by S K Rizzolo
“The truth, sir. You have made Fiona most desperately unhappy and ill. Would to God that if you must break her heart, you might at least have abandoned her before the contagion had a chance to take hold.”
He drew himself up. “Contagion? I went to see that surgeon fellow myself after the girl dared face me with her shocking untruths. Not that there was ever the slightest cause for apprehension, but I thought it best in order to silence any slander. Of course, the surgeon has given me a clean bill of health, as they say in the nautical trade.”
Penelope stared at him, her thoughts whirling. Something was awry here. Had Fiona lied after all? Determinedly, she went on, “I must tell you, sir, that Miss Tyrone had learned of this matter and intended to tax you with it.”
“Oh?” He sounded genuinely surprised. “I came upon her in the churchyard a day or two before her death, and she did mention something about calling, but I am afraid my time was otherwise accounted for. Church business.”
“You weren’t here at all the day Constance Tyrone died?”
“Yes, yes, I was. I returned in the late afternoon.”
She felt a burst of excitement. So he had been here at the relevant time. “Perhaps you might describe your movements that afternoon and evening, Mr. Stonegrate?”
His heavy hands clenched. “By what right do you interrogate me, Mrs. Wolfe? My activities are none of your concern. I have already made the appropriate statements to Bow Street.”
“To Mr. John Chase?” she asked innocently.
Starting, he glared at her. “I have told Mr. Chase that I spent the evening here working and afterwards fell asleep. Not, I repeat, that it’s any of your affair.”
“You were alone?”
Expecting at the least an angry response, she was taken aback when his fleshy lips twisted in amusement. “Why you should imagine I had any reason to wish Miss Tyrone ill I cannot fathom. But yes, Mrs. Wolfe, I was alone until morning when my curate roused me with the news.”
“So there is no one to vouch for you?”
Again that sly little smile flickered. “Strangely enough there is. Miss Fiona stopped by in search of forgiveness. She was just outside praying in the church for some hours. You may ask her.”
“You made Fiona get on her knees to you?” Penelope gave a short, bitter laugh. “You astound me, sir!” She rose, shaking out her gown. “I shall assuredly speak with her.”
Stonegrate regarded her over his spectacles. “You insist upon misunderstanding me, madam. Fiona had no need to beg my forgiveness, for I had given it freely. It is the Lord with whom she must make her peace.”
Chapter Twenty
“Fiona is not here, Mrs. Penelope. She’s not been well.”
Maggie was the only one left at the Society. Clad in a voluminous apron with bulging pockets, she was busy tidying and locking up.
“I’m that glad to see you, mum.” She pulled Penelope inside and pushed her into a chair in Constance’s office. “You’ve not been with us much of late.”
Nodding guiltily, she answered, “I’ve been working, and Sarah had a bit of a head cold, I’m afraid. I thought it best to keep her close. Where are Frank and the baby?”
“Lil took them home for me. Frank will be sorry he missed you and Fiona too.” Maggie paused. “We’ve been that worried for her, mum. She’s got awful pustules on her limbs and a putrid sore throat. Not eating enough to keep a bird alive either.”
“She needs treatment, Maggie. You must convince her.”
“We’ve been trying. Miss Elizabeth thought she’d brought her around, but after Fiona spoke to the rector again and he wouldn’t so much as look at her, she changed her mind.”
“You know about Mr. Stonegrate?”
“We all of us do now, and Miss Elizabeth is so fired up she talks of seeking rooms elsewhere.”
“’Twould serve him right to lose the rents, though he’d like nothing more than to be rid of the lot of us. Miss Minton must not give him the satisfaction.”
“Yes, mum.” She gave a few half-hearted swipes with her broom and stopped to watch Penelope don her gloves and button her pelisse. “Mrs. Pen? Miss Elizabeth says you don’t think the Irish was the one what killed poor Miss Constance. But if not him, who? Do you aim to find out?” Maggie’s blue eyes were worried.
“If I can. I wondered about the rector, but it appears he may have something of an alibi.”
“The rector?” Maggie gasped. “Eh, but that’s hard to credit.”
“Is it?” said Penelope, smiling a little. “Yet one can easily fancy him talking someone to death.”
Maggie sent a glance around the room to check its neatness. Apparently satisfied, she retrieved her own wrap. “If you’ll wait, mum, I’ll walk out with you.”
She went to the French window to test the lock and peered through the glass. “Dark already and cold too, I warrant.” She turned back. “Mrs. Pen, what if it was Mr. Bertram Tyrone? He’s a rich man now with Miss Constance’s money.”
Penelope frowned. “He seems to have loved his sister.”
Maggie added eagerly, “Or Mr. Strap? Miss Constance once told Miss Elizabeth how grateful she was to him for his help physicking the women in spite of past awkwardness between ’em.”
“What awkwardness, Maggie?”
“Well, that’s just what Miss Elizabeth asked her, and she said why that silliness about us making a match. So I reckon he once paid his addresses to Miss Constance and she would have none of it.”
“Odd, one doesn’t sense that sort of emotion when he speaks of her, but perhaps ’twas long ago. I believe they have been friends for a number of years.”
Their eyes met. Penelope said, “Shall I bring Sarah to stay with the other children so that I may pay a visit to Mr. Strap tomorrow? I should like to look over his wards and learn what I can of available treatments for Fiona’s sake.”
“You best be careful.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me in a busy hospital with scores of people on hand. Don’t let your imagination get the better of you, Maggie!”
“A woman on her own is easy pickings, mum, no matter how safe you think you are. Do you know what today is, Mrs. Pen?”
“Friday, the 20th of December. Why?” said Penelope, puzzled by the sudden change of subject.
“It’s St. Thomas’s Eve.” She came closer, one hand held over her bulging apron pocket. “Ghosts may walk abroad between now and Christmas Eve, and dreams are mortal powerful. That’s another reason for you to be careful.”
“Oh, Maggie.”
“You may laugh, mum,” she said darkly, “but that don’t make it not so.” She brushed a lock of hair out of her face and marched toward the door.
Penelope followed her out of the office into the anteroom beyond. After another quick scrutiny Maggie was ready to depart. Holding open the front door, she waited, ostentatiously silent.
“Doubting Thomas?” Penelope asked. “Why is he associated with ghosts?”
She broke into an impish grin. “Queers me. I recall my mam telling me so. Maybe it’s because St. Thomas refused to believe the Lord could return from the dead, so now all the other spirits got to show they can rise up too. But it makes no odds how it all begun. I got something to give you, if you’ll take it.”
Reaching into her pocket, she pulled forth a round object which she thrust into Penelope’s hand; then she turned to secure the door. The light was so dim that Penelope couldn’t actually see the object, but she caught a whiff of its unmistakable odor. Round and hard, it was peeling slightly from being jostled in Maggie’s pocket.
“An onion?”
“Yes’m. Keep it safe till you get home and tonight after Miss Sarah’s asleep—” Maggie shivered in the piercing wind which struck them full force. “Curate will be locking up shortly. We should hurry.”
When they stood in the shelter of the gate, Penelope said, “What am I to do with the onion?”
Maggie eyed her from under the heavy scarf she had wo
und about her face and neck. “Stick a pin in the middle, Mrs. Pen, eight more in a neat circle around it. After that say what I tell you. Put the onion under your pillow, and you’ll dream of him.”
“Him?”
“Your husband, of course. True one, that is.” Her rhyme recited, she hurried down the street without a backward glance, stepping around puddles and horse droppings.
Left clutching her onion, Penelope watched her a moment, then took herself in the direction of home. When Maggie’s gift wouldn’t fit in her reticule, she considered tossing it in the gutter, but instead tucked it into her muff. If nothing else, she could use it to fend off an attacker.
Sarah pounced on the onion when Penelope got home, rolling it back and forth across the floor for the amusement of Ruff. Removing her wrap, Penelope turned to her writing table to discover that someone had left her another gift: a cylindrical shape wrapped in oil cloth.
“What’s that, Sarah?”
Sarah looked up. “Mrs. Fitz said someone brought it for you. She told me not to touch it and I didn’t.”
“Good girl,” said Penelope absently.
“Open it. I want to see!” Sarah abandoned the onion to jump up and down at her mother’s feet.
After Penelope read the note that accompanied the package, she removed the wrapping. Since her desk was not large enough, she spread the portrait on the floor, using two paperweights and some books to hold down the corners. It was excellent work, perhaps the best Jeremy had ever done.
“Who is the lady?”
“Someone you don’t know, love,” Penelope murmured.
Surprisingly, this seemed to satisfy the child, for she bounced away again to play with the dog, and Penelope was able to concentrate. She sat motionless for some minutes.
He had rendered Constance Tyrone with a sensitivity that stunned.
In the background against a stark sky, an ivy-covered stone wall ascended to a high bell tower. In the foreground stood Constance, clad in a simple, high-waisted gown and pointed shoes. She was vibrantly erect, head thrown a trifle back. Framed by profuse red roses that seemed to bleed from the greenery at her back, from the surrounding stone and sky, she was also serene, yet not ethereal, a woman very much of this world. One could almost see the breath beating at her throat. She possessed strength, both of body and soul, yet Jeremy had also captured a vulnerability in the lips, a wistfulness in the eyes.
Penelope thought first that this was a genuine woman of God, but also someone unafraid of practical action, who would scorn to use her spirituality as a retreat from the world. And in spite of the passion evident in every line of the slim figure, there was no prurience in the artist’s depiction.
It amazed Penelope that Jeremy had seen all this—Jeremy, who saw so little. Suddenly angry, she rolled up the portrait and bestowed it safely. She would do as requested and forward it to Sir Giles Tyrone.
Later, when Sarah was finally settled and the dog asleep in its basket, Penelope poured herself a glass of sherry and sank into the faded easy chair by the hearth. As they couldn’t afford to warm their tiny sitting room at night, Penelope usually spent her evenings in the bedchamber. For a while she read, but found that the words sat heavily on the page; she was simply too tired.
Finally, she got up, thinking she might as well go to bed early. On the way, however, she stopped to retrieve the onion and carried it to the bureau to rummage for some pins. Feeling decidedly foolish, she was glad no one was there to see her arranging them in the required circle. At least, she thought wryly, she would be able to tell Maggie she had followed her instructions to the letter.
When the pins were in place, Penelope went to the fire and sat down again in the chair. The room was quiet except for the chink of coal in the grate and the occasional creaks of the tenant upstairs walking across the floor. Whispering so as not to wake the sleeping child, she repeated Maggie’s rhyme:
Good St. Thomas, do me right
And let my true love come tonight
That I may see him in the face
And in my arms may him embrace.
Afterwards she placed the onion on the bureau next to Constance Tyrone’s portrait and went to sleep with Sarah.
***
Penelope stood on Blackfriars Bridge, some distance away from Edward Buckler. He appeared exactly as she’d seen him before, alone and ineffably weary. She knew she could not touch him or talk to him, that he would not hear her if she tried.
It was dark and growing darker. With horror she watched the night slip over his unmoving form. She looked away, her gaze pulled to the rushing water below, and experienced a sudden nightmarish conviction that the bridge itself would crumble, dashing her into that frigid tumult.
Suddenly she was standing at the head of a narrow, dimly lit corridor, surrounded only by silence. A row of doors, all closed, stretched out before her, yet she paid them no mind as she moved swiftly toward her goal. She knew the room she sought was at the end of the passage and knew also that it would be dangerous to enter. But she was drawn forward.
It was a plain door, nothing marking its difference from the others. And on the threshold sat the little stray dog Penelope had found in the street. It gazed up at her mournfully, not in warning it seemed, but with its habitually resigned expression.
Before she could change her mind, she opened the door and stepped over the dog into the room. At first she could not see, for the curtains at the window were closed. However, as her eyes adjusted she became aware of clots of blood pooled at her feet, and looking up, she saw the corpses of several women hanging along the wall. Their throats had all been cut, widely, from ear to ear.
A peculiar snorting, snuffling noise broke the quiet. Turning away from the corpses, she peered into a corner and caught the unmistakable gleam of gold and jewels, an enormous glittering hoard. Atop this mound sat a goliath, a winged, reptilian creature covered in thick scales. A dragon. Penelope crept a little closer, but poised ready to flee should the creature move. She noticed that its eyes were old and dulled, its scales peeling to reveal raw, bleeding skin beneath. The sound she had heard was the air rasping in its chest as it struggled for breath.
She backed away and found herself, in the inexplicable manner of dreams, standing at a crossroads on a winter day, one of a crowd who watched a tableau unfold. The sun burned brightly, but the wind gusted, and the skeleton of an oak tree loomed above.
The people were gripped by a feverish gaiety, and looking into their faces frightened her more than anything she had yet seen. She tore her gaze away and focused instead on what was happening, wanting to understand it.
They all watched an aged woman dressed in a shabby black servant’s gown who faced them from atop an overturned crate. Her shrunken face alight with joy, she bent to retrieve something at her feet and held it aloft for all to see. It was the little dog, trembling, terrified, in her grasp. As the people murmured restlessly, the old woman took a knife from her apron pocket, slit the dog’s throat, and tossed the animal into the dust of the road, blood spilling over the shoes of those at the front. A low groan of satisfaction was wrung from the crowd.
When Penelope began to cry, the crone pushed through the onlookers and came to her. Gripped in her arms, Penelope stared, fascinated, into the woman’s eyes. The old woman crooned, rocking her, and smoothed her cheeks with one gnarled hand. Penelope relaxed, drifting almost into slumber.
But the dream shifted, and Penelope was a spectator again. Perched on her crate, the old woman grinned and flapped her arms once, crow-like. Responding with shouts of encouragement and the rumblings of an indistinct low chant, the people jostled closer. Penelope could smell their excitement, but she herself felt oddly removed.
Then she discovered what they were waiting to see, for the old woman swooped down as she had before to take up something at her feet, her face wearing that same look of fierce rapture. It was a small child, who looked fearlessly into the crone’s face and smiled. The woman smiled back and nestled the c
hild against her shoulder with one arm while the other groped for the knife in her pocket…
***
The arms were around Penelope now, close and comforting. “Hush now, my love. ’Twas only a bad dream,” said Jeremy.
Still enmeshed in the nightmare, she twisted convulsively in a futile attempt to escape the encircling grip and find Sarah. But then, in a thrill of awareness that brought her fully awake, she realized she had not imagined the voice.
“Jeremy?” She tried to sit up.
He loosened his hold. “Yes, love. I’m here. You were dreaming.”
“My God.” She gripped his shoulders and gazed up into the familiar features that became more distinct as her eyes adjusted. “It is you. Where did you come from? Damn you, you climbed through the window again.”
He bent closer to whisper in her ear. “All of London is battened down defending itself against monsters on the loose, and you neglect to lock up. That’s like you. How I have missed you, Penelope.”
The kiss, long, deep, and satisfying, left her trembling. “Let me up,” she said after a moment, disconcerted to hear how shaken she sounded. “You’ll wake Sarah.”
Obediently, he followed her into the sitting room. Getting the lamp lit and finding a shawl to stave off the cold gave Penelope a much-needed interval to accustom herself to his presence. As her bewilderment faded, she found herself wondering what had happened to the anger that usually sustained her when it came to Jeremy’s nonsense. She had not had reason to believe him in danger any longer—and every reason to think he would return when it suited him. As indeed he had. Why then this treacherous gladness, this insuperable relief?
Facing him, she clasped her arms under the shawl. “Where have you been this time, Jeremy? I suppose it’s too much to expect you to inform me of your whereabouts, or even to send word of your intent to return to us.”