a slight lifting of the chin, a quiver of one corner of the mouth indicating a smile sternly repressed. She remained silent.
“What?” said the Earl slowly.
“What of my brothers, my lord?”
The Earl’s breath came in harsh, rasping sounds, and a vein in his temple throbbed. “James,” he said, curtly. “Henry, Edward, Stephen, and all the rest. They are”—he swallowed and spoke with a sneer—
“your brothers?”
“How mean you, my lord?” Eliza asked in bewilderment. “You are their father. Their blood is my own, for I am their sister.”
The Earl’s hand made a convulsive movement, and the glass of port teetered as if hesitating, and then fell and crashed to the floor. Spilled port spattered the Earl’s stocking, soaking in like blood. “Those traitorous curs,” he growled, his words rising to a roar as he stood, “those damned whelps?”
“Traitorous, sir?” Eliza gasped. “Who dares name them traitors?”
“All men do, and curse them. Rot them to perdition! The knaves would strike at England’s very heart, bringing her down to anarchy with them. Corruption and dishonor, enemies on every side, demons thirsting for blood—but not me or my house, by God! We remain loyal to the Crown!” He broke off his rant and swayed on his feet for a moment, shutting his eyes tightly as if in pain. Robert Owen, on his knees picking up the pieces of broken glass, entreated Eliza with his eyes, shaking his head desperately. She hesitated and then went on stubbornly, “I do not believe it! What evidence was there against them, sir? What proof?”
“Proof? Hah! Thou fool,” the Earl sneered, opening his eyes again. “None was needed. Their guilt was black for all to see. It stank to the very heavens!”
“You refused to defend them when there was no proof?” Eliza exclaimed, horrified. “Abandoned your own sons?”
“Not my sons; I have disowned them.”
Eliza’s face went white. “And you accuse them of dishonor?”
“Eh? What?”
“Am I not part of your house, sir? As their sister, I entreat you, will you not reconsider and intercede for them?”
“If you are their sister,” he snarled, “you are no daughter of mine!”
“Sir!” Eliza fell back a step, fear and alarm struggling in her face.
“Please calm yourself, my lord!”
The Earl shook off Robert Owen’s tentative hand at his wrist and glared at the girl. Through the veil of his rising blood-rage, and his astonishment that he could have thought her anything like Anna, she seemed to shrink, to twist, to coarsen. “Thou pert jade! Thou baggage, thou strumpet, thou painted whore! Thy brothers, sayest thou? If thou claims kinship with that filth thou art no daughter of mine! ”
But even as he saw her now for what she really was, he still saw Anna’s eyes staring up at him, and the stricken expression in them drove him over the edge of madness. He raised a shaking fist and slammed it against her cheek, longing only to splinter that travesty, that horrible, twisted mask. ‘ The blow drove Eliza to the floor, and horrified, Robert Owen stepped in between them and knelt over her. “My lord, no!
Have pity!”
“Dare you defend her, sirrah? Do you align yourself with her, too? Have you grown so weary in my service?”
“I... I...” Robert Owen licked his lips, his eyes darting around the room. “I am your faithful servant, lord—but—I beg you—” His voice broke as Eliza stirred, raising her head groggily to stare up at the Earl in amazed disbelief. “There is no need to hurt her. She is but a child!”
“She is a pestilent harlot.” The Earl reached a trembling hand behind himself for the back of his chair and all but fell back into the seat. “If she does not wish to be hurt, let her leave my sight forever. I charge you with it, Owen: see to it that she is expelled from the Hall.”
His eyes met hers with fathomless coldness. “I care not if she lives or dies as long as she remains out of my sight, for I renounce all ties with her. I only pray that when she does die, she shall be consigned by Almighty God to burn in hell-fire forever.” He turned his head aside. “Go
.”
They all remained frozen in place for a moment, and then Robert Owen, sick with remorse and fear, turned to Eliza. “Come,” he whispered, putting a hand under her elbow. “Up.” Trembling all over, she seized his arm with a grip so tight that he winced. Together they rose, and he steadied her as she swayed. She buried her head in his shoulder as they turned toward the door. The Countess stepped quietly aside as they passed and then followed them out of the room.
“Child,” Robert Owen murmured into Eliza’s hair as they came out to the Great Parlor. “Child, hush. Hush, now. This will not aid you at all.” She shook all over so violently with shock that for a moment he wondered whether he could hold her up if she fainted. She raised her face to his and saw the Countess over his shoulder.
“Madam,” Eliza whispered. “Madam.” Her knees buckled, and he shifted his grip to put an arm around her waist to support her. “Madam,” she said again, holding out her hand imploringly to the other woman. “Will you not speak to him? Will you not defend me? I know he will listen to you. Oh, I pray you, have mercy!”
Robert Owen watched, fighting against his own urge to bolt as the Countess walked toward them. She came to a stop and slowly smiled—and then, as quickly as an adder striking, she seized the locket around Eliza’s neck and tore it from her throat. Eliza cried out, and her hands flew to the welt left behind on her neck from the broken ribbon. Wideeyed, she stared as the Countess looked down at the golden piece in her palm and then deliberately closed her fingers over it.
Her cold gaze turned to Robert Owen. “See that you do as the Earl bids you and oust her from the Hall immediately.” Without another word, she turned her back on them both and strode quickly from the Great Parlor.
“No,” Eliza moaned after the Countess had gone. “Not my mother’s—no. She could not be so cruel.” She swayed again, and he led her to one of the straight-back gilt chairs against the wall and helped her sit. Tendrils of her hair had fallen in her eyes and he brushed them away. Underneath, wide tracks streaked her face, where her tears had washed away powder and rouge. Still shivering, she wrapped her aims tightly around herself in numb misery.
“She could,” he said. “She is.”
“Why?” Eliza whispered.
“I am so sorry,” he muttered. “If only I had—but I am a fool. Of course I should have known she would chouse you with such a scurvy trick as this, given the opportunity.”
“What?”
“The paint.” Angrily, he ran his thumb across her cheek and showed her the smudge on his skin. “You couldn’t have known how the Earl felt about it.”
“She told me—she told me I should wear it. That it was expected!”
“It might not have mattered, if you hadn’t said aught about his sons. Why didn’t you heed my warning?” And yet she could not be blamed, he knew. He should have explained more clearly when he had the chance, but he had been too afraid. His fist clenched and he thumped it against his thigh. “God forgive me for being such a fool!”
“But wherefore does she hate me so?” Eliza said in a small voice.
“Because—” He gestured helplessly. “Because she is like a cuckoo, pushing another bird’s eggs out of the nest. She is greedy, and wants all that is his for herself.”
“What has happened to my brothers? Why did my father—”
He gestured her to silence and leaned forward to speak in a low voice in her ear. “She accused them all of being part of the Popish plot. Do you remember, the Catholic conspirators who were discovered trying to kill King Charles?”
“She made the accusation?”
“Aye, my lady. Eight years ago.”
“But,” she said in bewilderment, “that was a Catholic plot to kill a Protestant king! And—” She broke off and did some calculations. “Why, eight years ago Benjamin would have been but nine years old! A traitor at nine years of age? How could my father have been so mad as to believe such a tale?”
“I can only guess what arts from the Devil she employed to convince him,” Robert Owen said bitterly.
“But yes, she made him believe they all converted to Rome and joined in the plot to kill the King.”
“Eight years ago,” she said, her eyes still glazed with shock. “That was just when the payments stopped coming for my foster parents. And he cast my brothers off? Just as he has disinherited me.” She looked up at him again. “Were they imprisoned?”
He hesitated. “They disappeared, my lady.”
“Where did they go? Surely you know where they went. Do you not?”
“You must leave here at once,” he said, desperate to turn her attention. “It is not safe for you. If the Countess should discover you have lingered—”
“What could be worse than what she has already done to me?”
“Believe me, child,” he answered grimly, “you do not wish to know.”
She stared at him for a long moment. “She ... she made them disappear? What did she do to them?”
She gripped his hand until it hurt. “Tell me!”
“There is nothing to tell!” He checked himself and, lowering his voice, continued with forced calm. “I went out riding with two of your brothers one morning. At one point, they rode ahead of me, out of sight beyond a stand of trees. When I came around the bend in a road, all I saw was two riderless horses in a large, open field. Your brothers were nowhere in sight.”
“But you must have searched for them!”
“Of course I did! But they were nowhere to be found. When I rode back to report their disappearance and rouse help, the household was in an uproar because the Countess had just leveled her accusations. All the Earl’s sons were gone, and no one has ever seen them since that day.”
She searched his face, trying to discover there some key to the mystery. “But... you do not really believe her, that they were traitors who fled. Do you?”
He hesitated, and then shook his head. “No. No, I do not.”
“But surely you have some idea of what happened to them!” she exclaimed. He opened his mouth, longing to tell her the rest. The horses had been terrified, had bolted from him, sweating, their eyes rolling; it had taken him the better part of an hour to subdue and catch them again. The field was so large, so empty and bare that there was simply nowhere the boys could have hidden themselves from his sight. It was uncanny, as if they had vanished into thin air. For a month before that morning, the Countess had barricaded herself for hours in the stillroom each morning. When he had ridden back to the Hall to raise the household for the search, she had already declared that all the brothers had fled. He could not understand how she could have known such a thing before he had even had a chance to report two of them missing.
The pieces did not add up to anything that made any sense. He almost managed to convince himself he had no choice but to believe the Countess’s story. He had tried to mourn the boys as lost, to forget them and move on. Yet now, confronted with Eliza’s searching eyes, he felt again the weight of the dreadful, lurking suspicions he had secretly carried within his heart for eight long years. But all the terror that had first pierced him on that fatal morning rose up again to choke off the words. “I cannot say what I truly believe, my lady,” he whispered finally, closing his eyes. “I... I dare not.”
“You must!”
“No!” Suddenly furious, he wrenched his hand from her icy grip and seized her shoulders. “You must think no more about them! Go back to your foster mother, where you will be safe!”
“And so you will obey the Earl and cast me out? You will obey her?”
“I can do nothing else,” he said, his voice cracking. “I... I have two sons, my lady. I must think of them.”
“Say you so? And yet you will not even speak to my father of the duty he owes me?” Her mouth shook. She could see the conflict struggling in his face, and so she pressed him again. “He called me a whore and a bastard, but you know it is a lie, don’t you? Just as you know they lied about my brothers!
How can you
help expel me, even knowing I am my father’s rightful daughter?”
He lowered his eyes in shame, and tears spilled down Eliza’s cheeks again. “Oh, Mr. Owen. You said you wished me well with all your heart. You said you wanted naught but to serve me.”
“I swear to you before God, my lady, that I can serve you best by convincing you to leave this accursed place behind you forever.” He fumbled at his belt. “Here—wait. I have money.”
She drew away from him then, her mouth frozen with contempt.
“Don’t be a fool,” he said sharply. “Take it to your foster mother.”
He thought she would still refuse, but after a moment, she held out her hand, and he placed the pouch of coins within it and wrapped her cold fingers around it firmly. “Come.” As he helped her tenderly to her feet and led the way to the marble staircase leading to the dark doorway outside, he thought that he had never done so much in his life as this single night’s work to merit damnation on the last day of judgment.
Chapter Six
I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate,
envy no man’s happiness, glad of other men’s good,
content with my harm.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, AS YOU LIKE IT
Light filtering through shifting leaves onto Elias’s face woke him the next morning. He lifted his head from his pillow on the couch and raised himself on one elbow to look around, blinking sleepily, trying to remember where he was. The apartment’s main-room window overlooked a quiet courtyard in the back. Opposite the couch and window was the kitchen, marked off as a separate area by a maple table. To Elias’s left were the bedroom and bathroom. A shower was running behind the closed bathroom door; the water turned off and he heard a low, bouncy whistle, and memory came flooding back. Last night, after ushering Elias into the apartment, Sean had played the gracious host, showing him the small bathroom and providing sheets and towels before disappearing quietly into the bedroom. The couch proved surprisingly comfortable, but Elias had not slept well. He lay awake for a long time, wondering if Sean really had in fact expected nothing sexual when he brought Elias home. Elias waited, muscles tense. The light under the bedroom door to his left went out, and he listened, straining to hear sounds in the next room above his own light breathing. When an hour had passed and no figure slipped out of the bedroom to join him on the couch, he finally closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep, unsure whether he was glad or sorry.