by Joan Smith
They came to a row of willows, trailing their branches into the stream. “There is where Muffal lives,” Lewis said, pointing to a shack that tilted precariously to the left. It was about ten feet square, built of unpainted boards, with a tar-paper roof. Three dead hares hung in the unglazed window.
“It must be cold in winter,” Charity said, staring at the horrible domicile.
“Muffal goes to the poorhouse in Eastleigh in the winter. This is his summer residence. He will be fishing, I expect. You would be surprised how big some of the fish in this stream are.” He cupped his mouth with his hands and shouted, “Halloo. It’s Winton, Muffal. Are you home?” Aside to Charity he added, “I would not take you into the place for a wilderness of monkeys. I don’t know how he can stand the stench of rotting meat and dead fish.” This said, he cupped his hands and shouted again.
Almost immediately, a bearded, filthy man dressed in a ragged grogram coat of ancient vintage, with a misshapen beaver hat pulled low over his eyes, appeared around the corner. In his right hand he held a fishing rod.
“G’day, melord.” He grinned, revealing a few shattered remains of teeth. “They be biting t’day.”
“G’day, Muffal. I want to ask you something.” He went a little closer, with Charity hanging somewhat behind. “Do you mind telling me some years ago about Meg Monteith’s grave?”
“Aye, Meg and the wee one.”
“You said there was no baby buried with her. The gravestone says there is.”
“Stones can lie as well as folks, I’m thinking.”
“So you are saying Meg is alone in that grave?”
“Meg and the worms. That’s all, melord.”
“How do you come to know that?”
“Why, ‘tis well known as an old ballad. Meg sleeps alone, for t’first time since her put up her hair and let down her skirts. Hee hee.”
“Yes, but how do you know? Who told you? Or did you see her being put in the coffin?”
Muffal lifted his hat and scratched his hair. “ ‘Twas that long ago I don’t rightly remember, but I know Meg sleeps alone. Ah, she were a bonnie lass.”
Charity nudged Lewis’s elbow and whispered, “Ask him if she was ever enceinte.”
Lewis went a few steps closer and said, “Are you sure Meg ever had a babe at all, Muffal?”
“That she had, to judge by the yelling and screaming that night. I mind it well. We all see’d her body swelling day by day.”
“Where did she give birth to this baby, then?” Lewis asked.
“If you’re wanting to know more, ‘tis Old Ned you mun talk to. Ned knows more than he says.”
“You mean the hermit?” Lewis asked.
“Aye, Ned Carbury that was, afore he took religion. A fine toper was Ned, but the books destroyed him. He were always a lad for book reading. Ah, there was weird and wild goings-on in them days. Ned was groom at the big house, courting Meg, afore she caught His Lordship’s eye. He got elevated pretty quick to post of hermit with all its perkizzits.”
A rabbit darted through the meadow. Muffal dropped his fishing line. “Be that all, melord? There is a fine hopper waiting for my jiggle bag.”
Lewis could think of nothing more to ask and let Muffal go. As he walked away with Charity, he said, “I told you. There is no baby buried in that grave. Never was, never will be.”
“I wonder if Muffal learned it from Ned, the hermit. We should speak to him.”
“Ned don’t talk. That is the sort of hermit he is. He just prays, and on fine days he might sit in the sun and read for a spell.”
She directed a meaningful look at Lewis. “Very convenient, his taking a vow of silence.”
“I don’t know that it is a vow. Ned never actually took holy orders. He is a sort of amateur holy man.”
“He was given this sinecure of hermit by your father to pay him off for losing Meg.”
“I fancy that was the way of it. A pretty slim reward it was, too, but then if he had a taste for books ...”
“We have got to talk to Ned,” Charity said.
Chapter Eleven
Charity looked around, wondering where the grotto might be. Other than the graveyard, there was nothing but natural beauty around her. The meadows, the park, the stream.
“The grotto is this way,” Lewis said, pointing off to the far side of the estate. “We walked westward; the grotto is to the east.”
As they passed behind the Hall, Charity glanced up to admire the soaring stone walls and pointed windows. It was difficult to be certain, with the sun shining in her eyes, but she thought she noticed a head at one of the bedroom windows.
“Whose window is that?” she asked, pointing it out to Lewis.
“That is the east wing. Only Mama and Miss Monteith are using it at the moment. Mama had thought of putting you there, since you are a girl and John and I sleep in the west wing, but as your papa was along, she decided there was no impropriety in letting you have the Queen Elizabeth Suite after all.”
“Someone was watching us,” she said. The Hall was built on the summit of a small incline. Whoever had been watching would have had a view of the graveyard and perhaps even of Muffal’s shack. At least she (of course it was Miss Monteith she feared was watching) would have seen the direction they had gone in.
“Daresay it was John. He hobbled upstairs to keep an eye on us. I noticed he has taken to calling you Charity. Not like him. Sorry I called you Charity at breakfast. I only did it to rag John. He is usually stiff as a poker with guests Mama imports against his will. You want to be careful, Miss Wainwright, or he will be pestering you with an offer.”
“Oh, I do not think that at all likely,” Charity replied, biting back a smile. “After the scold he gave me last night, it is more likely to be an order to get out than an offer of marriage.”
“He felt demmed foolish about that. Serves him right to make a cake of himself. He is too toplofty by half. I only did it for a lark. How was I to know the gudgeon would take off after Millie and bust his ankle? But that is always the way, ain’t it? You only want a bit of fun and end up in the suds. There is the chapel. Do you want to take a peek?”
They did just that; took one quick peek at the Spartan room before continuing on their way. It seemed a great pity to Charity that the lovely little Gothic chapel, so pretty on the outside, had been stripped of all its ornaments within.
“Ned lives in the woods yonder,” Lewis said, pointing to a stand of ancient oaks with a path leading through it. “You might see him sunning himself at the edge of the stream. It winds through the woods. I catch a glimpse of him from time to time when I am out riding. He usually has his nose in a book, but sometimes he is just sitting there. He might be asleep, to judge by the looks of him, but as he is a holy man I daresay he is thinking of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or some such deep thing.”
They continued for about a quarter of a mile through the woods. The air was cool and moist, with tall branches filtering the sun that came in sudden shafts of glory between the trees to light patches of wildflowers. The uneven path was slippery underfoot from last autumn’s fallen leaves. Squirrels chased one another up the tree trunks, chattering busily. Overhead, a jackdaw croaked a warning of their approach to the woods’ unsuspecting inhabitants. When they came to the stream, Lewis veered off the path and continued for about two hundred yards.
“There it is,” he said, pointing to a little stone grotto built into the side of a hill.
There were no statues or any indication that the grotto was used at all. It was shallow, with a squirrel scuttling through the grass.
“He cannot live there!” Charity exclaimed. “Where is his cave?”
“It ain’t a cave, exactly, but somehow we always speak of the hermit as living in a cave. Seems more hermitlike. His house is just there, beside the grotto. It seemed the proper place to put him. Hermits and grottos go together like gammon and mustard.”
She looked and discovered a pretty stone cottag
e set off a few yards from the grotto. It was small, perhaps comprising two rooms on one floor. It looked snug and modern, more like a tenant’s cottage than a hermit’s nook.
“Papa built it for him. I shall give the door a rap and see if he is about.”
So saying, he approached the door and tapped. They waited; Lewis tapped again. No sound came from within. He tried the door and found it locked.
“It is strange he would lock his door when he is in such an isolated place,” Charity said.
“Poachers. Muffal would steal the fleas off a dog. We shall try the stream” was his next idea.
There, sunning himself on a large rock, sat the hermit. He had long white hair and a severe face, with some suggestion of a marble monument in its austerity. The face was not white, however, but well tanned, with a pair of startling blue eyes set deep on either side of a prominent nose. His robe was snowy white. A staff like a shepherd’s crook sat on the ground beside the rock.
“I say, Ned,” Lewis called, walking forward.
The hermit leaped up as if he had been shot at. What struck Charity was the man’s fierce eyes. At this close range she saw that they were shockingly bloodshot.
“Hence home, you idle creatures!” he exclaimed, pointing toward the Hall and looking like Jehovah in a very bad temper.
“I just want to ask you a question,” Lewis said. The hermit examined him suspiciously. “About Meg Monteith and her child.”
The hermit said no more. He rose from his rock, picked up his staff, and marched stiffly off to his pleasant-looking little cottage. From that impressive visage Charity had expected a tall, gaunt frame, but the hermit was short and slight.
Lewis shrugged. “I told you he wouldn’t talk. A regular statue. There is no point following him.”
“He did speak. He quoted Shakespeare. That is odd, is it not?”
“Eh? What are you talking about?”
“That ‘home, you idle creatures!’ That is Shakespeare. From Julius Caesar, I think. I would have expected something from the Bible.”
“I never can tell them apart. Very likely Ned can’t either.”
“But where would he have come across Shakespeare? He was only a groom before he became a hermit. One assumes his reading since then would be of sermons and holy writing. Did you notice his eyes were very bloodshot?”
“No doubt he was up praying half the night, or studying, or flagellating himself, or doing whatever it is hermits do.”
“Or drinking,” Charity said, though it was possible a late night of reading might have caused those red eyes.
They returned, retracing their steps through the pretty forest without incident. When they reached the Hall, they found Merton in the Blue Saloon waiting for them, with his bandaged ankle propped up on a footstool. The bandage had required the removal of one topboot, which had been replaced by a patent evening slipper. He hastily picked up the book of poetry he had laid aside an hour before in favor of the Farmer’s Monthly.
“You missed all the excitement,” Merton said. “We have had a visit from Knagg despite the locked door and sealed windows. Why, it is enough to make a man believe in ghosts.”
“Especially if he wants to ingratiate Miss Wainwright’s papa,” Lewis added, grinning from ear to ear.
Charity appeared unmoved by both Merton’s announcement and Lewis’s gibe. “Has Papa sorted out the relationship between Knagg and Walter yet?”
“They are half brothers; they have the same mama,” Merton told her. “Knagg’s papa was forking and country, and Knagg followed in his father’s footsteps. Walter, né Charles, was the son of one of Cromwell’s men. The half brothers met, and died in battle, here at Keefer Hall, but they did not kill each other.”
“And the singing nun?” Charity asked. “Papa mentioned the possibility of a connection between the three of them.”
“They were neighbors, all local folks. That is the only connection. He is upstairs with the singing nun now, attempting to discover her tale. It should be amusing to learn what she was doing in a monk’s cell. But enough of that. What have you two been up to?”
“Miss Wainwright thinks Mama murdered Meg,” Lewis said.
“Does she indeed!” Merton replied with an astonished look. “Is there no end to Miss Wainwright’s inventiveness? My being a bastard is not enough for you?” he asked, damping down his anger. “Now you label Mama a murderess!”
“I merely suggested it as one possibility among many,” she explained dismissingly.
“Because of there not being a child in Meg’s grave, you see,” Lewis explained.
“That is news to me!” Merton said. “Surely the gravestone indicates a double burial.”
“Told her it was no such thing,” Lewis said. “About Mama, I mean. As to the grave, she is dead right. Did Muffal never tell you the story, John?” he asked, amazed at such a lack of initiative on his brother’s part.
“I do not number Muffal among my confidants,” Merton said dampingly.
“You ought to. He is a mine of information. I have known forever that Meg was alone in that grave. Old Ned, the hermit, could confirm it if he would, but you know Ned. He will never say a word.”
“Except to quote Shakespeare,” Charity added. “And furthermore I think he drinks more than is good for him. His eyes were as red as radishes.”
“You should not have disturbed Ned, Lewis,” Merton chided. “Our hermit is not a mere ornament to amuse our guests, as some are. He is a genuine holy man.”
Lewis accepted this without arguing. “Did you know Papa gave him the post of hermit when he stole Meg Monteith from him?”
“More of old Muffal’s imaginings?” Merton asked, cocking an eyebrow in derision.
“I had the story from Muffal,” Lewis admitted.
“Muffal is a nasty piece of mischief. I wish you would not speak to him.”
Charity asked, “Why do you allow him to live on the estate if you dislike his character, Merton?”
“Why, he has lived here forever.”
She knew this was always sufficient reason for continuing a pointless or even dangerous tradition in the noble homes of England. At Beaulieu Lord Montagu harbored a known felon, who had a knack for devising superior fish lures.
“Besides,” Merton added, “he does an excellent job of keeping the park free of moles.”
“He is a demmed fine rat catcher as well,” Lewis added. “Cleared out our cellar in one afternoon. I say, John, is the Armaments Room open now? I should like to have a look-in to see how Knagg is behaving.”
“Yes, it is open. I have allowed Mr. Wainwright to put the offending objects away in a chest in a corner of the room. If that does not satisfy Knagg, I may have them removed to another room.”
“Don’t take them to your own bedchamber,” Lewis advised. “I mean to say, the nun would not want them near her. She must have been dead set against Cromwell, eh? Her being a nun and him destroying our chapel.”
He left, and Charity took his seat closer to Merton. He prepared a smile, looking forward to some private conversation of an intimate sort.
She said, “Someone upstairs was watching us from the east wing. Miss Monteith, I daresay.”
“That is possible. I am sorry I missed our ride this morning. I was particularly looking forward to it.”
“Yes,” she said impatiently. “I daresay Miss Monteith is upstairs?”
“I have not seen her down here. I believe, now that I have had my ankle tended to, I may be able to ride tomorrow.”
“No, we will not be riding. I should have listened to Papa. Where is your mama, Merton?”
Merton saw there was to be no romance until he had discussed the apparition at the window. “St. John is with her at the moment, consoling her for last night’s invasion by the pigeon. I mean to move Mama to another room before nightfall. I am convinced Monteith introduced that bird into her chamber. It is enough to put me in charity with St. John. Better he should get Mama’s money than that Monteith
should. I have invited him to take lunch with us. I shall sound him out on his plans for the fund. If I approve, I shall not try to dissuade Mama from giving him half her fortune.”
As Merton was alone, Charity thought it polite to spend a little time with him during his convalescence. Glancing about, she noticed the book of poetry on the table and said, “I see you have been indulging your taste for poetry, Merton. That surprises me. I would not have taken you for the poetic sort.”
He studied this for either insult or praise. As he had no use whatever for poetry, and as Charity had claimed a lack of interest equal to his own, he decided it was no insult at least.
“It helps to pass an idle hour on such occasions as this, when I am chairbound.” He proceeded to put the opening to more personal use. “Er, what sort do you take me for, Charity?”
“A very practical, down-to-earth gentleman. Keefer Hall appears so prosperous that you are obviously a good manager.”
This, while hardly romantic, was one sort of praise to please Merton. He was proud of his estate management. Had she been a gentleman, this discussion might have continued into the byways of sheep rearing and crop rotation. As she was an attractive young lady, he said only, “I am considered a fair manager, I believe.”
“It is generally the way with you unimaginative gentlemen,” she said unthinkingly.
Merton’s jaw moved silently. “What is your reading of yourself ? What sort of young lady are you? I would have thought one of your highly imaginative faculties would be a lover of poetry.”
“No, by and large I find it silly. I like flowers, but to turn them into sentient beings goes too far for me. I am really very boring,” she replied blandly. “I am not poetical or artistic or musical. I do not know what I am precisely. Since I began to grow up, I have never been in one place long enough to find out. I cannot even make up my mind as to whether I believe in ghosts. Papa does seem to have some unexplained power.”
“I believe it is the power of hindsight. He can explain matters after the fact. For instance, we Dechastelaines have always been loyalists. My Armaments Room holds mostly artifacts from wars defending the monarchy. That little yellow jerkin and the round helmet are obviously out of place there. Hence your papa has decided they are the cause of the mischief. It is but a short step to claim that a Cromwellian spirit is doing the mischief.”