Cuth was uncharacteristically blunt. The master was dead, he told Conroy. No servingman was now needed or wanted. And no more Irish—male or female—for there were quite enough underfoot as it was, with their crabby faces and heathen babblings.
But Molls husband proved an ineffectual ambassador for the mission, and when presented with an order to depart the castle, Conroy took it very badly. Deep in his cups during the interview with the old steward, the well-muscled young Irishman drew his sword and threatened Cuth with emasculation if he so much as showed his wrinkled visage in the upstairs of the house again.
The old steward, his heart pounding with terror at the threat, shuffled off to complain to his wife. He gave her a full report of what had been said and done, and hearing this, Moll, armed with a knobby oaken cudgel she kept in the kitchen for beating off beggars and gypsies, marched upstairs to confront the unruly Conroy.
She found Conroy in the master’s parlor and with his great soldier’s boots propped up on the master’s writing table as if Thorncombe were Conroy’s own house. A blue haze of tobacco smoke filled the air. He looked at her insolently. “Well now, what would you be wanting?”
“What do I want?” Moll returned, already quaking with rage. She held her cudgel firm in her grip, her muscles as tense as catgut. “You impudent varlet! You despicable thing of worthlessness! How dare you treat my young mistress’s house as though it were a barracks? You take yourself from this house this very hour, or heaven help, I’ll call the servants and they’ll turn you out!” Conroy put his arms to the back of his head and howled with laughter. “The servants? Why, of whom do you speak, old woman? A half-dozen green-sick girls?”
“Then the constable and his men,” she replied undauntedly. “You have no rights here. The master is dead. Your duties are done.”
The Irishman leaned forward and put his feet on the floor. He regarded her intently, his light eyes large and fixed with contempt. “Shut up, you disreputable old whore. You spawn of a Derbyshire bog not palatable to a toad. Go unman your husband with your bullying and tongue-lashing and leave a real man to his tobacco and drink. Cuth’s used to your rantings. You’ve terrorized the old boy good, you hideous old slattern.”
This was not language Moll could readily suffer. She raised the cudgel above her head and was about to bring it crashing down on her abuser’s skull, but Conroy saw the threat and acted quickly. His unsheathed sword lay at his side; he grasped the hilt and thrust the sword toward her so that the point caught Moll’s bodice about midstomach and then ripped up toward the neck.
Moll gasped and let the cudgel drop to the floor, and, far too amazed at the swiftness of Conroy’s attack to be concerned for her modesty, she simply stood there gaping at the damage. Her red-
dened face now became quite pale. Her heavy, sagging breasts, exposed to the light of day by the Irishman’s savage assault, heaved like a blacksmith’s bellows.
“It gives me no joy to strike at one of your sex, but a man must defend himself,” said Conroy with a glimmer of amusement in his eye and the same insolent smirk that had greeted Moll when she first entered the chamber.
She covered her breasts with her arms, and with rude, brutal anger, she hissed, “You just wait, unruly sir. Just you wait. With a poor woman you will be bold to commit rape and murder. But others are coming. Even now they are on their way. I have it on good authority. From our mistress herself. Mistress Frances. In a letter addressed expressly to ourselves—that is, to my husband and me. A new steward and housekeeper to sustain us in our dotage. We shall see whatthey will tolerate from the likes of you.”
She punctuated this mighty threat with an obscene gesture she had observed the local shepherds, a very rude crowd, use to good effect. But the sign only provoked Conroy’s derisive laughter. Throwing his head back so that Moll could see his ragged teeth and beyond, the ruddy tunnel of his throat, he said, “Oh God in heaven and all the saints preserve us. I’m so afraid.” He invited her to kiss an unmentionable part of his anatomy and then dissolved in a paroxysm of laughter that Moll found even more infuriating.
Yet, threatened still by the pointing sword, she could only stand and suffer the Irishman’s crudity. When he recovered, he regarded her coldly and said, “New steward? New housekeeper? Braver warriors than you and your mouse-husband, I warrant?”
“I’ll say no more, sir,” replied Moll with as much frigid dignity as she could muster, given her half-naked condition and the impending threat of death. “It’s true you have the advantage of me now—me a poor weak woman of advanced years at the mercy of a hardened veteran of the wars. But we shall see what time discloses. There are laws, sir. Even in Derbyshire. We are not as you Irish ” She curled her lips in contempt and paused, as though even to name his race was to condemn it. “You Irish,” she continued. “A race of heathen, as well the world knows; but good English souls, we. There are laws, and they are not without their power to evict the unwelcome guest and interloper.”
“Damn your laws!” Conroy cried, the sword in his hand shaking a little. “Were I less a man, I would tell you just where you can put those laws you speak of. But I don't care a turd for your laws. And less for the English race. You have the gall to speak of laws? Well now, old woman, tell me if you can, if your law is so good and fine and holy, by what justice was my late masters death declared misadventure and not plainly what it was? Just you tell me that.”
He had asked for an answer yet did not seem to expect one, for he provided no time for her reply. He had started to blubber, and she felt less threatened now. A man sodden drunk was a contemptible thing to her, even if he was holding a naked sword at her vulnerable breasts. Conroy turned his face from her toward the goblet from which he had been drinking. With his free hand he picked it up and put it to his lips. The red liquor dribbled down his chin. His slovenliness seemed another deliberate insult to the house and to Moll.
“He was sitting in his shallop. That's how I found him,” Conroy recalled, looking at her again. “Out on the lake and him not three or four hours in his own house. Drowned like a rat. We found the body . . . his little boat . . . the lake he delighted in.”
“I know all that,” Moll interrupted impatiently. She was tired of his raving; his growing inccherence promised to be even more vexing. “I was there, too. I saw the master. There's nothing to be done about it now.”
“Nothing to be done?” Conroy cried. “He was murdered in cold blood! Revenge is what’s to be done, old woman! And when I find out who's to blame—”
“Drunk as you are now, you're not likely to find your way to the door.”
“Drunk or sober, standing or sitting, I'll find out.”
“Brave words,” she taunted.
I he Irishman was suddenly overcome with emotion, and his emotion gave him a kind of eloquence. “The bravest man and soldier I have known, Sir John was. I allow that he was English born and bred. Although he was of such mettle, I would swear to Heaven he was Irish rather, and some English brat put in his place. A
changeling . . . good Irish blood transplanted by some malign fairy to test whether such transplantation from Irish sod to this inferior soil would diminish the child’s manhood.”
‘'Nonsense,” she scoffed. “You speak foolishly. Sir John was of old Saxon blood. He and his race.”
Conroy paid no attention to this remark. He continued to ramble, bleary-eyed, but he still held the sword and Moll didn’t dare move. She was forced to listen: “Misadventure, indeed! Who but a fool or madman would have viewed his death as such? For did I not once see him swimming in full armor in the river Shannon when it was in full flood and chafing? He came ashore then, dripping wet but breathing as though he had not strained a muscle and the expanse of raging water had been a mere puddle he had been obliged to vault to keep his soles dry. And he had a smile of triumph about his mouth. Well-deserved triumph, too. No, never tell me that such a man falls overboard, drowns in three feet of water, then climbs aboard his boat again to sit there
in pouring rain like an idiot in a stupor. Only fools and madmen would believe such a tale.” Moll was about to remind him that Sir John had been weary from his long ride that day, that he had not fully recovered from the amputation, and that, after all, the man had but one good leg, for all his triumphs and heroics. But she didn’t bother. Conroy’s voice trailed off, became a mumble. His head suddenly fell forward on his chest and he sat motionless. The sword dangled in his hand.
Full of disgust and loathing, Moll saw her opportunity. She inched backward on cat’s feet. But the Irishman heard. In an instant he was alert again, the sword aimed with lethal accuracy, the pale cold eves as hard and threatening as ever. He uttered something in Irish. A terrible curse by the tone of it. With the back of his hand he wiped his moist red lips. He seemed now aware of what he had spoken, the emotions he had revealed, his apparent motive for remaining in the house these twelve months or more since his master died. He started to say something else, then evidently thought better of it. He made a motion with the sword to indicate she should go—and quickly.
“lake your cudgel with you,” he said.
“So will I,” she replied, not content that he should have the last word. She looked down on Conroy with quiet superiority, but
secretly she was much gratified for her release. Although still sensitive to his insults and threats, she had now concluded that he was totally mad, and to Moll, a man who was mad and also a drunkard and an Irishman and made outrageous charges of murder and rude assaults on the bodices of decent women was not only beyond her comprehension but her control too. His maudlin reminiscences had made her even more disdainful. She loathed masculine tears. She herself had had no great affection for Sir John. She was always more content when he was away in Ireland, preoccupied with his soldiery, his cannons, his barricades and counterscarps. She did not believe in Conroys professions of loyalty to the dead man, nor in his desire for vengeance. She suspected an ulterior motive for his remaining at the castle, where he had no one to serve, no friends, and therefore no business.
Safely exited, she stood in the gallery outside the masters apartment and breathed a sigh of relief, looking heavenward at the same time to acknowledge the divine help in sparing her life. Remembering now how she must look—her florid face sweating, her bodice ruined and gaping, a cudgel in her hand and defeat written upon her face—she boiled with indignation. Her eyes filled with tears of self-pity. Would she not herself be revenged upon Conroy—drunken ruffian who had slandered the English race, taken unlawful possession of the house, and presumed to raise both hand and voice against her?
She stiffened with resolve and, planting a firm hand over her bodice as a temporary repair, she marched directly to the attic chamber she shared with her husband.
She was gratified to find Cuth absent. When he returned she would tell him how she had threatened to brain Conroy if he did not leave, how the Irishman had begged her forgiveness and how she had graciously permitted him to remain where he was—until the new steward and housekeeper should come. She would tell Cuth that if he did not believe her account, he might go to the devil—or to Conroy himself—for confirmation.
That was how Conroy found out about the Stocks. He communicated the news to Edward the hostler, whom he liked, even though Edward was a local and no soldier. The two men were about
the same age, well-made in arm, shoulder, and thigh, and they shared a love of horses that often brought Conroy into the stable.
"That old harridan the housekeeper is down on me now, my lad,” Conroy said good-naturedly. "I pricked her bodice with a quick parry to her threatening cudgel and saw to my horror such a magnitude of withered duggery that my heart stopped beating for the terror of it.”
The two men laughed softly, but Edward more for politeness than pleasure. He did not like Moll Fludd any more than the Irishman did, but he secretly shared some of her offense at Conroys high-handed manner in the castle.
"She says there’s a new steward to come—and a new housekeeper,” Conroy said, as though the news were inconsequential.
"Is there?” responded Edward. Edward was saddling Conroy’s horse. He paused and looked at the Irishman.
"The Eludds have received some letter from Mistress Frances.”
"The old master’s niece?”
"She that’s heir to Thorncombe,” Conroy confirmed.
"She’s appointing a new steward? What’s to happen to the old folks?”
Conroy shrugged. He assumed they would stay on in some capacity.
"When?”
"Soon, says the Amazon, our lady housekeeper,” Conroy remarked jovially. He provided the hostler with an abbreviated account of his interview with Moll. Edward laughed despite himself. It was a soul-satisfying comeuppance for the old battle-ax. No less than she deserved.
"So she says the new steward will throw me out on my ear,” Conroy said. He leaned against the horse’s stall, watching the hostler cinch up the belly straps, then he followed as Edward led the horse, a piebald, round-haunched gelding, out into the paddock. But Edward said nothing to this possibility. He seemed not to care about the new steward.
"A new steward may mean trouble for you, lad,” Conroy said.
"How so?”
"Oh, you know very well. What is it that’s said, A new broom sweeps clean.”
“So goes the proverb,” Edward said. “Heres your horse. You should exercise him more often. He's a fine mount.”
Conroy shrugged. “Look at it this way: Why should a new mistress be sending a new steward and housekeeper save she were suspicious of how things are run around here?”
“The Fludds are old, the both of them,” said Edward.
“A ready answer,” replied Conroy. “But so they've been for a good many years. I have it on our late master's authority that he kept the pair only because his grandfather had hired them. It was a matter of family tradition, so to speak. Sir John could hardly abide Moll Fludd; I'm of the same mind. As for the steward—petty old fool—his wife’s drudge. A pestilent excuse for manhood, the old fart.”
“If a new steward comes, I'll take orders from him. Same as before,” Edward said.
Conroy sighed and shook his head. “You English! Have you no blood in your veins, man?” But when Edward made no response to this question, Conroy brightened. “Look, Ned, come drinking with me tonight. I'm in powerful need of a companion to my labors, and you seem one well-suited to drain a stoop or two.” He clasped a friendly hand on the hostler’s shoulder.
Edward smiled and shook his head. “Thanks for asking, but I’ve no stomach for drinking. Besides, my father expects me at home.”
At that moment the hostler happened to look toward the castle and noticed a curl of smoke rising above the Black Keep. He commented on it.
“Our lady of the mop and broom has prepared the Black Keep for her replacement,” Conroy said, mounting the piebald mount and adjusting himself in the saddle. He patted the horse on the withers, continuing as though he were addressing the horse. “Fancy that, will you? The Black Keep! A fine chamber of horrors for a newcomer to Thorncombe. Can you read the old witch's mind, Ned?”
“She must be mad,” said Edward, more to himself than to his companion.
“She's sane, all right, but a nasty, vengeful sanity it is. She may have surrendered her place to the new housekeeper, but she won’t
do it with a charitable spirit. Shes given them the worst quarters in the castle, not barring the servants’ cubbyholes in the attic, which are dreadful enough. As for the Keep, Sir John took me on tour once and told me a clever story of it. Seems one of his ancestors had his head removed against his better judgment. By a brother, mind you. Of course there’s a tradition of a ghost. Now they say we Irish are superstitious! But the part I like best has to do with the cause of the homicide.”
"Yes, I’ve heard the tale,” said Edward, still looking at the tower. "A quarrel over some woman.”
"Quarrel for a fact!” exclaimed Conroy with a chuckle. "One of
the Challoners niggled his own sister. Got a child upon her body, whereupon a young brother of this Challoner administered a swift, sure justice. But you must give credit to the fatherer. His nether tool was in working order, although they say he was twenty years his sister’s senior.”
Conroy laughed uproariously and gave his horse a dig with his spurs. Horse and rider pranced around the paddock while Edward watched. Then Conroy came back and looked down at the hostler.
"You mentioned your father,” Conroy said. "How is the old man in these days of suffering?”
"Old and infirm,” replied Edward. "I’ve been spending my nights in his cottage. He likes the company and I prefer his to the horses’.”
"A wise choice, Ned,” said Conroy. "By the way, whatever happened to Brigid O’Donnal, the fresh young thing Sir John brought home time before last? Other than the master’s drowning, nothing gave me more sorrow than to find she’d gone. Run off, say the Eludds. Now there was an elegant piece of work, that Brigid. Very plucky, too. I found her myself, you know, on the road. Her town was in flames, all her people dead. A pitiful story, even to one who is not often blamed for having a heart.”
"She left months before the master returned,” Edward said. "She’s probably back in Ireland now.”
"Then Ireland is the richer,” Conroy said. "Yes, she was a fine piece of work.” The Irishman stared off toward the road, contemplating the excellence of female flesh and the distance he was to ride before he could settle down to an evening of drinking, wenching,
and card-playing. He again invited the hostler to join him. Again the hostler declined.
“Well, I'll find company enough." said Conroy. He gave the other young man a quick salute and a lecherous wink and rode off in a gay mood, singing as he went. Conroy’s clear tenor voice could be heard until he was a tiny figure in the dusk.
Edward went back into the stable. His work was done for the day, and with no master in the house there would be no nocturnal summons for a mount. He shut the stable door and began walking toward his father’s cottage. It was about three miles distant, an easy walk for the strapping young man. But Edward was an angry young man too, angry at Conroy and his filthy talk. The Irishman hadn’t known how near he’d come to being pulled off his horse and thrashed. That remark about Brigid O’Donnal. A fine piece of work indeed. As though she were horse or whore! The Irishman had made an enemy!
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