Matthew listened to her story without interrupting. When she had finished he put a sympathetic hand on her hand and said, "A terrible vision, indeed!"
Then he wanted to know all about the chest—its contents, size, and color; its quality and all the details of its construction that Joan had only half noticed. "What," she exclaimed in exasperation. "Am I a carpenter that I should observe these things? It was a chest, a plain wooden chest, such as might store clothing."
"Well, it might be a clue," Matthew conceded.
But she protested his weaseling might be. "Of course its a clue. Anyone can see that! In the first place, it was no chest for casual discarding. Who but a fool would throw away a chest so fine? In the second, it was not hidden where I found it but half-submerged—an incompetent concealment if there ever was one. I’ll wager it floated ashore and foundered like a vessel at low tide. Only it was deep in the sedge, very deep. Seeing it was a stroke of luck. But oh, Matthew, such a midnight melancholy seized me when I touched the thing—and a vision and waking dream of black water—like murky jelly all about me and loathsome creatures gaping and sucking."
She shuddered at the recollection, and seeing how distressed she was, Matthew put his arm around her shoulders and drew her forehead against his cheek. Her skin was cool; he could feel her trembling.
He asked her what she thought her vision meant and she shook her head, puzzled. She was almost afraid to speculate. But she said
she was sure the chest meant something, was connected to the baronets death, and perhaps with Aileen Mogaill’s, too.
Her certainty seemed to settle the matter, and Matthew admitted the empty chest into his inventory of clues, as small an inventory as it was. He had too much respect for his wife’s intuitions and visions to contest her interpretation. Partly to distract her from her gloomy memories, he told her about his visit to the wretched tenant farms, about his meeting with Stafford and Wylkin, repeating all that was on either side as best he could recall it. He told her about the child’s cry he had heard while at the Bastian cottage. And about the fire that had been laid shortly before his arrival, but not by the old man, who, Matthew was convinced, would have been incapable of it.
Joan agreed it was very suspicious. “A child in the cottage, whose existence Edward denies. Could it have been a mewing cat you heard? Or a squealing pig?”
‘The Bastians keep no pigs, and I saw no cat,” he said, at the same time thinking that one often saw no cat, yet there might have been one. Yet he insisted he knew what he had heard: the wail of a human child—a singular, isolated note he could have discerned in the mighty cacophony of a tempest. He said again, “It was neither pig nor cat, but human child. Edward denied hearing it, but the lie was writ large upon his face.”
“But whose child?” Joan wondered.
“His own, some other. But Edward knows.”
She sighed heavily and felt regret, for she liked Edward. He seemed an honest, decent young man of stalwart parts. He had been their only ally in the castle. Now he, too, had come under suspicion.
Exhausted from her adventures, she gently released herself from his embrace and began to prepare for bed while the multiplying mysteries vexed her soul. “So,” she said a little later, “our store of facts are these: that Conroy is lurking about the castle locking doors behind him, but we don’t know why; that Edward has a child he keeps mum about, but we don’t know whose; that an empty chest has something to do with Sir John’s death, but we don’t know what; and that a poor wretched girl was cruelly slaughtered under this roof and we can make no more sense of it than to say it happened, and that’s that.”
It gave Joan little comfort for Matthew to remind her that most of the facts she had recited were not facts at all, but mere supposes. She said, “At least we’re on firmer ground with Una. The purpose of her deception is clear.”
“To find our secret purposes out,” he said.
“I detest a household spy,” she said categorically, and then she remembered that she was one herself.
“Her amorous encounter with Wylkin makes the case stronger against her,” Matthew said. “Hes Staffords eyes and ears at Thorncombe. It s impossible to think that one such as he could love without ulterior motive.”
“She who lies down with dogs must rise with fleas,” Joan said.
But Edward s duplicity bothered her most. He seemed such a pleasant young man, yet she knew the devil had power to assume a pleasing shape. Perhaps Edward was an ally of Unas, and therefore in league with Wylkin. Or a co-conspirator with Conroy?
The household of Thorncombe offered to her imagination the prospect of any number of entangled alliances.
He was already asleep when she woke him with her complaint—a draft from the casement, and would he be a good dear and see to it.
He murmured yes, crawled out of bed, and groped his way toward the window He could see as hie eyes adjusted to the dark how the curtains fluttered nervously. He pulled them back and saw the casement was ajar. He looked out on the view that Joan had seen for the first time earlier that day and it held him there for a moment.
The moon had risen over the distant hills and had transformed the lake into a breathtaking scene. The island at the lake s center seemed impaled upon a shaft of yellow light expanding from the base of the hills at the farther shore to the nearer.
He stood there long enough marveling for Joan to be aware of his delay. She called out sleepily, “Matthew?”
He replied, not wanting to leave the scene. “I’m here. At the window. Coming to bed soon, my love.”
He continued to watch. The moonlight and the awesome stillness caused his heart to beat a little faster. His sleepiness fell from him.
She called again, “Come, Matthew, back to bed.” There was
impatience in her voice. He started to obey. Then he stopped, thought for a moment, and then returned quickly for a second look.
He had seen something. Something moving in all that stillness of light; something that had belatedly registered upon his consciousness and which now curiosity drove him back to the window to confirm.
“Matthew, will you come to bed, or do you think to stand there all night gawking? What are you looking at?”
“I thought I saw something moving, down by the lakeshore,” he said. He pulled the curtain and stared hard through the glass. Down across the greensward to the waters edge he could see a solitary figure. Then it moved again. Toward the water. Within seconds he saw the human figure merge with an oblong shape. He knew what it was. Sir Johns boat setting forth.
“Who is it?” came Joans voice.
Her irritation at his delay had been replaced with concern. He was aware, without looking behind him, of how she would be propped up now, upon her elbows, staring into the darkness. Or into the moonlight rather as it filtered through the glass. He strained his eyes to see again. There was nothing; only the shimmering water.
“I’m going down there,” he said. “I saw a man, and Sir Johns missing boat.”
“Surely, you’re not thinking—”
“Yes. You stay where you are. I only want a closer look.”
“But, Matthew!” she protested. “It must be eleven o’clock. The whole house is abed. The night is cold, and a young woman of the house has been cruelly murdered!”
“Someone has found the boat and set forth upon the water. 1 want to find out who.”
“A lunatic—or worse.”
“Lunatic or demon from hell, I’ll find out who it is,” Matthew said with determination.
“I’ll come with you,” she said, making an effort to free herself from the tangle of bedding.
“Absolutely not,” Matthew said sharply. “I’ll be back in no time. I only want a look.”
“But it might be that rascal Wylkin,” she said.
“Or Conroy,” he said, planting a kiss upon her head. “Go to sleep. I said Yd be right back, and so I will.”
“See that you are,” she said in what was more plea than
command, for with all his hardihood she had great fears for his safety.
A candle helped him down through the sleeping house. Outdoors, the effulgent moon sufficed. He crossed the greensward swiftly, making directly for the lake. Soon he was standing where he had stood earlier that day when Edward told him the history of the lake and pointed to the place where Sir John had drowned.
The water shimmered magically in its yellow light. Matthew, straining to see or hear, saw nothing but the placid water. Nor was there any other sign that what he had seen from his casement had material substance. But Matthew knew what he had seen, and he knew it had been no spirit.
His suspicion fell on Conroy. Conroy was strong, an experienced soldier, a practiced braggart who exulted in his physical prowess. It was Conroy, too, who had had charge of his masters shallop.
Matthew conjectured that Conroy had hid the shallop, had come down in the dead of night to fetch it, and was now upon the lake in the same craft, rowing with his powerful arms.
But to what end? For exercise? To convey himself to the opposite shore, to which a reasonable man could as easily get by walking around?
Matthew was left with the island.
The assumption gave him a platform to build on. But having theorized as to the identity of the person and his activity, the next question was one of motive. Why should Conroy (or whoever else) want to journey to the island at midnight? Indeed, why go at all?
Matthew was starting to shiver a little. He realized that his vigil might go on all night. Joan would be beside herself with worry. He decided to go back. But first he resolved to establish more firmly one of his assumptions—to promote it from assumption to fact, if possible. He retraced his steps through the woods, then went to the stable, where he knew from Joan that Conroy had been exiled. He thought that if Conroy was in bed, then he was not rowing upon the
lake, and although the opposite fact did not necessarily hold, it would strengthen mightily the assumption that it was Conroy whom Matthew had seen.
Warm odors of horse and hay assailed him as he opened the door, then he groped in the darkness of the stalls until he came to the little room that had been Edwards and was now, according to the hostler, Conroy’s.
There was enough light from the moon to show him what was there and what wasn’t. There was no Conroy, but the man’s doublet and cloak were spread out on the pallet in the corner, and beneath were the sword and heavy soldier’s boots Matthew had never seen the man without.
While Matthew was gone, Joan turned and tossed in a fit of worry. Then she collected herself and planned just what words and phrases she would use to chide him for his foolhardiness.
If he returned alive. Of which she was in grave and painful doubt.
‘Thank Cod!” she exclaimed when she heard his knock and reassuring voice that it was he and no other. But she was also curious to learn what worthy fruit he’d plucked from his recklessness.
Matthew told her that he thought it was Conroy he had seen and that the lake isle was his destination. He told her all the evidence he had gathered to that effect, hard fact as well as tentative supposition. She agreed it was very likely Conroy was their man.
“Rowing to the island! At this hour! A mad practice unless well motivated,” she observed.
“Mad indeed, and therefore 1 infer it to be well motivated. Surely he’s not doing it for the exercise.”
“But searching for what?”
“God knows, but I’ll find that out, too,” Matthew said.
“Well,” she said. “Confront him tomorrow. Demand to know what he’s up to. Tell him we know it was he who lurked behind the door in the White Keep to frighten silly women and rows by night to islands.”
“That might be unwise,” Matthew cautioned. “If he’s murderer as well as prowler—”
“And boat thief as well." she inserted.
“It would be better to keep him ignorant of what we know. For now, at least.”
Joan agreed in principle, remembering the dangerous looks Conroy had given her.
“Did you make fast the door?” she asked.
“Thrice over if it were possible,” he said.
“Searching for what?” she wondered aloud.
It was another question badly wanting an answer. And soon. Joan fell asleep and dreamed of the lake and the island and Conroy rowing across the dark water.
Alice Stafford was a plain-looking, plain-speaking woman of about thirty. Short and plump like a partridge, she ruled her house and her husband with boisterous efficiency. She was the daughter of a well-to-do farmer in the shire, and her marriage to Thomas Stafford eight years earlier had been considered an excellent match on her part—a step up the rung of the social ladder. The only blemish upon the cheeks of her fortune was that there never was enough money in the household coffers to suit her purposes. Therefore she regarded her husband as a failure and reminded him of the fact at least twice a day. They quarreled endlessly about matters great and small, but the truth was they had a good deal in common. Both husband and wife were preoccupied with themselves, were arrogant and peevish; each was inclined to do things behind the others back. Her domineering impulse was complemented by his uxoriousness.
Both Alice and her husband were relieved that she had never borne children, and both had an inordinate desire for money and were terribly frustrated at not having more of it. They were, therefore, of one mind with respect to Sir John Challoners Irish plunder. They agreed they deserved it more than the baronets niece, and even more than Her Majesty the Queen, who, after all, was rich enough already and was very near unto death, if rumor spoke true. Alice Staffords reasoning in that regard was that the Queen would hardly miss what she never knew she had, didn't need, couldn't use. Neither husband nor wife had qualms about securing the plunder by any means necessary. While neither would have stooped to rob a church; the church having been robbed, the plunder was up for grabs to whoever should grab first. And Sir John having neither need (since he was dead), nor right (since the plunder was plundered), neither did young Frances Challoner.
By the Staffords' logic, the ill-gotten gains were best distributed to those Sir John had wronged by his aristocratic arrogance in general and his egregious tampering with nature in particular. And thus it was that since the happy hour in which Jack Wylkin had proved his worth by bringing word of the hidden treasure of Thorncombe, a period of unusual domestic harmony had prevailed at Stafford Hall. Uniting in their larcenous enterprise, husband and wife smiled tenderly upon each other. Alice's carping about money ceased, and the couple spent many a pleasant hour contemplating what they would do when they were truly rich. The only difference in their attitudes toward the Irish booty was that while Thomas Stafford sometimes feared the story might be but a dream, Alice’s faith never wavered. She coaxed her husband forward in the project, encouraged him to engage Wylkin in even more desperate efforts of espionage, and insisted on being a party to every aspect of the conspiracy.
It was to that end that on the evening of Stafford’s encounter with Thorncombe’s new steward, the husband having divulged that merry tale to his wife, Alice and Thomas Stafford were waiting with great eagerness the arrival of Wylkin from his most recent rendezvous with Una. They were seated in comfortable chairs in the withdrawing room of Stafford Hall, which, although not as commodious as its counterpart at Thorncombe, was well heated, and secure from the pryings of their servants.
“What does Wylkin intend to have from the Irish wench?" Alice Stafford asked with a coarseness she affected when participating in her husband's scheming.
“Intelligence concerning the new steward and his wife," Stafford answered. Above the fireplace there was a mantelpiece upon which sat a stolid German clock. It ticked very loudly and then began striking the hour. Nine gongs. Wylkin was late.
“The pair could make trouble, couldn't they?"
Stafford turned from the clock and his irritation at Wylkin’s tardiness to face his wife, for they were not seated opposite each oth
er but very nearly side by side, both facing the fire. "Nothing I can’t handle,” Stafford said.
"You mean nothing Wylkin couldn’t handle,” she answered dryly. It was her turn to stare moodily into the fire.
Stafford winced at the remark. It was a casual slur, but it seemed to have graver implications. Although his wife had long professed her distaste for Wylkin, Stafford had noticed her looking at him more closely of late. And the looks she had given Wylkin seemed to Stafford to be quite bold, to say the least. Provocative, even!
He would have inquired of her whether there was not something passing between his wife and his servant but he was hesitant to start a quarrel. Yet the question stuck in his gut and he was beside himself to have it out.
Then Wylkin appeared, dressed in a sable doublet and hose that gave him an even more predatory appearance than usual. He bowed respectfully to his master, favored Alice with a deferential nod, and then presented his report.
"Una says the Irishman has been laying low since the new steward and housekeeper came. Sleeps in the stable now with his horse. The Stock woman made him do it. Una’s convinced Conroy knows where the booty is hidden and is only waiting the right opportunity to snatch it.”
"And how does she know that?” Alice asked, lifting her round face to address Wylkin.
"Pure instinct, madam,” Wylkin said. “The way one dog sniffs out another though the chamber where they lie be as black as pitch. Conroy stays at Thorncombe for no apparent reason except for some ridiculous account of how he must wait upon his new mistress. Evidently, he also has some claim as a scholar of Sir John’s papers, but Una has never seen the man read a sign properly, much less a book. It’s all a gross imposture. Trust me, he’s biding his time because he knows where the gold is, or doesn’t know and is still looking.”
"Well, tell the woman to keep a close eye on Conroy. I won’t be cheated out of what’s mine by a knavish Irishman,” said Stafford, glancing toward his wife for support of this position.
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