Bloodie Bones

by Lucienne Boyce

  Dan shook his head and immediately regretted it. “I think it best to avoid trouble.”

  But there was no arguing with them, so he made his excuses and left. They were poring over the map before he reached the door.

  *

  In the morning, Dan snatched a quick breakfast in the kitchen, which was like eating in the middle of a whirlwind. His Lordship had company that afternoon, and the cook and her staff were busy. He was limping across the hall – his knee had swollen in the night – when the library door opened and Lord Oldfield emerged with Garvey and Mr Poole. The rector had a roll of papers under his arm.

  “So you’ll put up the notices immediately?” His Lordship asked.

  Poole nodded. “Of course, My Lord. And on the question of the provisions for the poor of the parish, I am at your disposal whenever you are ready to discuss it further.”

  “Oh, yes, of course. I’ll be in touch, Mr Poole.”

  “Good day, My Lord.”

  It was a wonder Poole’s forehead did not sweep the ground when he bowed. He hauled himself up and stalked to the front door. Ackland showed him out with flattering ceremony.

  “Do we really have to bother with all that, Garvey?” His Lordship said as soon as Poole had gone. “I don’t see why I should give the ungrateful beggars a damned thing.”

  “It is for the sake of appearance only,” Garvey answered. “Let it seem that you are eager to make provision for the poor when you enclose the common land and you will make friends, or at least avoid making enemies, of meddling philanthropists and politicians.”

  “So I have to compensate the rabble for helping themselves to my wood and game?”

  “You will be in control of the dispensations. Those who prove themselves undeserving will have no claim on your beneficence.”

  Which was a long-winded way of saying that anyone who did not toe the line could shiver and starve. Dan wondered how long men like Girtin and Tom Taylor would survive in Barcombe after His Lordship’s ‘improvements’.

  “If you say so…Ah, Foster, come along. Drake should be here any moment. Show him into my office when he arrives, Ackland.”

  Garvey gathered up his papers and they trooped downstairs. Garvey sat at one end of the desk with pens at the ready. He was going to act as clerk for the justice and take down the depositions.

  “You seem to be in pain, Foster. I’ll send for Dr Russell.”

  “Please don’t trouble yourself. A bit of ice will do the trick, if I could have some later.”

  Lord Oldfield said there was no need to wait, rang the bell, and ordered Ackland to bring some ice. A chunk covered in a towel appeared a few moments later, and Dan sat down and wrapped it around his knee. His Lordship and he chatted about the relative merits of cold and heat for the treatment of sprains and bruises, and were debating the use of smelling salts as revivers during a fight when Drake arrived. He was a few minutes into his account of the attack when there was another knock on the door. Ackland ushered in Caleb Witt.

  A downhearted Witt reported that he and his men had failed to arrest Higgs and Thomas. They had waited all night outside their homes, but the pair had not come back. Nor, they discovered, had the labourer Creswick and Jem Cox. Two angry wives were on the warpath looking for them.

  “Can’t say I’m surprised they’ve gone,” Dan said. “I’ll get their descriptions to Bow Street and into the Hue and Cry journal. It would also help if you could write to your fellow justices in the county,” he suggested to His Lordship.

  “Of course. I’ll offer a reward.”

  “That will help even more.”

  Garvey sniffed. “There’s not much chance of catching them now.”

  “You’d be surprised. Men like this have a habit of turning up again. Chances are they don’t have much money, they’ve no spare clothes, no food, no transport, and no skill at dodging the law. I can’t promise we’ll catch them, but I wouldn’t say we never will either.”

  “I’m very sorry, My Lord,” Witt said glumly.

  “Can’t be helped now,” Lord Oldfield answered. “You may go.”

  “Well,” said Garvey when the keeper had clumped off, “we’d better finish these depositions. You were saying that the man you called Higgs threatened to kill you.”

  Drake nodded. “The others weren’t up for it and ran. Higgs didn’t hang around after that. Foster grabbed his pistol and fired after him, but he got away.”

  Garvey read the statement back and Drake added his signature to it. Dan gave his statement and signed it. When Drake had gone, Lord Oldfield stood up and stretched. “I’m going for a ride.”

  The lawyer took his work upstairs to the library.

  As for Dan, there was a woman he had to see.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Thanks to the ice pack, Dan was able to walk without too much discomfort. He did not expect trouble in broad daylight, but he kept his pistol handy. The Fox and Badger and the forge were still shut up. He walked past them and on along the Bath Road until he came to Dr Russell’s house. The gate stood open and the stable was empty: the doctor was out on his rounds. Dan continued along the lane, past the house belonging to the Wests, the theatrical couple. He turned into the gateway of the end house, which was overshadowed by the yew tree after which it was named.

  A maid let him in and left him in the hall. A moment later she returned and took him into a drawing room overlooking a well-kept garden. It gave on to a view of meadows and woodland with glimpses down to the twists and turns of the Stony River. Mrs Hale snored softly in an armchair by the fire, an ugly old cat purring wheezily on her lap. Her niece sat at a table near the window, working over a pile of books.

  She rose to meet him. “If I had known I had a visitor coming, I would have put them away. Barcombe does not think Latin a suitable study for women. My brother was more enlightened.”

  Dan could not see what use it was to a young lady like Miss Ruscombe to pucker her brows over Latin. He knew there were females who enjoyed such things, but they were usually aged crones in dowdy dresses.

  “You’re Lord Oldfield’s Runner,” she said, inviting him to sit on a sofa. She took the other armchair and folded her ink-stained hands in her lap.

  Dan glanced at her aunt.

  “Aunt Joanna won’t wake up yet. What business can you possibly have with me, Mr Foster?”

  “You know that I’m in Barcombe to investigate Josh Castle’s murder?”

  “Yes. I do not see how I can help.”

  “Don’t you?”

  She tapped her foot and stared out of the window.

  “You put flowers on his grave yesterday.”

  Her foot stopped moving. “You are mistaken.”

  “I saw you. Afterwards I spoke to Mrs Poole. She said she put the flowers there, but I know she was lying. She was protecting you. Why, I ask myself, does a young lady like Miss Ruscombe need protecting?”

  The old lady snorted, mumbled into her moustache, and lapsed back into a deep slumber. Louisa seemed to lose herself in contemplation of her aunt’s red, wrinkled face. It was a puzzling complexion to be sure, more suited to an outdoor life than a drawing-room existence.

  “Do you want to wake her?”

  “No,” Louisa said quickly.

  “Then will you answer my question?”

  “There is nothing to answer.”

  “Do you want me to find Mr Castle’s murderer?”

  “Of course I do. That is – I – the murder of any man is a terrible crime.”

  “And the loss of a man you cared about is a very terrible thing.”

  “I did not…”

  But she could not tell that lie. She gazed down at her entwined fingers.

  “If you want me to catch his killer, you must talk to me.”

  There was a long silence. “Mr Castle,” s
he managed after a moment, “Mr Castle was…he and I…” She raised her head defiantly. “We were going to be married.”

  Dan was not shocked, or even very surprised. “And you kept the engagement secret. You knew that it would seem improper to many people given the difference in your stations.”

  “As if I should care for that!”

  “Your family might care.”

  “My mother was a farmer’s daughter. My father met her while he was on a walking holiday when he was at Oxford University. Aunt Joanna is her sister.”

  Dan wondered how far the sisters had resembled one another. Louisa must have guessed his thoughts, for she said, “My father used to say Mother fitted into her family like a princess stolen by the gypsies. She died when I was young, but I remember her well. She was a gentlewoman by nature if not by birth, with a natural delicacy and refinement.”

  So that was how this genteel young woman came to have an aunt who looked like a dairy maid. He admired Miss Ruscombe for defending her family, but he still had questions to ask.

  “And Mr Castle was a gentleman?”

  “He was. He had as much right to marry me as Lord Oldfield himself.”

  “But Mr Castle’s descent was not…” he hesitated.

  She supplied the word. “Legitimate? But it was. Josh’s grandparents were married in London before they went to Oldfield Hall.”

  “An invalid marriage carried out by an excommun-icated clergyman called Alexander Keith of the Fleet Prison.”

  “That was what the Oldfields wanted people to think. Josh grew up thinking it, and would never have thought of questioning it until we made our plans. It made no difference to me, but Josh went over and over it in his mind and started to put together things he’d heard as a child. He was only a boy when his grandmother died, but he remembered they sent for a priest for her. Josh had never seen a priest before. It was a condition of the allowance the Oldfields had given her that her son should be brought up in the Church of England, and she was scrupulous about it. When the priest came out of his grandmother’s room, he said she wanted to talk to Josh’s father. He took Josh in with him and sat the boy on his lap.”

  Dan remembered Elena’s story as he had learned it from Mrs Singleton and Lord Oldfield. Francis Oldfield, defying his father, ran away and joined the army. He fought in America, where he met Elena Castillo, the daughter of Spanish parents. There had been a dispute with Spain in the colonies, a war that started when a sea captain had his ear cut off by Spanish coast guards. The only part of the story Dan had been interested in as a schoolboy was that the captain brought back his ear and displayed it whenever he told his tale.

  Francis brought Elena back to England and they married – or so they thought – in London. They travelled on to Oldfield Hall, where the young man died of a fever, leaving his wife pregnant with John Castle, Josh’s father.

  These were the facts so far as Dan knew them. But now, as he listened to Louisa tell the story, the scenes she recounted, informed by her love for Josh and her interest in the outcome, rose vividly to Dan’s mind…

  *

  A sweet smell hung about the priest’s black robes. He was a tall, gaunt man. Josh thought he looked stern, and wondered how Grandmother found any comfort in him. The man made a gesture with his hand and rustled out of the room, leaving him and Father alone with Grandmother. At first Josh fidgeted on his father’s lap. There was a fire in the hearth and the sickroom was brightly lit with real wax candles in honour of the priest’s visit. Gradually the heat made Josh drowsy and he settled into his father’s arms.

  Grandmother was propped into a half-sitting position on a pile of cushions. Her hair, which still had some black left in its thin grey strands, was neatly tucked away under a nightcap. She breathed shallowly, and there were long gaps between one breath and the next when her chest did not lift at all. Her face was sunken and lined, her eyes pink-rimmed, milky, bulging slightly as she struggled to focus on her son’s face. She clutched feebly at his fingers.

  “Johnny, Johnny, I have done you wrong!” Her voice was faded and indistinct. It was as if she was seeping away, dwindling to nothing.

  “Hush, Mother,” he said. “You’ll be all right in a bit.”

  “It all goes back to the day I was married. Ever since I first set foot in a Protestant church all has gone ill with me. Dios mío, ten misericordia de mí!” God, have mercy. “I told myself there was no harm, because the church was dedicated to St George and he was a soldier, like your father.”

  Josh gasped as his father’s grip on his shoulder tightened. He looked up into his father’s face, which suddenly had a clenched look to it. “What are you saying?” he said through tight lips. “What church?”

  “I don’t know. We walked in Hyde Park afterwards.” She raised her head from her pillow, her watery eyes bright. “It was so pretty, with all the carriages and I in my new dress, and Francis so handsome! I was carrying the flowers he bought me.”

  “But the church, Mother. The church you married in. Which was it?”

  Her head sank back, and for what seemed a long time her chest did not move. Then she shuddered and sucked in a breath. “Hijo mío, perdóname,” she whispered. Forgive me, my son.

  Grandmother had not spoken again, though Father sat there for hours, leaving her side only to carry Josh to bed. When Josh woke the next day he was told she had died in the night. Mrs Jackson from the village had already been to wash her and lay her out. His father took Josh in to kiss her. She lay on her back beneath a clean sheet, her hands folded across her chest. She wore the white shroud she had made many years ago. Josh had not liked the feel of the cold, dead skin beneath his lips, nor the empty look of her face.

  The day after the funeral, Father said that he was going to the Hall to see Lord Oldfield, the present Lord Adam’s father, who had inherited the estate from his father, Francis’s brother. He whistled as he put on his best hat and jacket. When he was ready, he sat down and pulled Josh to his side. He looked around the room as if he did not recognise the old sideboard and the scrubbed table, the smoke-blackened rafters, the wooden chairs.

  “Think of something special you’d like,” he said.

  Josh did not have to think very hard. “A bow and some arrows.”

  Father laughed and ruffled his hair. “They will be yours.”

  He put the boy aside and left the cottage. Josh went out to roam the heath, as he usually did when he got the chance. When he got back, Father was home. He was not smiling or laughing any more. He sat by the cold hearth, his face grim and dark. Josh asked what was for tea, and he snapped, “Get yourself some bread and cheese.” In the morning when he went out to work, he slammed the door. He did not come home till after dark, when the first and only thing he said to Josh was “Get to bed.” There was little left in the house to eat, but that did not seem to bother him: he who had always come in and fallen on his supper with the hunger of a man who had spent hours at hard, outdoor work.

  So it went on for several weeks, his father brooding and bad-tempered, the house more and more neglected. Josh lived on bread and water, did not wash, ran wild about the village. Then one day he went home to a fire in the hearth, the floor swept, and the beds made, soup on the table, and a cold scrubbing in a tub in the scullery.

  Everything went back to normal, except that there was no Grandmother any more. Father and son grew close. Josh absorbed all his father could teach him as he went about his work in Barcombe Wood and the surrounding estate. He did not mind that the other village boys regarded him warily as the son of the gamekeeper. He had a friend in Adam Oldfield, whom Lord Oldfield sent to learn to hunt, shoot and fish. Sometimes he caught Father looking at them with a strange, angry look in his eye. When he met Josh’s gaze he would shake his head and shrug, as if casting off some uncomfortable thought.

  Josh never got his bow and arrows.

  *

>   “Then it wasn’t a Fleet wedding,” said Dan when Louisa had finished speaking.

  “No, it was a church ceremony.”

  “So John Castle learned that his mother was married in church, but he didn’t declare himself legitimate. Presumably that was because he couldn’t. There was still something about the wedding that wasn’t right.”

  “That’s how it seemed to Josh and I, but it was all so mysterious. How could Mr Castle be illegitimate if there was a church wedding? And what did Alexander Keith have to do with it if he was a Fleet parson? Josh decided to look for the church and try to find out the truth about his grandmother’s marriage.”

  “Did he, now? Well, that’s not an impossible undertaking. St George’s Church in Hanover Square is close to the Park, and St George’s Chapel of Ease is practically on Hyde Park Corner.”

  “What a pity you were not here to tell us that a few months ago! It took Josh a little longer to make the discovery, and of course he could only get up to London when the Oldfields were away. Eventually he found St George’s parish church in Hanover Square, looked at the register, and found nothing. He was about to leave when the churchwarden, who was used to people trying to prove their ancestors were properly married, said didn’t he want to look at the registers for St George’s Chapel? Josh had no idea there was a St George’s Chapel, or that its records were kept in Hanover Square. In them he found a note of the marriage of Francis Oldfield and Elena Castillo on 17 June 1742, in a ceremony carried out by Dr Alexander Keith.”

  “So all Josh Castle succeeded in doing was proving the Oldfields right. Keith was not qualified to perform weddings.”

  “That’s what Josh thought. The churchwarden saw how upset he was and said he was sorry he hadn’t found what he was looking for. Josh said he had, but it had Alexander Keith’s name against it. The churchwarden said yes, Dr Keith had been the incumbent of St George’s Chapel when it had been a popular place for run-away marriages among the fashionable. ‘In fact,’ the man said, ‘it’s a history we’re very proud of, for our church played a large part in the doctor’s downfall.’ Josh asked him to explain, and the churchwarden told him that the then rector at Hanover Square had taken exception to Dr Keith’s practice and insisted that all marriages in the parish should take place in the parish church. He ordered Dr Keith to stop performing marriages in St George’s Chapel. The doctor refused to give up his profitable business, so the rector took him to the Ecclesiastical Court. Keith was excommunicated in October 1742. Six months later he was sent to prison, from where he continued to run a marriage business, employing his own curates in a private chapel he established within yards of St George’s Chapel.”