The Raven's Seal

by Andrei Baltakmens

  And yet, these tasks were but the propping up of the self against the passing of the years, and as a traveller in a high and weary mountain pass measures out the distance with respect only to the path beneath his feet, step by solitary step, so the prisoner doled out his life in hours and days.

  WILLIAM QUILLBY, meanwhile, had come to feel like a felon himself and began to doubt his own propriety. For he frequented the courts and the offices of lawyers regularly, but however many judges he waited on, howsoever many chambers he lingered in, or how often he called upon the mayor and his officers, his appeals were unheard and his presence spectral. Mr. Bensey had scratched out countless papers in his remarkable hand, but even this could not sway the bench. Quillby dined, likewise, in a private capacity with lawyers and judges, who advised him that his evidence was thin and speculative, and the majesty of the Law immobile.

  Quillby also strove, in vain, to find the owner of the Black Claw, or untangle the skein of property and influence that surrounded the Withnail brothers and their countless partnerships. He took himself out into the slums and shambles of Airenchester, wherein the wealthy gather their rents and repay little besides, but though he found much of misery and neglect, he uncovered no sure sign of wrongdoing.

  William spoke, sometimes, of his weariness and worries with Miss Clara Grimsborough (when her stern father, the Captain, was not by). Clara frowned (very prettily he thought) but could add no more. Mr. Harton, when passing by, looked on his efforts with a pompous smile. He had grown sleek and content. Mr. Palliser, returned from the Continent, was often with his wife, and he had a downcast and defeated aspect, no more compelling than his former character. In a few instances, William made bold to seek out Mr. Kempe, but that gentleman was deeply involved in business, and when they did meet, he was distracted and coughed and fidgeted with his collar.

  WHILE THE prisoner trod the gaolhouse round, reprising the dreary cycle of familiar faces and preoccupations, gaming and drinking, the servants of the property in Staverside knew only the domestic round, rising before the sun was seen, cleaning, scrubbing, changing, and carrying until long after the sun was no longer seen. All that could be gained by these exertions was an aching back, weary shoulders, worn and tired hands, and inflamed knees; but there was no end to the domestic round.

  Between times, Miss Redruth departed to a shabby little garret above Campion’s, a tumbledown stationer’s store filled with quills and old parchment foolscap, where she met Mr. Bensey and discharged her duties. In truth, these correspondences were very easily dealt with, and Mr. Bensey was free to pursue his lessons. Little by little, he brought her to master the shapes of the alphabet, and these figures, which once writhed across the page in a meaningless parade, were intelligible to her. First, Miss Redruth spelt her own name, her father’s name, her mother’s name, the names of all her brothers and sisters, with ease. Now, with some hesitation and great concentration, she read the shipping news in the Register. Mr. Bensey nodded, quietly pleased.

  Once a week, learning gave way to family, and Cassie called at Porlock Yard. Her family was the same as ever: her father direly sarcastic, her mother placid and weary, and the children by turns harried, frantic, or sleepy. Yet a change had come over the Redruth patriarch, for Cassandra Redruth was once again the Favoured Child, as her position and employers were highly respectable, while Toby Redruth’s name and character were forever blotted. The unpredictable, surly boy had become a lounging ruffian, holding his family in contempt and rarely visiting. When present, he still had a kiss for his eldest sister and mother, but his old evasiveness now hardened into stony indifference, and after laying a few coins on the table, he sauntered off to join his coarse and sinister companions.

  When she could, in the rain, the hot sunshine, or the scattered snow, Cassie climbed the roads to the Bellstrom and sat with “her prisoner”—as Silas Redruth was pleased to refer to him. Her visits were infrequent, though Mr. Bensey and Mr. Quillby often had little commissions to go between her and Mr. Grainger. Her prisoner always strove to be cheerful and treated her with singular courtesy, and, had she time to think on it, she would wonder how many of her thoughts and reflections were framed and detailed towards her conversations with him. Yet, after these talks, she was often strangely distraught and raged in her heart against the injustice of it, the folly of it, and questioned her purpose and hopes.

  “You were ever quick in your affections, dear,” her mother told her wistfully.

  “A sight too quick, to cast herself on the fortunes of a felon and give no thought to herself or her family,” added her father.

  (And what he thought, she knew not, and could not know how he struggled with himself in the desolation of his empty cell, after she had gone.)

  Thus she returned to her duties, bone-wearying and perpetual. Mrs. Scourish approved of her, for she was steady and conscientious and held herself apart from the prattling of the other maids, and she was promoted from the scullery to the upper-floors. She was sometimes able to observe who came and went in the house at Staverside, but from dinner to dinner there was no sign of a third partner, and though the brothers were shut up close with Mr. Brock on many occasions and drove out to a meeting at their lawyer’s twice or thrice a year, she had no sure knowledge of whether this person was a reality or a phantom.

  Adventures, such as creeping down at midnight into the cellars and casting a light on the dusty rows of strong-boxes, searching futilely for one labelled “Massingham,” were but diversions. By chance, she came across other papers the brothers left unattended on their desks, or tucked under stools and pillows (where, in their apprehension of being caught by the other making private memoranda of their dealings, they hid them), matters of properties, loans, and foreclosures (as Mr. Bensey revealed, as she untangled their content with him), but she came no closer to their main business. And so Cassie felt that she was scrubbing away her youth, her strength, and what little she marked as her fine looks, and she appealed in her mind and soul against the cage of service and wondered what she gained there, besides calluses, black nails, roughened skin, and red eyes.

  THOUGH THE Withnail brothers were usually discreet when they entertained, tonight was a magnificent occasion, and no effort had been spared—at least by the servants. Every inch of brass, silver, and glass had been polished, and the retiring hallway behind the retiring door was ablaze with lights. Rumour below-stairs held that the guest was a woman, and Mrs. Scourish did not deign to deny this. Accordingly, all the servants were brought forth, the footmen in wigs and gaiters, and the maids were at their neatest and prettiest.

  The butler himself was assigned to open the doors, and when he did so, he admitted a blast of icy air and a few fragments of mist. A carriage turned around the dry fountain and stopped. Footmen tumbled out to open the carriage doors. A fine lady was handed down.

  She was, perhaps, forty or fifty, but majestic in her carriage and clothes. Handsome, with bold, dark eyes, under strong, dark brows, red lips, and whitened cheeks, she strode into the Withnails’ hall, and the brothers bowed and simpered before her. Behind her darted a lady’s maid, black-haired and narrow-waisted, almost as fine as her mistress, who glanced at the house and allowed a touch of a sneer to occupy her lips.

  Cassie curtsied before this lady and felt, for a moment, her eyes upon her, as cool as the mist.

  The butler stepped forward to take the lady’s furred cloak as she looked about, but her maid being already at hand got in the butler’s way and was scolded for her haste.

  After the dinner was done, Cassie called on Mrs. Scourish in her nook of an office behind the kitchen.

  “Who was that lady here tonight?”

  Mrs. Scourish sniffed and scowled. “That, my dear, was Mrs. Wenrender.”

  “You know her, ma’am?”

  Mrs. Scourish picked up her teacup and set it down again, untasted. “Indeed I do. She is the most wicked procuress in this wicked town.”

  “Indeed!”

  “Indeed
,” said Mrs. Scourish serenely.

  “Pray, how so?”

  “You mean, how do I know, my dear? Because that dreadful woman is my sister!”

  MICHAELMAS term lately over, William Quillby took coffee with a sprightly young articled clerk in the offices of Trounce and Babbage. He laid out, as he understood them, all the facts in the matter of the enclosures along Seddington Road.

  “I am sure,” finished William, “that there is some fraud or forgery at the base of it.”

  “Quite right,” agreed the clerk, a slight, slim fellow with a bright, energetic manner, who published droll, hurried sketches in the Register and the Town Review. “In most of these dealings, where the old rights to common land are overturned, there is fraud, forgery, or force behind it.”

  “But there are papers enough in the affair to fill a horse-trough,” continued William. “I cannot see where to begin, let alone where it should end. It is all a thicket of confusion and complication. There is no telling where the crime is in it.”

  “That is quite simple,” said the clerk with a smile. “Look to who profits in it. Look to who profits. Therein you’ll find the crime.”

  MRS. WENRENDER came to call again. She swept through the hallway and installed herself in the drawing-room like a queen ascending to her throne. Shortly, the brothers called for tea, and Cassie bustled through the kitchen to be first to bring up the tray.

  “This is a handsome girl,” remarked Mrs. Wenrender, as Cassie straightened.

  “If you say so, ma’am,” said Mr. Withnail.

  “Step into the light, child.” Mrs. Wenrender shaded her face from the fire with her fan. Her eyes were very dark. “A little lean and coarse, but pretty all the same.”

  The maid, standing behind her mistress’s chair, scowled at Cassie.

  “You don’t like it that I praise you?”

  “I don’t account my looks, ma’am.”

  “You are not proud, I hope?”

  “I pray that I am not. I know my place.”

  “But my dear,” said Mrs. Wenrender, with a smile, “where is the advantage in that?”

  TWO OR THREE times a week now, Grainger engaged in chess against Mr. Ravenscraigh. Ravenscraigh’s cell was in a precarious corner of the Bells, among neither the felons nor the debtors, but high above the curtain wall and beneath the weathered mass of the Bell Tower itself. It contained two or three jumbled sets of old furniture: dark tables, desks, tall, old-fashioned chairs, and cabinets with green brass hinges and rusty locks.

  “It is,” said Grainger, on the first night, “a singular prospect.”

  “It is, I admit,” said Ravenscraigh, “a strange, out-of-sight corner of the gaol that houses a strange, out-of-sight prisoner. It pleases Mr. Swinge to keep in here some oddments of lumber that he has no use for. Among these relics, I account myself.”

  The chessmen were laid out on a board of cedar and inlaid marble. The pieces were ivory and dull ebony, heavy and smooth. Grainger complimented Ravenscraigh on the set.

  “They are one thing I rescued from the collapse of my fortunes. I was a reckless youth and fell into bad habits and wastrel ways. It was my thought, ill-formed as it was, that this game might help me pass my imprisonment.” Ravenscraigh shrugged, smiled sharply. “Now, who shall play white?”

  Howsoever they chose, Grainger, at the start, lost every bout.

  “I fear,” said Grainger, “I am no apt opponent.”

  “If I may presume to say so, you play with energy but without foresight. It is your father’s game. Your father was an excellent gentleman, but his play is of the old style, a thing of passion, haste, and flair, and so he recks little of the pawns but sends them forth to their destruction, clearing a path for the stronger pieces behind, neglecting position in favour of sudden and dramatic attacks.”

  “I expect you are right,” replied Grainger, musing over his losses. “I had not thought much upon it.”

  “The pawns are the soul of chess,” Ravenscraigh resumed, taking up one of these pieces and turning it in his dry, long-fingered hand. “Alone, they are weak, hobbled, worthless. Massed and directed, they are formidable. Preserve them until the vital moment. Sacrifice them without compunction.”

  “There is a philosophy in that,” remarked Grainger.

  “A nice philosophy, for two poor knights sequestered in a forgotten corner of the board,” said Ravenscraigh, setting down the piece with a click.

  “I am not equal to your policy,” said Grainger.

  “You shall come to it in time. By all accounts, you acquit yourself tolerably within these walls.”

  “Whose account, may I ask?”

  “Mr. Tyre, for one. He is the model of meekness and cheerfulness, but mark you: he has held his place in this pit of cruelty and violence for many a year. He knows more than he says, and seems less than he is.”

  Grainger began to gather up the discarded pieces on his side. “Shall we play again?”

  “It is growing late. The candle is almost gone.” Ravenscraigh took the candle to the door and knocked loudly for the turnkey.

  IT WAS WINTER again, and Mrs. Wenrender came upstairs, complaining of a chill, and a footman started a fire for her and piled it high with fuel. Mrs. Wenrender’s wardrobe was quite dishevelled; she had snow in her hair and called for chocolate and that girl, that pretty maid with the strong hands, to attend to her.

  Mrs. Wenrender looked at her face in the glass above the mantle, at the powder on her cheeks, the paint on her lips. Cassie curtsied and stood behind her.

  “I need a new maid,” said Mrs. Wenrender, speculative.

  “Ma’am? Shall I call for someone else?”

  “No, child. I don’t need a silly girl. Are you a silly girl?”

  “I think not, ma’am.”

  “I need a maid who will hold her tongue. I can’t abide a chatterbox.”

  “I can keep my peace,” said Cassie, a dark gleam in her eye.

  “Yes. I believe you can. You have no attachments, child?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “A girl of your qualities. Surely…”

  “He’s in service, ma’am. I expect he’s fond of me. But it’s not proper. He’s out of reach and that’s all there is.”

  “Then there are no obstructions.”

  “I haven’t said yes, yet. Mrs. Scourish—”

  “Jemima has a sharp tongue,” sighed Mrs. Wenrender. “But are you content, girl, to scrub and slave beneath the stairs, when you could ride with a lady and see all that a lady does? I am acquainted with many fine families and gentlemen of power and influence in this wicked little town. I am not unkind, if you are steady and discreet.”

  The fire blazed and the room grew warm.

  “You are known about the town,” said Cassie, with a note of caution and interest.

  “My dear, there is no door in Airenchester that is made fast against me, save one.”

  To this last comment, Cassie made no reply, but nodded pensively and stood behind her mistress to unpin and pin anew her hat and dark hair.

  THUS, THE SURF of these years had surged and roared three times, and threw up these fragments of action upon the shore, but the seasons breathed like the seas about the feet of the Bellstrom, bringing drought, rains, snows, and storms in turn, and still the prisoner navigated by the fixed stars of routine and attended only to the hours and days.

  Mr. Grainger played chess, another night, with Mr. Ravenscraigh, and his play was now so amended that he might win one or two of a handful of games.

  Grainger reached for a piece, had it in his fingers, raised his hand, and dropped the knight, which fell to the board and scattered two or three pawns around it.

  “I beg your pardon!” cried Grainger.

  “You are not wont to be clumsy or inattentive,” said Ravenscraigh, with a touch of sharpness.

  “It is my fingers,” admitted Grainger, ruefully flexing his hands. “They are half numb with cold. I cannot get warm in that little cell of mi
ne.”

  Ravenscraigh straightened the disturbed pieces. “Then that must be amended.”

  CHAPTER XVI.

  Detecting the Scent.

  EARLY ONE MORNING in his fourth year within the Bells, Thaddeus Grainger was already awake and raising himself from his narrow bed when the door to his cell was unlocked and thrown open.

  The gaoler, Swinge, was there, as crooked and burly as ever. “Gather yer things,” said he. “Yer out.”

  And for a moment that he would later ridicule and dismiss, Thaddeus Grainger imagined that, unheard and unforeseen, a reprieve had come, and he was about to be released into the bright, boundless, busy world beyond the prison walls. His heart hammered, pierced through with joy and fear and suspicion. He looked up and met the gaoler’s eye. Swinge grinned, for he well knew the import of his words and their cause.

  “What is the matter?” said Grainger, as coldly as he could.

  “Yer to be moved,” said Swinge. “I wants yer cell for another.”

  “Moved? Where moved?”

  “Where I please to put yer! Now rouse yourself, sirrah.”

  The gaoler withdrew, with a fatuous bow. A moment sufficed for Grainger to throw on his waistcoat and breeches, and grope hurriedly behind the little flue for his hiding place and the few items (including the rough Black Claw) he kept there.

  SO, WHEN Cassie Redruth called for him next, she found him in another, airier cell beneath the Armoury Tower. There was a little fireplace and a high, square window that admitted a faint shaft of light.

  He was not expecting her, and so she found him writing, absorbed in the task. For a moment, she observed him unawares. The prison had altered him: there was an air of concentration and resolve about him; his features were leaner and touched with the prison pallor; his clothes were simple and dark, though still neat and not frayed. The prison had touched him, also, with its wildness and wariness, and though he had neither heard nor seen her, yet by instinct he looked up briefly and saw her standing and musing by the cell door. Only his smile was as open to her as it had always been.