The Magpie Lord

by K. J. Charles

  “Don’t be silly,” Stephen said, with a touch of impatience.

  “This is my place,” she said, low and angry. “I have rights.”

  “And you have duties,” said Stephen. “What’s your name?”

  “Bell. Marjorie Bell. I’m Gammer’s granddaughter.”

  “I’m Justiciar Stephen Day. This is Lord Crane, that’s Mr. Merrick. Now—”

  “Stephen Day?”

  There was just a hint of a pause before Stephen nodded.

  “Nan Talbot’s nephew Stephen?”

  “Yes.”

  Her mouth dropped open, a picture of incredulous contempt. “Allan Day’s son? Helping the Vaudreys? Your father must be turning in his grave.”

  “My father knew his duty,” said Stephen stonily. “He did his job, and I am doing mine. Starting now, Miss Bell.”

  “Does Nan Talbot know you’re working for that?” She jerked her head at Crane.

  “Now.”

  Miss Bell went a deeper red. She spun and led the way with angry nervous steps to one of the cottages. The boy ran up to her as she walked; she said something quietly to him and he hurried away.

  The cottage looked neglected, the plants outside withered and dead, and the door stood open.

  They filed inside, Merrick leaning against the door to discourage eavesdropping. It was dark and dusty with an accretion of spider webs in the corners, smelling of dead fires and some acrid scent Crane couldn’t place. The air felt withered and old and greasy. Crane, who was starting to recognise some things, darted a look at Stephen and saw him rubbing his fingertips together like a pastry cook at work.

  Miss Bell said, “This was Gammer’s cottage. What do you want here?”

  Stephen ignored her. He was walking around, touching walls, running his hands over furniture, testing the air. He stopped for several minutes in the tiny kitchen, hands planted on the table, quivering slightly, returned to an old oak dresser, pulled out just one drawer, which seemed to be full of bits of fur and leather, and rummaged through it.

  It took about ten minutes, and in that time nobody spoke. Miss Bell adopted a neutral expression and seated herself, on an uncomfortable straight-backed chair instead of the rocking chair that stood in the corner. She sat, looking into nothing, as though she would be happy to stay there all day. Crane leaned his shoulders against the slightly damp plaster of a wall and watched Stephen’s intent face and searching, restless hands.

  Finally Stephen looked round.

  “It was her. Gammer Parrott. The Judas jack was made in the kitchen. The ivy wood came from the lychgate. It killed two men, nearly killed a third. Tell me, when did she turn warlock?”

  “She did not turn,” said Miss Bell fiercely.

  “I took that jack apart. It wasn’t a novice effort. She’d done it before.”

  “She never did! She didn’t turn!”

  Stephen looked at her assessingly. “Why did she do it?”

  Her lips were pressed together tightly. “What’s the good in me talking to you?”

  “Miss Bell, if I’d already made my mind up, you would already know about it,” Stephen said. “And Lord Crane spent two months under a vicious jack. He’s got a right to know why.”

  “He’s got no rights. None.”

  Stephen’s voice was measured, implacable. “You will answer me.”

  She gave him a long, considering look. There was another lengthy silence. Finally she sniffed and began, speaking to Stephen only, without a glance at Crane.

  “Gammer Parrott had two daughters, my ma and my Auntie Effie. And Effie had two daughters too. Liza Trent, you saw her outside, and Ruthie, Ruth Baker. Ruthie was the child of Effie’s age, she was forty-six, and Baker long dead. Too old for childbearing. She died in her labour. She never named the father, but we all saw Ruthie’s looks.

  “She was a pretty girl, lively, but she didn’t have enough brain to know which way the sun rises. And when she was fifteen, Hector Vaudrey got her with child.” She looked at Crane for the first time. “Maybe he didn’t know she was his daughter, maybe he didn’t care if she was. Maybe it was what he wanted from her.”

  Crane shut his eyes and leaned his head back against the plaster wall.

  “Was it by force?” Stephen asked.

  “No need,” said Miss Bell shortly. “He told Ruthie he’d marry her. She wasn’t a clever girl.”

  “Clearly.” Crane’s voice was cold, eyes still shut. “Let me guess the next part. She finds out she’s expecting, goes to Hector demanding the promised marriage, he laughs in her face, she goes to my father for justice and he sends her to the Magdalen. Yes?”

  Miss Bell shook her head. “She didn’t go to the Earl. What would be the point? Nobody went to him for justice against Hector Vaudrey, because nobody got it. No. Ruthie told Gammer about the baby. Gammer was angry. She’d have come round, she loved Ruthie, but things were said. And then…Ruthie learned who her father was.”

  “How?” asked Stephen and Crane simultaneously.

  Miss Bell’s jaw jutted. “I could never find that out.”

  “And what did Ruthie do when she knew?”

  “She hanged herself. She was six months gone.”

  Stephen nodded slowly. “When?”

  “Candlemas two years since.”

  Crane rubbed his fingers over the bridge of his nose. Miss Bell was watching him.

  “Gammer went to the Earl,” she said. “Told him what Hector Vaudrey had done. He ordered her to be whipped for slander.”

  Crane winced. Stephen nodded again. “And Mrs. Parrott made the jack after that. Alone?”

  “I’d have helped her,” said Miss Bell defiantly. “I would. But she didn’t ask for my help.”

  Stephen looked round. “Lord Crane, any comment?”

  “What on earth is there to say?” Crane said. He had a hand over his face. “His daughter.”

  “Mrs. Parrott killed him for it.”

  “Good,” said Crane with some force.

  “And your father for abetting him. Slowly and painfully. Does that bother you?”

  “No.”

  “Right,” Stephen said. “Moving on—”

  “Moving on?” said Miss Bell incredulously.

  “Moving on,” Stephen repeated. “Lucien Vaudrey returns from twenty years on the other side of the world and promptly finds himself enslaved to a Judas jack, left there long after the guilty men were rotting in the ground. Tell me about that, Miss Bell. Tell me why you and Mrs. Parrott decided to kill an innocent man.”

  “I’ll tell you why,” said Miss Bell loudly. “Because we didn’t want another Vaudrey just like the last two. It’s easy enough to come down from London with your justice, but we had Hector Vaudrey’s ways for thirty years, and we’ve all heard about him.” She gestured at Crane with her chin. “Do you blame us?”

  “Yes,” said Stephen. “I do. Lucien Vaudrey was not responsible for his father’s and brother’s acts. You know that.”

  “Hector Vaudrey raped—”

  “I know what Hector Vaudrey did. He’d been doing it for years. If you and Gammer Parrott had done something about it before, Ruthie would be alive now.”

  Crane sucked in an audible breath. Miss Bell gasped. “How dare you!”

  “Other families suffered at Hector Vaudrey’s hands. You did nothing until he hurt your family, and then tried to kill a man who had nothing to do with your wrongs. I don’t call that justice.”

  Miss Bell’s mouth worked. “And this is justice?” she managed. “Come in here when they’re dead and tell us what we did wrong? What did you do about Hector Vaudrey?”

  “Nothing,” Stephen said coldly. “Lychdale is sufficiently stocked with lawyers, practitioners, guns, sharp-edged farming implements, poisons and kindling to get rid of a hundred Hectors. The only possible conclusion is that you all liked having him around.”

  Crane put a hand over his face at that; Merrick gave a little whistle. Miss Bell was scarlet, with spots of whi
te on her cheeks and the sides of her nose.

  “Now,” Stephen went on. “Can you explain why leaving the jack for Lucien Vaudrey was other than murder? Can you justify killing a man you’d never even seen for the acts of his brother?”

  “I can,” said Crane, over Miss Bell’s speechlessness.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said, I can give you a reason. My father could tolerate Hector but he couldn’t countenance me. Everyone expects me to be at least as bad as my brother. You did yourself.”

  “I didn’t try to kill you.”

  “You’ve a heart of gold,” Crane said sardonically. “In Mrs. Parrott or Miss Bell’s shoes, I would have done precisely the same thing: kill them all and let God sort them out.” Miss Bell made a slight gasp of protest; Crane went on. “Hector and my father brought their ends on themselves. And I am happy to regard the attempt on my life as an understandable precaution, as long as I know it will not be repeated.” Crane looked over Stephen’s head at Miss Bell. “I am not like my brother, madam. If you will accept that, this can end now.”

  “I’m the justiciar here,” said Stephen with unusual belligerence. “I will tell you when this ends.”

  Crane’s chin went up instinctively. “And I’m the lord here, and you’re on my land.”

  “Your land, and your laws, is it?”

  “I choose whether to prosecute a crime against myself,” said Crane. “You’ve heard my wishes, Mr. Day. If this lady will drop the matter, so will I, and so will you. Madam?”

  She opened her mouth, closed it, and glanced over at Stephen, whose face was stony.

  “You’re saying you’re not like Hector Vaudrey,” she said slowly. “But you’re asking me to take a Vaudrey’s word for it.”

  “Not really. And I suspect you know that. Talk to Mrs. Mitching up at Piper. Talk to Graham, if you like. Thank you, Merrick,” he added, at the snort from the door. “I am far from spotless, but even Graham won’t be able to tell you that I behave like my brother.”

  She walked over to Crane and looked up at him. “Give me your hand.”

  Crane extended it, gazing at her levelly. She looked down at it, turning it over and back.

  “I’ll accept what you say,” she said at last. “For now. But you needn’t expect any mercy if it turns out I shouldn’t.”

  “No,” said Stephen. “You will not act on this man in any way, under any circumstances, ever.”

  “Mr. Day—”

  “No,” said Stephen again, this time to Crane. “I’ll respect your wishes, but there is a caveat and it is this: You have lost the benefit of the doubt, Miss Bell. If you believe action is needed against Lord Crane, you may call on me, but you will not take it yourself or cause it to be taken by others. If you move against this man by any means, direct or indirect, practice or material, you will be judged, and not kindly. Understood?”

  She gave a stiff, resentful nod.

  “I am going to draw a line under this business, at Lord Crane’s request. But you are charged to spread the word that my attention is on the matter. If anyone harms Lord Crane, I will be back, and I will be unhappy, and I will spread that unhappiness far and wide and deep before I’ve done. Make that known round Lychdale. Are we clear, Miss Bell?”

  Miss Bell’s face was tight and mask-like. “Yes,” she rapped.

  “Good. Lord Crane, is there anything else?”

  “Does Ruthie have a gravestone?” asked Crane.

  The words fell into blank silence.

  “Why?” asked Stephen cautiously.

  “Suicide.”

  “No,” said Miss Bell. “She don’t. An unmarked grave outside the church wall is what Vicar gave her.”

  “Which church, the one here?”

  “Saint Sulpice, in Fulford. He wouldn’t let her lie here.”

  “Which vicar?”

  “Mr. Haining.”

  “Does it matter to Mrs. Trent?”

  “Yes,” said Miss Bell. “It does.”

  Crane nodded. “I’ll speak to him.”

  She snorted. “We spoke to him. New churchwarden tried and tried. Went and begged Vicar, for Gammer’s sake. Back and forth, he went. Vicar wouldn’t hear it. Self-murdered is outside the Church, he said, and that’s all there is.”

  “Well, we shall see,” Crane said. “Thank you. Good day, madam. Let’s go.”

  Chapter Eleven

  They left the unhappy little cottage, emerged into the bright, clean sunshine, and took two steps in the direction of the carriage before the cry cut through the air.

  “Stephen!”

  “Oh God,” said Stephen.

  All four turned to see a short, fat woman marching up. Her bonnet was slightly askew, and her face was red with exertion and anger.

  “Stephen Day! What’s this I hear?”

  “I’m working, Aunt,” Stephen said quellingly, to no effect.

  “Working for the Vaudreys?”

  “No, working. At my profession.”

  “There is no justice that you can bring to this,” said Mrs. Talbot through her teeth. “Have you gone mad? Your father—”

  “My father has nothing to do with this,” Stephen snapped. “And nor do you, Aunt.”

  She took a deep breath, swelling. “When I hear of my own nephew grovelling to the Vaudreys—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” said Crane.

  “You,” began Mrs. Talbot with loathing.

  “Nan…” Miss Bell interrupted, and there was a clamour of voices.

  “I will not—”

  “Listen, please—”

  “This ridiculous business—”

  “Everybody be quiet,” said Stephen, in a normal speaking voice that managed to deaden the sound of all the rest. “Aunt, if you want to speak to me, we will do it in private. Lord Crane, wait for me please.”

  He went back into the cottage without waiting for answers or permission. Annie Talbot gave Crane a long, nasty look before following her nephew in. The door slammed.

  Crane let rip a sentence in Shanghainese that made his henchman’s eyebrows shoot up, and stalked away towards the graveyard. Merrick didn’t follow. As Miss Bell, hesitating, started to turn away, he touched her arm. “Got a moment, ma’am?”

  “What is it?”

  “D’you know who I am?”

  Miss Bell frowned. “You? You’re Lord Crane’s servant, ain’t you?”

  “I’m Frank Merrick.” Miss Bell’s puzzled expression didn’t change, so he added, “Twenty years ago I was up here, courting Amy Pessell. If you’re from round this way, you might remember about that. She lived on a farm just a mile or so down the road.”

  Her face changed, slowly, two decades of memory shifting.

  “You were Amy Pessell’s beau?”

  “That’s right.”

  “The man who knocked Hector Vaudrey’s teeth out,” said Miss Bell. “That was you?”

  “One tooth,” Merrick said. “That’s all I got, then he gave me a hell of a drubbing. Then I got a flogging, after. Then Amy stood up in front of the old lord in court and says it’s all lies and Hector never touched her—”

  “She had a big family,” Miss Bell said. “No father. She couldn’t take the risk of crossing him.”

  “I know. So the old lord gives me a choice, right? Ten years hard for grievous assault or, he says, I can take a post as manservant to his rotten younger son what he’s sending to China. Seventeen years old and bad to the bone. Needs a keeper. Right? And I say yes to that, because there’s not a lot else for me except breaking rocks. And then, day before we go, I get a message from one of his men, and he says, if Lucien Vaudrey happens to fall overboard, no need to worry anyone’ll blame me for it, and I can just disappear in Shanghai, no questions asked. Right?”

  Miss Bell straightened her back. “His father said that?”

  “It came from him. Yeah. And I think, well, the old lord wants Hector alive and Lucien dead. So Lucien must be something special, one way or the
other. And I think, I got the whole voyage to China. I’ll just see what kind of bloke he is before I shove him over the side.” He nodded slowly, eyes remote with the memory. “And he’s a snotty, arrogant little so-and-so who needs keeping on a leash till he grows up, but what I can see pretty quick is, he ain’t Hector. So I think, I got nothing better to do, let’s see where this goes. Right?”

  “Right,” said Miss Bell, hypnotised.

  “Twenty years ago, that was. We started poor as hell. You would not believe how poor you can be in the slums of Shanghai. Didn’t think we’d live through the first winter. But he never let me down. He got me through smallpox, and made a shaman, that’s one of your lot, take a curse off of me, and that cost him. I smuggled him two hundred miles in a silk caravan to get him away from a warlord, and you don’t want to know about that, never seen a carry-on like it. Twenty years, Miss Bell. I know that bloke inside out, good and bad. You lot down here don’t have a clue.”

  “Well.” Miss Bell was nonplussed.

  “Took me five days on that ship to make sure of him. Mr. Day got his measure in an hour, if you ask me. And if ever a man had a right to hate the Vaudreys, Mr. Day does, but here he is, and fighting for my lord. Think on it, Miss Bell. We need a bit more thinking round here.”

  Miss Bell nodded, slowly. “I will.”

  “Good. Oh, and if you happen to be putting the word round like Mr. Day said, there’s just another thing, if you got a chance to mention it as well?”

  “What’s that?”

  “The next bloke takes a swing at my lord, I’m going to break both his arms,” said Merrick. “And that’ll give him trouble when he tries to pick his teeth up. That’s all. Nice talking to you, ma’am.”

  He strolled over to Crane, who was propped against the lychgate. Miss Bell stared after him.

  The cottage door opened. Stephen stalked out, stiff-legged and flushed. Mrs. Talbot followed, an ugly shade of angry crimson. Stephen went over to Crane without looking at anyone else.

  “I dare say I’ve wasted your time,” he snapped. “Jack’s maker’s dead, no need for me to protect you. I’m going to walk back.”

  “Do you want company?”

  “No.”