by Laura Powell
Everyone made admiring noises, and the Lane sisters cooed as enthusiastically as if it had been an actual infant. Nonetheless, Alphonse’s tawny eyes had an angry glint, and his beak was cruelly sharp. Despite Reverend Blunt claiming a keen interest in ornithology, the only person who took up Lady Hawk’s invitation to pet the bird was her daughter.
‘O savage majesty, tamed by a fair maiden’s hand!’ declaimed Mr Ladlaw. ‘Lightning-beaked bolt of feathered awe! Cloud-blazoned warrior of wing and claw! How proud his . . . um . . . How swift the . . . er . . .’ But faced with Miss Hawk’s calm gaze his powers of poetic invention deserted him, and he lapsed into sulky silence.
‘D’you hunt with it, my lady?’ Lord Charnly enquired. It was the first sign of interest he had shown in anything save for Miss Hawk.
‘I confess I have little taste for blood sports.’
‘Lord Charnly is a champion huntsman.’ Captain Vyne’s smile had a malicious glint. ‘Foxes, deer and all manner of game. He was saying on the boat that last season he bagged near three thousand pheasants.’
‘Whereas you, dear Captain,’ said Lady Hawk, ‘are a hunter of men! I’m sure your feats of daring in battle are immeasurable.’
Now it was Captain Vyne’s turn to look uncomfortable. He had yet to see active service, and his time in the army was mostly occupied with drinking and gambling in the Officers’ Mess.
The Reverend Blunt seized his chance. ‘The Bible tells us we have much to learn from the animal kingdom. As Our Lord said, “Who teaches us more than the beasts of the earth, and makes us wiser than the fowls of heaven?”’ He absent-mindedly helped himself to a cream puff from Miss Smith’s plate. ‘Ha – I’d certainly rate my horse or my dog above most of my servants. After all, they do their work more faithfully, and with a deal less complaint.’
This was, at least, a subject the rivals could agree on and the ladies contribute to, and so the tea party ended with an animated discussion of the faults and failings of the servant class.
The servants had scarcely finished clearing away the tea when it was time to prepare for dinner. Mr Perks had given them a little speech after prayers that morning on the importance of Pulling Together and Sharing the Load, with additional remarks on the virtues of Industry, Fidelity, Diligence and Calm. However, both he and Mrs Robinson wore a distinctly harassed air, and Mrs Palfrey’s kitchen had been a whirl of activity since dawn. It seemed an increasingly impossible task to feed, serve, dress and launder such a throng.
But at some point that afternoon, a miracle had occurred. They found the silver had been polished and dining table laid, the wine was already up from the cellar, the potatoes peeled, fowls plucked and cherries pitted. Nobody seemed to know when these tasks had been done or who was responsible for them.
‘I could swear. . .’ said Mrs Palfrey to Mrs Robinson, frowning at the potatoes and shaking her head. ‘I swear. . .’
Mr Grey glanced up from where he was inspecting the household accounts. ‘I took the liberty of arranging for a few small chores to be done while you were engaged elsewhere.’
Mrs Robinson was taken aback. ‘That’s, er, very kind of you. But I don’t quite under—’
‘Did I not assure you that the household would be amply served? You will find your duties become lighter, too, as the party progresses.’
Pattern and Nate exchanged looks. Stewards were far too grand to go about peeling potatoes or polishing spoons, but who else could have done it? And how was it possible that nobody had witnessed the work being done? The other servants too were as puzzled as they were relieved. But since there was still plenty to be arranged, and precious little time to do it in, they were not inclined to fret over the issue.
Pattern wondered what Lady Hawk’s guests were making of it all. She did not expect much from their servants – the Lane sisters’ maid was as empty-headed as she was amiable, and neither Lord Charnly’s loutish valet nor the Dowager’s dowdy maid struck her as particularly enquiring types. (They had certainly paid scant attention to Mr Perks’s speech on Sharing the Load, each claiming to be far too busy attending to their master or mistress to assist with other chores.) But the ladies and gentlemen were supposedly educated people. Surely they must be puzzled by the island’s oddities.
Pattern, as a lowly third housemaid, had been assigned to attend to Miss Smith’s needs. As a poor relation, entirely dependent on Honoria and Frederick Blunt’s charity, Miss Smith was little better than a servant herself. Taking her a wash jug before dinner, Pattern found her sitting by the window, staring out despondently over the service yard, an open letter on her lap. Having seen the other young ladies flit about, scented and silken, with costly jewels about their person, Pattern could not help feeling sorry for Miss Smith. Most of her luggage consisted of books, and she had nothing in the way of jewellery. She might have almost been pretty, had there been a bit of colour in her cheeks, and had her hair not been fixed so carelessly.
Miss Smith accepted Pattern’s offer to dress her hair (‘My older sister is a lady’s maid, miss, and she has taught me something of the Art’), though she showed little interest in her efforts. Pattern’s offer was not a selfless one, of course: she knew ladies were apt to gossip with their maids, given time and the right kind of encouragement.
‘How are you liking Cull, miss?’ she asked as she set about with the comb and pins. ‘Very pretty, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ the girl said broodingly. ‘I suppose it is.’
She smoothed down her letter again: it was written in a vigorous hand, and worn and creased in a way that suggested it had been read many times. The blotches on it had the look of tearstains, Pattern thought.
‘And so warm for the season!’ she burbled on. ‘It is an almost magical spot, I should think.’
‘The gentlemen are certainly spellbound.’
Pattern detected a touch of bitterness in her tone. ‘Miss Hawk has admirers wherever she goes.’
‘And yet nobody knew anything of her until this season. She appeared as if from nowhere and – pouf! One flash of her eyes, and even the stoniest of hearts has melted.’
‘I hope her success has not left other young ladies disappointed.’
‘If so, the fault is not Miss Hawk’s. It is a gentleman’s responsibility to keep his word and behave in an honourable fashion. Of course, not all gentlemen are as honest or loyal as they appear. Quite the contrary, in fact –’ Miss Smith stopped and bit her lip, flushing.
Poor lady, thought Pattern. It seemed very likely that Miss Smith had once enjoyed a romance with one of the gentlemen present, probably the person who had written her the letter, and most likely Mr Ladlaw.
Miss Smith was surely right to describe the gentlemen as spellbound. But who had cast the spell? Cassandra Hawk, or her mama?
CHAPTER SIX
You must be guarded against the allurements of pleasure.
S. & S. Adams, The Complete Servant
Pattern took a wrong turn on leaving Miss Smith and found herself in a shadowy warren of unused rooms with no furnishings, save a few bits of marble statuary and the trace of frescoes on the walls. Hearing voices a little ahead of her, she paused in the doorway of a small antechamber.
It was Lady Hawk in conference with Mr Grey.
‘. . . any impertinent questions?’ the mistress was asking.
‘The servants are inclined to gossip, as servants do,’ the old man replied. ‘Thus far, it seems harmless enough. Of the ladies and gentlemen, there has been nothing out of the common way, though naturally the ladies are more inclined to suspicion.’
‘Then I think we shall have a little musical entertainment tonight.’
‘Very good, my lady.’
Lady Hawk’s skirts swished past Pattern’s hiding place. Pattern held her breath and kept very still. She did not know what this scrap of conversation meant, but she had a feeling it spelled trouble.
At the bottom of the back stairs, Pattern found she had just missed a scene of high drama
. Jane, the housemaid, whirled past in one direction, and William, the footman, stamped off in another. The sound of cross words and slammed doors hung in the air.
‘Whatever was all that about?’ she asked Nate, who had been keeping watch from the boot room.
‘Lovers’ tiff.’ He grinned mischievously. ‘Seems our gallant Captain Vain’s set the cat among the pigeons.’
It was Alfred who had thought of the nickname ‘Captain Vain’, after noticing how the gentleman was drawn to any mirror he passed. Moreover, Captain Vyne’s compliments to Jane, which seemed given out of habit rather than made with serious intent, were quite enough to cause upset between her and William.
Nate bent to pick up a small posy, which Jane had evidently thrown on the floor in disgust. Pattern drew nearer.
‘Goodness, are those snowdrops? From the forbidden glade?’
‘Poor William picked them to prove his devotion. Said he wasn’t afraid of no snakes, nor no sneaking snake of a gentleman. Then Jane said honest men don’t need to wrestle snakes; they just need to keep their promises. Whatever that means.’ He thrust the posy at Pattern. ‘Here. You take ’em. Didn’t you say snowdrops was a favourite of yours?’
Surprised and touched, Pattern buried her nose into the blooms. They were ice-white, almost uncannily perfect, with a rich velvety scent. ‘Thank you, Nate.’
He winked at her, tucked a stray snowdrop jauntily above his ear, and returned to the boots.
Pattern planned to put the posy in her room, but Mr Perks was on the warpath, and Mrs Robinson in a pother, so she tucked them in her pocket and returned to her duties. These included composing her first report for the Silver Service. It was to be in the guise of a letter to an imaginary sister, and while turning down the beds she set about drafting sentences in her head.
A previously agreed code would help with the task. That she ‘was sorry to hear about the loss of Aunt Ethel’s cat’ meant that their suspicions were confirmed, and supernatural misdeeds were afoot. Mentioning that her knee gave her ‘no trouble for the moment’ signified that she was not in any immediate danger. The news that she had been ‘unable to find any trace of Mother’s hairpin’ was in reference to Henry Whitby. Describing the wider situation was less easy, however, and she struggled to communicate the strangeness of the island and her suspicions of Lady Hawk in suitably disguised terms. Part of her suspected this was, in any case, a pointless exercise. Mr Grey had told the servants that he would pass letters to the boatman who brought supplies from the mainland, but Pattern had little faith in this offer. If mischief was afoot on the island, Lady Hawk would not want it communicated to the wider world, and Mr Grey was clearly very loyal. Any correspondence might well be tossed into the sea.
While Pattern and her fellow housemaids were making the bedrooms ready for the night, the rest of the servants were seeing to the gentry’s dinner. Their own food would not be served until nine o’clock, and Pattern had been feeling hollow with hunger for most of the afternoon. The others had managed to eat some of the leftovers from tea, but Pattern had been doing chores for Miss Jenks and missed her chance. In her effort to ingratiate herself with the lady’s maid, she had offered to take Lady Hawk’s pug on its daily walk, whereupon Miss Jenks immediately thrust the yapping creature into her arms, and instructed her to give it a bath and clip its nails while she was about it. Pattern had not received as much as a thank you for her pains, let alone any useful gossip.
So when the message came that all the servants were invited to listen to Lady Hawk play the harp to her guests, Pattern could not suppress a sigh of annoyance. It would delay the meal yet further, and eat into the precious ten minutes or so before bed that she was permitted to take as leisure. How was she to write her report now?
Since the evening was so warm, the party had eaten out on the terrace. Pattern had heard the laughter and the chink of cutlery as she had gone about her work upstairs. It had been no small task to move the dining table outside, and it meant an even longer journey from the kitchens for the footmen laden with steaming dishes. From the open doorway, she saw that the table had only been partly cleared, still littered with stained and crumpled linens, and the wilting garlands that had adorned the feast. Warm air blowing into the house brought with it the scent of sea salt and jasmine, roses and earth.
The footmen had carried the harp from the music room and placed in the hall. It was a huge gilded thing, worked all over with carvings of blooms and birds, and Lady Hawk looked very regal as she took her seat beside it, dressed in purple satin, with her shining black hair piled high.
The ladies, wearing expressions of happy anticipation, and the gentlemen, suppressing yawns after sampling the wines at dinner, were seated in chairs before the harp. The servants, with throbbing backs and aching legs, arranged themselves on the stairs. Only Mr Grey was aloof, observing the scene from the door of the dining room. Pattern was reminded of how he and Lady Hawk had consulted earlier about the ‘musical entertainment’, and felt newly uneasy.
Lady Hawk swept her hand across the strings, and the harp shimmered into life. The melody was a very beautiful one, and Pattern soon forgot her aches and complaints. After a while, the lady began to sing. Her voice was low but very sweet. The lyrics were in some foreign tongue, and the rippling melody was full of both promise and yearning.
Pattern was absorbed by what she heard, yet she began to realize that the rest of the audience was more enthralled still. Servants and guests alike had glazed eyes, vacant smiles and altogether empty expressions. Only Mr Grey looked just the same as he ever did. And one other – Nate. He craned round to look up at Pattern, and rolled his eyes.
When the last strains of music died away, for a long moment nobody moved. Even when the applause began, everyone clapped with a dreamy slowness. Their faces remained strangely blank.
Lady Hawk rose to her feet and lifted up her arms. ‘The night is warm; the moon is full. It is time to celebrate the first night of our revelries. Let us embrace this isle and each other – let us dance!’
Now Pattern knew for certain that magic was in the air, because the servants moved down the stairs to mingle freely with the guests, and no one batted an eyelid. The Dowager ambled outside hand in hand with Mr Perks; Mabel the kitchen maid was asked to dance by Lord Charnly. Everywhere Pattern looked were similarly strange pairings.
‘This is a rum do, make no mistake,’ Nate muttered in her ear. ‘Best keep our heads down and play along.’
Pattern did not need any further encouragement. She knew instinctively, as Nate did, that they must disguise the fact they were not under the same enchantment as everyone else. So she tried to look as if she too had milk-pudding for brains and, arm in arm with Nate, followed the rest of the party as they streamed out on to the lawn.
Mr Grey took out a fiddle and began to play a jig. It sounded like a sea shanty. A full moon – swollen and apricot – hung in the indigo sky. Light blazed from every window of the villa where there had been no lights before. As the music soared, the dancers changed their partners, back and forth and round about. Sometimes it was the fiddle that played, and sometimes the harp. And whether the tunes were as wild as a storm or as gentle as moonlight, the dancers twirled with the same dreamy expressions, and the same empty eyes.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Men frequently become the dupes of artifice.
Mrs Taylor, Practical Hints to Young Females
Servants and masters parted at midnight after an hour of dancing, and everyone repaired to their chambers in the same dazed manner in which they had gambolled on the lawn. The music’s power was miraculous indeed, for the gentry even managed the irksome business of making ready for bed without the help of their servants. Pattern thought she would never sleep, with so many wild notions capering around her head, but, in the event, sheer exhaustion overwhelmed her.
In the morning, no trace of the revelries remained. The table on the terrace had been cleared, the washing-up done and the kitchen restored to right
s. Even the usual work proved lighter than expected, for the weather was so warm that the maids were spared the task of laying fires in the bedrooms, and the air was so pure – without any of London’s smuts and soot – that household dusting was much reduced.
However, not every load had lightened. The chamber pots were still to be emptied into the slop bucket, and their contents taken to the privy. This was Pattern’s least favourite duty, but as she dealt with the various swills and stinks, she reflected that it was perhaps not a bad thing to be brought so sharply back to earth.
Nobody made mention of the strange events of last night. ‘It was very kind of the mistress to let us hear her music-making,’ Mrs Palfrey remarked to the kitchen maids. This sort of acknowledgement was as far as it went. Today, nobody questioned who had cleaned up last night’s dinner, or remarked on the unseasonal weather, or even seemed particularly surprised when a fox was found lounging on the drawing-room sofa.
‘Another of Lady Hawk’s pets,’ Mr Perks observed, quite unruffled. It was as if he could see no difference between the fox and the pug dog.
Pattern was anxious to talk to Nate. This did not mean she intended to ask for his help – the task of uncovering Lady Hawk’s secrets was hers alone. In any case, she was not at liberty to speak of the Silver Service or Sir Whitby to anyone. But she was exceedingly curious to know what he made of last night’s events, hardly knowing what to think of them herself. Although her Silver Service training had impressed upon her that sorcery came in all sorts of disguises, a topsy-turvy dance was not exactly the kind of danger she had prepared for. Yet magic was at work here – she was sure of it. Why else was her skin prickling hot and cold with strange dread?
She found Nate in the silver room polishing knives and humming one of Mr Grey’s sea shanties.
