The Nightingale Legacy

by Catherine Coulter

  It was then that the Duchess told her about the Wyndham treasure. “King Henry the Eighth,” Caroline said. “That’s amazing, more amazing I think than finding proof that poor old King Mark is here.”

  “I don’t know about that,” the Duchess said. “Henry the Eighth is only three hundred years old, whereas King Mark is more than a thousand years old. That’s impressive, Caroline, very impressive.”

  “I personally think it’s all fancy woven from the tortured minds of North’s male ancestors, misogynists, all of them, beginning with his great-grandfather.”

  “Tell me more,” the Duchess said, and Caroline did.

  “Hmmm,” the Duchess said after an hour of talk and questions. “Let’s put our heads together, Caroline. Two ladies, I believe, have a much better chance of figuring things out than two passionate gentlemen who would rather bust heads together than just think.”

  “That,” the earl said from the doorway, “sounds very much like an insult to me.”

  “I agree,” North said, coming into the bedchamber. “At least my wife still looks bright enough to give me a smile. That miserable potion is still working?”

  Caroline was getting muzzy in her thinking, but North looked so very splendid, all windblown and tousled from riding in the chilly afternoon, as vibrant and as alive as a man could get, that she felt a leap of energy and smiled at him, she couldn’t help it. “I feel wonderful.”

  “That look on your wife’s face is all female besottedness, North. If you believe it, then you’re more conceited than I had imagined.”

  The Duchess said, “We’ve been discussing King Mark and his treasure being here on Nightingale land. What do you think, North?”

  “Hmmm? Oh, I’m sorry, Duchess. What did you say?”

  Marcus poked him in the belly with his fist. “He’s thinking about announcing to the world that he is a god above men, just ask his wife. So he pleases you, does he, Caroline?”

  “Yes,” she said simply, still smiling at her husband.

  The Duchess rose and shook out her wool skirts. “I think it’s time that Caroline had a nap. She looks like she’s on the verge of a minor wilt. Marcus, I would like to speak to you now. Alone.”

  “Ah,” the earl said, giving his wife his arm. “I fear she will order up our carriage and force me to—”

  She punched him in the belly.

  “I have found,” Caroline said, “that North’s cravats are very useful in gaining control. At least they were that one time he let me use them.”

  “How?” the Duchess said, an elegant black eyebrow arched upward.

  Caroline turned crimson, her eyes nearly crossing with what had come unexpectedly out of her mouth. North laughed and said, “You see, there’s no such thing as a private jest, sweetheart. Won’t you tell the Duchess what you did with those cravats?”

  “Yes, I will, when we’re alone,” Caroline said, then sneezed, a fake sneeze, North saw, but he let it alone. Her color was high. Damn and blast the miserable cold.

  It was the Duchess who said to everyone the next afternoon at luncheon, “I read the entire journal last night.”

  “She told me to be quiet and repose myself,” the earl said, and forked down a bit of Polgrain’s delicious roasted wild duck garnished with watercress and small oranges.

  “What truly surprised me,” the Duchess said, “was that he did. He slept like a glutton who’d just eaten Christmas dinner. In any case, the journal was illuminating, Caroline.”

  Caroline, who was feeling much more the thing than the day before, said, “What did you find? I’ve skipped about in the journal and haven’t read it all the way through. Have you, North?”

  He shook his head. “What do you think, Duchess?”

  “I think we should go to that spot where your great-grandfather said one of his men found that armlet. So strange that it just disappeared. Too, I’m afraid his directions aren’t too specific.”

  “No, they’re not,” Caroline said. “I’ve been so frustrated trying to find something.”

  The earl looked at his wife with mild disbelief. “Surely you don’t believe that pap? I’ll wager my best Hessians that there never was an armlet save in your great-grandfather’s head, North.”

  “I agree, unfortunately,” North said. “I think he was already well over the edge when he began the journal. You read, certainly, Duchess, all the rantings and ravings of his about his miserable harlot of a wife. I think the selection of King Mark as his hero of choice is because King Mark was also betrayed by his wife, Isolde, with Tristan. I believe it pleased my great-grandfather to compare himself to the poor tortured king and transplant his remains and a boundless treasure closer, namely here on Nightingale land, thus aggrandizing himself in the process.”

  “I went there, Duchess,” Caroline said. “There’s a thick copse of oak trees, a long stone fence, and so many of those rolling hillocks. I looked and looked, but alas, I didn’t find a thing, even a scrap of a pottery piece, nothing at all. I went there three or four times.”

  The earl said, “I tend to think there never was a golden armlet, else where is it? If it was stolen, then why didn’t your grandfather or even your father write about it?”

  There was no answer to that. North said, “Even the three male martinets don’t know a thing.”

  “No matter,” the Duchess said. “I want to go there.” She said to her husband, “This reminds me of my searches at the abbey, Marcus. Remember, we neither of us believed in the Wyndham legacy and we were wrong. Just perhaps I’ll find something. Actually I want to find something very badly.”

  “Treasure-hunting is now in her blood,” the earl said. “You should see her wearing that rope of pearls we found and nothing else, just the pearls—”

  His wife’s very white hand slammed over his mouth.

  33

  THE DUCHESS HAD left Mount Hawke early to treasure-hunt, the gentlemen had ridden off to the tin mines, and thus Caroline rode into Goonbell. She wanted to see the chamber Coombe had stayed in before he’d disappeared.

  Mrs. Freely was talking before she’d even taken Caroline’s cloak and gloves. She learned all about how Jeb Peckly, that miserable sodden drunk, had become nearly a decent husband, drinking very little now, and she hadn’t heard a thing about his beating his wife and daughters. Caroline smiled hugely at that. Mrs. Freely asked her questions about the Earl and Countess of Chase as she took her into her huge warm kitchen and gave her a mug of mulled wine, to ward off the piskey chill, she said, then patted Caroline’s hair, and said, “Lovely hair you have, my lady. Rich-looking, not just a boring single color, but a multitude of interesting shades, just like the trees that surround the inn. I’ve always been fond of those elms and oaks and maples, yes I have. At least until they lose all their leaves, which I hope you won’t ever do, in a manner of speaking.”

  Eventually, Mrs. Freely led her upstairs, wishing aloud that she could meet the Earl and Countess of Chase. Caroline thought about the Duchess dealing with the gossiping Mrs. Freely and thought it couldn’t fail to be fascinating. She invited her to dinner.

  “Now, my lady, no man has ever tried to tell me what to do,” she said as they neared Coombe’s chamber door.

  “Huh?” Caroline said, at sea.

  “No man who’s around to tell about it in any case,” Mrs. Freely added, nodding to herself. “There was one man who dared call me Meg and pat my bottom whenever I walked past him. I clouted him but good. Ah, here we are, poor Mr. Coombe’s room.” She opened the door. “I assure you there’s nothing more to find. His lordship searched most thoroughly. Everyone hereabouts believes Coombe was a madman, and they’re both relieved he’s gone and worried that they don’t know where he is. No one speaks of anything else, as you can expect.”

  “Yes, one would expect that,” Caroline said.

  It was actually a very nice room on the east side of the inn, on the second floor. There were four windows, all wide, all covered with lovely white lace curtains. The
furnishings were plain but not at all unpleasant. Caroline stood in the middle of the room, just looking around her. Mrs. Freely was quiet for the first time since Caroline had met her. Then she just nodded, turned, and said over her shoulder, “That one man, the one who called me Meg, he was a lovely lad, he was.” She nodded again and left Caroline alone.

  “Did you kill my aunt, Coombe?” Caroline asked the still room. “Everyone is saying that you hate women, that the Nightingale legacy poisoned you. Everyone believes you killed the women because they rejected you or betrayed you. No one really knows. North doesn’t know what to believe, truth be told, nor do I. He’s wondered and wondered about that letter from Elizabeth Godolphin. He says he didn’t know you had a nickname and neither did Tregeagle or Polgrain, and such an odd nickname. Did she really call you her ‘King of Diamonds’? Did she never use your real name? Did other women call you that as well? Why was there only one letter? And only from her? North is very disturbed, Coombe. He says you aren’t stupid. He just doesn’t understand why you would leave this bloody knife here in your room if you were guilty. Ah, I wish I knew what happened.”

  The chamber was utterly silent, not that she expected anything else. Caroline sighed, then turned to the armoire.

  “Where did you go? If you escaped, why then would you leave all this evidence behind to be found?” Again, there was no answer, no sound at all.

  She opened the armoire. It was empty now, North had taken everything. There were drawers below that smelled of cedar. They were also empty. She rose and closed the armoire doors. There was a small desk with a quill and ink on top, nothing else, and three narrow drawers. She opened each of them. They were empty. North had found the letter in one of the drawers. Certainly he’d searched all of them carefully.

  She straightened from the desk and looked around the chamber. It was chilly, for there was no fire in the small fireplace. Mrs. Freely had no one staying in this room at the moment. In fact, Mrs. Freely had told her that no one had stayed in this room since Mr. Coombe had disappeared. Too many flapping jaws, she’d said to Caroline, everyone telling strangers about the bloody knife, and how the room was now haunted. “Your ladyship knows how we Cornish love our ghosts. If there isn’t a ghost for every cottage, for every inn, for every twisted tree, then you simply aren’t in Cornwall. Aye, you’re in Devon or Dorset, no imagination in any of those folk. They sit around and boast about their silly Devon cream, which doesn’t hold a candle to Cornish cream, let me tell you. Still, I do hate to lose money with this room empty.”

  Caroline felt no strange lurking feelings standing in the middle of the room. Perhaps since she wasn’t Cornish she wasn’t able to scent the ghosts or feel them or perhaps even hear them. “Where did you go, Coombe?” she asked the silent room. “Didn’t you think Mrs. Freely would notice that you weren’t here? Didn’t you think she and North would search your room?”

  She jumped. She heard a rustling, slapping sound, then drew a deep breath, realizing it was a tree branch lightly sliding against a window.

  “Maybe I was a Cornish woman a long time ago,” she said. It helped to speak out loud. It made her feel less alone.

  She felt depressed that she hadn’t discovered anything, but then again, she really hadn’t expected North to overlook anything. She was on the point of leaving when she noticed the beautifully carved wooden poles on the Hepplewhite bed that had once been much taller, supporting a canopy. Obviously someone had cut them off, for now the four poles ended in rather roughly carved pineapples. She walked slowly to the bed, her eyes on those carved pineapples. She lightly touched one of the poles at the foot of the bed. It didn’t move. She tugged at it. It still didn’t budge.

  She went to the other one at the foot of the bed. It too didn’t move. It was the third one at the head of the bed that turned easily in her hand. Her heart speeded up. Slowly, she pulled the pineapple off the pole. There was a hole beneath, not solid wood. She reached her fingers into the cavity and touched paper. She managed to hook her fingers around the paper and pull it out. It was a single sheet and it had been folded into a square and then into a smaller square until now it was no larger than an inch square and very thick.

  She stared at the folded paper in the palm of her hand. It was yellow and crisp with age. Very gently, she eased the paper from its stiff folds.

  She didn’t know what she expected the folded paper to be. Perhaps a long-ago love letter written by one lover to another upon leaving early in the morning fog. She shook herself. She was being quite silly.

  She carefully spread the paper out atop the bed counterpane. It wasn’t a love letter. It wasn’t an old tradesman’s bill or a simple list of household linens.

  It was a letter threatening murder. It had been written in May 1726 by Viscount Chilton, North’s great-grandfather, to a man named Griffin. The black ink was spidery and difficult to read in many places, but the letter itself was straightforward enough. “‘Griffin,”’ she read. “‘You will keep away from my wife or I will thrust my sword through your black heart.”’ And it was signed D. Nightingale, Viscount Chilton.

  D. was Donniger. Yes, it was certainly North’s great-grandfather. Donniger Nightingale, an odd name, one she hadn’t forgotten.

  Who was Griffin? What was the letter doing stuffed down into one of the sawed-off, pineapple-carved bedposts?

  She smoothed the paper over her hand and dashed downstairs to the taproom. She was breathing hard and Mrs. Freely said, “My goodness, child, whatever do you have there?”

  “You’ll not believe it, Mrs. Freely. I found it hidden in one of the bedposts. Just look, it’s rather amazing, and this, I fancy, is the beginning of the Nightingale legacy of betrayal.”

  Mrs. Freely ushered her into the kitchen and the two of them spread the paper on the kitchen table.

  “Ah, Griffin,” Mrs. Freely said. “My granny told me about him.”

  Caroline found herself again marveling at the tenacity of the Cornish memory. If she asked, doubtless Mrs. Freely could easily discover Griffin’s middle name. “Who was he?”

  “A wild rogue, from what is still said around these parts, a handsome young man too, with scarce a worry on his shoulders, and too much money from his pa. He seduced more ladies than old Casanova himself. This letter makes it seem like he was the one who cuckolded his lordship’s great-grandfather. You know, if I remember aright, he didn’t stay around here, left, he did, and never came back to Cornwall. He probably went to London to seduce his way through those ladies of the ton. So he left her to face her husband and then she died. Interesting, isn’t it, but I don’t know why that old letter would be stuck down in a bedpost.”

  “Where did the bed come from?”

  “Ah,” Mrs. Freely said. “That I can find out, my lady. Just you sip on the tea and I’ll look through my ma’s journals. My ma recorded every purchase she ever made for this inn. Sure enough she’ll have written down where she got this bed.”

  Caroline was both excited and depressed because it did seem true that North’s great-grandmother, that smiling happy young lady whose portrait now graced the huge white wall at the foot of the stairs, did indeed betray her husband. Caroline supposed she wished it wasn’t true.

  When Mrs. Freely told her that the bed had belonged to the Griffin family, Caroline wasn’t surprised. It seemed the family had fallen onto hard times, what with all the sons gambling and wenching, and had left England to go to the Colonies, selling off their furnishings before they’d left, way back in the 1780s. “Aye, my ma wrote in her housekeeping book that they went off to Boston to stay with their kin.”

  Well, that was indeed one Nightingale wife who had betrayed her husband. Caroline was depressed. She’d started the whole thing.

  She told North that night as they snuggled together, “I read all your great-grandfather’s part of the journal. He never wrote Griffin by name. Also, it appears he didn’t kill him, or if he did, he buried him deep because no one ever found his body. Then your great-
grandmother died only a month or so after he left. It’s all so tragic.”

  North was silent for a very long time. “You know, I think I’ll write a letter to the Griffins in the Colonies. You say Mrs. Freely heard they’d moved to Boston?”

  She nodded against his shoulder, breathed in the scent of him, and was lost.

  “My God,” North said some time later when he was able again to put two words together, “you surely give me glimpses of heaven, Caroline.”

  “Don’t you ever forget that, North Nightingale,” she said. She nipped his chin, then sighed deeply. “I wish our King Mark legacy could be real, like the Wyndhams’ legacy. Just think, the Wyndhams found old books and strange clues and they managed to weave their way through it all and discovered it was real.”

  “Sorry, sweetheart, but it won’t ever be more than the meanderings of bruised male hearts.”

  “What a nice way to speak of your male ancestors. I had really hoped that your great-grandmother hadn’t betrayed your great-grandfather. Now there doesn’t seem to be any doubt.”

  “No, no doubt at all. But perhaps there were reasons. Who knows?”

  * * *

  Caroline just shut her eyes and clamped her mouth closed. “Now, Caroline, just relax. I won’t hurt you, but I do have to poke about just a little bit. North, please step back, unless you want to do the poking.”

  North stepped back and watched Dr. Treath examine his wife. He didn’t lift her nightgown, merely slipped his hands beneath the covers and the gown. He pulled his hands free then and said to North, “Her belly is smooth and malleable but I need to examine her internally.”

  Before North could even begin to sputter, Dr. Treath stood and said to his sister, “I need some hot water and soap. Yes, Bess, it’s important, and must be done.”