Island of Bones caw-3

by Imogen Robertson

  ‘Do you think it likely Casper murdered him?’

  The fingers began to waggle quite ferociously. ‘I can’t think it, but then he was seen talking to the young lady, and handing her something, and he is a man. He is a man, a cunning-man and a man of parts, but still a man — and men do as they do.’

  Harriet decided it might be best to pick over the philosophy of this statement at a later date.

  ‘What was his business with the lady?’

  The landlord gave the back of his head a ferocious scratch, then lifted his hands to the height of his shoulder.

  ‘I saw Casper, your young lad and his tutor in company with her yesterday, then early in the day heard her asking Walter where Casper might be found. Hardly day at all it was, but off she set, even though the roads were still thick and dirty from the storm, and her a delicate-looking bird.’

  Harriet nodded over the information and read the advertisement again. ‘Can you shed any light on this business, Mr Postlethwaite? Anything you saw in Herr Hurst’s behaviour that might relate. .?’

  He lifted his hands and patted his cheeks as he thought — then, as if he had massaged the memories out of them, dropped them again. ‘Well, I might or might not. I shall tell you and you may tell me if I give light or shadow to the business. He was a nosy beggar, I’ll say that. Most ask after the paths and the museum and where they might hire a boat and a man to wield the oars, but his questions were all “Who lives here, and who stays there, and who are these folks?” That might be character, of course. Character. Ha!’ He stared ahead in silence for a moment, then started off again like a rabbit crossing between hedgerows. ‘I know he sent a letter. An express. Only a day or so after he came. On account. Always on account, that fella. And now Mr Crowther has swept his slate clean — well, well. Then Sunday evening he wants a horse ready for the morning and I say he’s welcome to one, but no more of this “on account, on account” until the bill he’s already run up is run off, if you take my meaning.’ Harriet smiled to show the meaning was taken. ‘So he gets himself all “of all the things”, and “shocked, shocked”, and announces he’s off to take one from the Queen’s Head instead if that’s the case, thank you very much. And I say to myself, “Well, fine and dandy to him”. So he takes himself off, then comes back late and full of strong drink and he has no need of a horse at all, thank you.’

  ‘Did you see him yesterday morning?’

  ‘Aye. Saw him send off his girl and tell her he had business to do. He spoke awful sharp to that child. Then she’s off and he’s off and he don’t come back for dinner or breakfast. Then the news he’s dead comes, and while I’m still catching my breath from that, I see the advertisement.’

  Harriet frowned. ‘Let me see if I have this correct, Mr Postlethwaite.’ He grinned at her, bunching and flexing his fingers. ‘Some time ago, soon after his arrival, Mr Hurst sends a letter. Then on Sunday evening he says he will need a horse the following day, but as far as you are aware, does not take one. Tuesday he waits at the inn. Yesterday he goes out, and does not come back. This morning the advertisement. Is that correct?’

  ‘Quite so, quite so. I like the look of your boy, madam. Nice lad. Is he to be a sailor like his da?’

  Harriet hardly heard him. ‘Yes, yes. . that is his intention. Did any message reach Mr Hurst while he was waiting at the inn? What was his demeanour?’

  Mr Postlethwaite seemed to have recovered. He lifted his chin and sniffed the air. ‘None through my hands, but there’s many a way of getting word to someone. I’d say he was happy on Sunday and Monday, grim on Tuesday though he went to bed cheerful, then a peacock on Wednesday as he headed out. Well, ma’am, I have done what I set out to do. If I have been of help, then I’m glad of it. If not, then I am sorry to waste your time and thank you for being so civil.’

  They stood and Harriet held out her hand. ‘Thank you, Mr Postlethwaite. You are invaluable. May I keep the newspaper?’

  He bowed slightly over her hand. ‘Indeed, indeed. With the compliments of the Royal Oak, Mrs Westerman. With our compliments.’

  Some time later, having folded the letter into his pocket, Crowther thought of the last occasion he had stood in this place, which had also been the last time he had seen Casper’s father, Ruben Grace. It was a fleeting encounter; he had looked up from the graveside as his mother’s coffin was lowered into the ground and seen Ruben hovering on the far side of the drystone perimeter of Crosthwaite churchyard. It was winter and the man was bundled up against the damp chill of the valley, standing in the shade of a skeletal oak, one hand on its dragon-scale bark, the other round the shoulders of a girl. It must have been his first sight of Jocasta, as well as his last of Ruben. Crowther remembered her as a thin shadow. He had never had friends among the village children, nor thought to enquire about the families of the servants in the house. Strange to think that that young girl, her grey shawl shrouding her face, had become the remarkable Mrs Bligh, who strode through London in gypsy-coloured skirts with her dog at her heels; who could not read, yet who was brave and intelligent enough to help her King, and to assist Harriet and Crowther discover and destroy a criminal conspiracy that had threatened their country. Had she got that bravery, that intelligence from her father? What was a cunning-man? A person who knew the fears of the people, guided them through them, offered them spells and symbols to make sense of the space around them. Such, it appeared, Ruben had been even while he had added up the columns in Sir William’s accounting books; such now was his son, defending his neighbours from witches; such was his daughter, turning her cards in her London room, offering comfort to the shop-girls and servants, advice to fools.

  Crowther was no believer in witches, cards, Lucks or the rest — but he had the grace to wonder if some of those who called themselves his colleagues in science and medicine had anything more valuable to offer than rowan twigs. And Ruben and his son knew herbs. He thought of Ruben standing in the shade of that tree. He had seemed as much a part of the landscape as the stones and water. Where that man had decided to set his foot he would not be moved, whatever blustering winds ripped round him. There must have been bad blood between Ruben and Sir William by that point, or he would have come into the churchyard to pay his respects to Crowther’s mother.

  Crowther seemed to feel the thrum of the rain by the grave again, his hands cramping with cold, his own sense of being cut off from everything around him. He could even hear his sister weeping damply into the housekeeper’s cloak as the vicar let the words of Scripture fall from his lips and into the slippery grave. He blinked, and found himself with the grave grown over under his feet and the gasping sun on his back. He picked up his cane and readied himself for the walk to the cottage of Lottie Tyers.

  As Kerrick crossed the field towards the stones, the black witch started to chatter at Casper.

  ‘You know in your bones, what he has to say. He’s come to say Agnes is not home. Sent her out in the storm, girl like that, and nice and close to where you took your beating.’

  Casper had clenched his teeth, but Grice continued spitting at him. ‘Maybe she saw you kill that man. Like you, that would be — murder a man in your madness then lecture his daughter about life the next morning! Oh, that makes me laugh! Maybe you killed Agnes too, and buried her better.’

  Casper could remember very clearly when the first voice had begun to speak to him. It had been just after the funeral of his father. Funerals had been poor affairs in ’54, the village had seen so many of them, but his aunt had baked the funeral bread and every household in the village was represented by the graveside. Ruben had died helping them through the pox. Then, as they walked away from the church, a young man had touched him on the arm and asked if he might call on him the following day. He wished to marry his girl and wanted to learn the day to do it. He was three years older than Casper, and Casper had always looked on him from the place of a child as they grew. He realised then that the title of cunning-man had fallen over him at his father’s death like
a cloak, and could not be given up.

  He mumbled some agreement, then went to his aunt’s house to sleep. He could not. He knew something of finding days of fortune in the calendar, but not enough. His father had not planned on leaving him so soon and he was kept awake by the knowledge of his own poor learning. So Casper had risen from his bed and taken his inheritance in his hands, then made his way to the circle of stones. There he had stared into the dark, seeing again the blistered faces of his father and his neighbours till the silence seemed alive with the sounds of their suffering, and under it all he heard the first of the voices. It was a whisper at first, like hearing a conversation through a wall at night. It was soft and friendly, a woman’s voice. It seemed a shape dressed in white; though he could not see it, had come to sit by his side in the darkness and was trying to make itself heard. As the cold night drew on, the voice had become clearer and the shape became a woman dressed in a white gown. She told him he knew all he needed to, and that she would speak to him and guide him when he was in doubt. So she had, through the next day and the ones that followed, and Casper grew to trust her.

  There was a price to be paid for her help. The lady had opened some door in his mind and other voices had used to clamber inside: these were the cruel, mocking voices of the bogles and dark witches that liked to tell him when he was foolish or wrong and laughed at him. Then came the affair of Blanche Grice, her death and burying, and she had ruled loudest in his mind for twenty years now. The white lady was still there, but it was hard to catch her whispers. Grice was crowing and flapping her arms now. The young man who had come to find Casper on the day of his father’s funeral was Kerrick himself. Casper watched him now, lumbering across the field to join him.

  ‘Hast thou seen her, Casper?’ Casper shook his head as he got to his feet. Kerrick gathered up his shirt in handfuls in front of him. ‘She was quiet when you had left, and kissed her mother, then said she had duty to do and set out at dusk.’

  Casper put his hand on Kerrick’s shoulder. ‘I’ll find her. Stay close to your place today, in case she makes her own way back.’

  Kerrick nodded. Gasped, ‘There was a man killed.’

  ‘There was. Trust me, old friend.’

  Kerrick managed to nod again, then put out his hand and Casper took it, then he turned away and set off back towards Keswick.

  ‘Trust you? Trust you, when you most like killed the pair of them? Find her? Find where you’ve buried her in your madness, and bring her back all muddy?’ The witch laughed; he could hear her stamp her feet.

  Casper came to a stop in the middle of the path and spoke very softly. ‘I shall find her. If she is hurt, I shall punish them that have hurt her. If that were me, I shall drown myself off the Island of Bones, and that’ll be you done with too, hag.’

  That stilled her.

  III.8

  The door to the cottage had been opened by a flustered middle-aged woman, who became all the more flustered when she discovered Mr Crowther outside. She tried to curtsey and tidy her hair and brush the flour from her dress all at the same moment. Crowther, unnecessarily, gave his name and asked to see Mrs Tyers. The tongue-tied woman nodded, then beckoned Crowther through the rough earth corridor that divided the living chambers from the down-house and into the rear courtyard. There in the shade, with a rolling view of meadows and the glimmer of Bassenthwaite in the haze, he found an old woman at her spinning wheel. She was dressed in black, and had shrunk with age. Crowther felt he could have placed her into his pocket and walked off with her into the hills.

  ‘You got my note then, Master Charles?’ she said, glancing up. Crowther felt his memories swirl round him like leaves in a sudden gust. He saw in the old lady the stern housekeeper of his childhood, saw her walking the corridors of Silverside with a set of keys on her belt, a notebook and that tiny black pencil with which she used to jab the maids if she felt they needed encouragement in their work. She had a thin scar running across her face from the corner of her eye-socket to her jaw. Crowther had thought that age would have hidden it, but it was bright on her tanned skin and ran against the natural lines of her face. ‘Fetch a stool for the man, Nancy,’ she continued, nodding to the woman who had opened the door. ‘There’s a good girl.’

  Crowther cleared his throat. ‘I did get your note, Mrs Tyers. I am glad to see you in health.’

  ‘Surprised, I should think!’ She laughed to herself and then continued more softly, ‘Eighty-seven summers I’ve seen now, and I hoped I’d lived through all the excitement I needed to. Dare say you didn’t think when you settled ten pounds a year on me for life you’d be paying out so long?’ She looked up from the wheel with a proud glint in her eye. The eyes were the same, as sharp and seeing as they had ever been.

  ‘I am happy to pay it, Mrs Tyers.’

  Nancy emerged from the house, wrestling a large carved oak chair with her. Crowther helped her place it and she fluttered back into the house again, only to emerge red and sweating with a pint-pot which she handed confusedly to Crowther, then dashed back into the dark once more.

  Crowther sat down and drank, painfully aware he had eaten nothing since breakfast and the dinner-hour was probably already passed. Mrs Tyers sucked on her gums.

  ‘You may call me Lottie still, as you did in your father’s time, my lord.’ She shook her head. ‘I said a stool! Daft lass that, but good-hearted. Married my nephew and has bred him three good sons. They’ll all marry on what I’ve saved from your money. Maybe that’s why she thought your backside too good for anything but that monster, Master Charles. No doubt she’ll treat it as a holy relic now.’

  Crowther smiled slightly. ‘I go by the name of Gabriel Crowther these days, Lottie.’

  ‘That’s your choice,’ said the old lady, raising her eyebrows and nodding at her wheel, ‘but my note was to Mr Charles. It was Mr Charles who stole Cook’s knives for his investigations, Mr Charles I clouted round the ear for it, and it is Mr Charles I shall talk to now, thank you.’

  Crowther wondered if she had not so much cheated death, as given it a firm talking-to. He recognised an immovable object when he saw it though, and decided to let her call him what she would.

  ‘Lottie, this note of yours. .’ The old woman turned back to the wheel and began to work the pedal. ‘Who was this man?’

  ‘That I cannot say, Master Charles.’ Each time she spoke his old name, Crowther felt it push against his chest. ‘I heard tell of the snuffbox, and I remember clear as day seeing one like it. Striped, is it? With a rose on the lid?’ He felt her sharp eye on him again and nodded. ‘Was the day after the fire destroyed Gutherscale and your father’s hopes of living there. The year was forty-five, just as we got news of the Young Pretender beginning his games. You and Master Adair were away at school, Margaret just a tiny child. A man in travelling clothes arrives at the Hall. My age he was, and a strong-looking devil. I opened the door to him, and there he was taking a pinch from that box, and such a look on him. Fierce. Angry. He had bitter eyes.’ She chuckled. ‘Not much left of his looks now, I’ll bet.’

  ‘Did he give his name?’

  ‘Not one I trusted.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Percival. He wanted speech with your father. Sir William went out and they had words on the lawn.’

  Crowther considered. Percival. The name of the knight that went searching for the Grail. ‘What else, Lottie? Did you hear their conversation?’

  She was silent for a long time, and Crowther heard nothing but the clack of the wheel. ‘Full of threats and flounce, he was. But you shouldn’t threaten a man’s children, no matter what you’re looking for. Your father took him off to the Island of Bones and I sent Ruben after them. Lord, I ran to him where he was stamping out the embers at Gutherscale.’ The spinning wheel paused for a moment and she stared in front of her. ‘I had served your father from the day I was twelve years old, Master Charles, and I feared for him that day. So I ran to Ruben and set him running to his boat. I thought they’d
paid him off. That’s what Ruben said that night when I asked. That the man was paid.’

  ‘We think he might have been a follower of Lord Greta, over here with Greta’s brother Rupert de Beaufoy.’

  She continued to work the pedal on the spinning wheel, and Crowther watched a while as the wool was twisted out from between her fingers.

  ‘Maybe.’ She glanced up at him. ‘Lord Greta loved Gutherscale, Master Charles. It was the home of his father, and his father’s fathers. Think he’d want to see another man set up house there?’

  Crowther felt suddenly cold. ‘Lottie, are you saying this man put the torch to Gutherscale on Greta’s orders?’ he said slowly. ‘What did my father tell you?’

  ‘Your father was not the sort to confide, Master Charles, you know that. And your ma knew to keep clear and quiet when he was feeling dark. And they were dark days. But there was this man, you say he was Greta’s man and there the day after the fire.’ She sighed. ‘Your father was not the same man after Gutherscale burned. He carried the embers in him.’

  Crowther drank again from his pint-pot and leaned back a little, listening to the wheel clicking and turning.

  ‘Adair was not at home at the time?’

  ‘I just told you he was away.’

  ‘Did my father have his cane with him?’

  He saw her glance at it, leaning up against the wall of her nephew’s home. ‘He always had it. That is like asking me if he had both hands attached, Master Charles.’

  He watched the meadows frothing out below them in wedding finery, all white clover and dog-roses, though this year there were not the poppies he remembered from his youth or the sparkle of cornflowers. He wondered if it were the effect of the strange weather that the fields were weeded of them.

  ‘I wanted to believe that Adair killed that man.’

  ‘I know you did, Master Charles.’

  Crowther put his hand to his forehead for a moment. ‘Lottie, do you recall Ruben’s daughter, Jocasta?’