When maidens mourn ssm-7

by C. S. Harris

  A woman's voice sounded behind him. `And who might you be, then?'

  Turning, Sebastian found himself being regarded with a suspicious scowl by a bony woman with thick, dark red hair, gaunt cheeks, and pale gray eyes. `You must be the boys' nurse, Miss Campbell.'

  `I am.' Her gaze swept him with obvious suspicion, her voice raspy with a thick northern brogue. `And you?'

  `Lord Devlin.'

  She sniffed. `I heard them talking about you in the servants' hall.' She pushed past him into the room and swung to face him, her thin frame rigid with hostility and what he suspected was a carefully controlled, intensely private grief.

  `Seems a queer thing for a lord to do, getting hisself mixed up in murder. But then, London folk is queer.'

  Sebastian found himself faintly smiling. `You came with the boys from Lincolnshire?'

  `I did, yes. Been with Master George since he was born, I have, and little Master Alfred too.'

  `I understand the boys' father is a rector?'

  `Aye.' A wary light crept into her eyes.

  Seeing it, Sebastian said, `Tell me about him.'

  `The Reverend Tennyson?' She folded her arms across her stomach, her hands clenched tight around her bony elbows. `What is there to tell? He's a brilliant man for all he's so big and hulking and clumsy.'

  `I'm told he's not well. Nothing serious, I hope?'

  The fingers gripping her elbows reminded him of claws clinging desperately to a shifting purchase. `He hasna been well for a long time now.' She hesitated, then added, `A very long time.' Lingering ill health was all too common in their society, frequently caused by consumption, but more often by some unknown debilitating affliction.

  Sebastian wandered the room, his attention seemingly all for the scattered toys and books. `And the boys? Are they hale?'

  `Ach, you'd be hard put to find two sturdier lads. To be sure, Master George can be a bit wild and hotheaded, but there's no malice in him.'

  It struck him as a profoundly strange thing for her to say. He paused beside a scattering of books on the window seat overlooking the river. They were the usual assortment of boys adventure stories. Flipping open one of the covers, he found himself staring at the name George Tennyson written in the same round copperplate as the poem given him by the housekeeper.

  Looking up, he said, `Do you know where Miss Tennyson planned to take her young cousins yesterday?'

  The nursemaid shook her head. `No. She told them it was a surprise.'

  `Could she perhaps have intended to show them the excavations at Camlet Moat?'

  `She could, I suppose. But how would that be a surprise? She'd taken them up there before.'

  `Perhaps she'd discovered something new she wanted to show them.'

  `I wouldn't know about that.'

  Sebastian studied the woman's plain, tensely held face.

  `What do you think has happened to them, Miss Campbell?'

  She pressed her lips into a hard, straight line, her nostrils flaring on a quickly indrawn breath, her forehead creasing with a sudden upwelling of emotion she fought to suppress. It was a moment before she could speak. `I don't know,' she said, shaking her head. `I just don't know. I keep thinking about those poor wee bairns out there somewhere, alone and afraid, with no one to care for them. Or... or...' But here her voice broke and she could only shake her head, unwilling to put her worst fears into words.

  He said, `Did you ever hear Miss Tennyson mention the name of an antiquary with whom she had quarreled?'

  Margaret cleared her throat and touched the back of her knuckles to her nostrils, her formidable composure slamming once more into place. `A what?'

  `An antiquary. A scholar of antiquities. You never heard Miss Tennyson speak of any such person?'

  `No.'

  `How about the children? Did they ever mention anyone? Anyone at all they might have met in London?'

  She stared back at him, her face pale, her eyes wide.

  Sebastian said, `There is someone. Tell me.'

  `I don't know his name. The lads always called him the Lieutenant.'

  `He's a lieutenant?'

  `Aye.' Her lip curled. `Some Frenchy.'

  `Where did the children meet this French lieutenant?'

  `Miss Tennyson would oftentimes take the lads to the park of an evening. I think they'd see him there.'

  `They saw him often?'

  `Aye. Him and his dog.'

  `The Lieutenant has a dog?'

  `Aye. The lads are mad about dogs, you know.'

  `When did they first begin mentioning this lieutenant?'

  `Ach, it must have been six weeks or more ago... not long after we first arrived in London, I'd say.'

  `That's all you can tell me about him? That he's a Frenchman and a lieutenant and that he has a dog?'

  `He may've been in the cavalry. I can't be certain, mind you, but it's only since we've come to London that Master George has suddenly been all agog to join the Army. He's forever galloping around the schoolroom slashing a wooden sword through the air and shouting, Charge! and, At em, lads!'

  `Any idea where this lieutenant might have seen service?

  `To be honest, I didn't like to pay too much heed to young Master George when he'd start going on about it. Couldn't see any sense in encouraging the lad. The Reverend's already told him he's bound for Eton next year. Besides, it didn't seem right, somehow, him being so friendly with a Frenchy.'

  Sebastian said, `Many émigrés have fought valiantly against Napoléon.'

  `Whoever said he was an émigré?' She gave a scornful laugh. `A prisoner on his parole, he is. And only the good Lord knows how many brave Englishmen he sent to their graves before he was took prisoner.'

  Sebastian went to lean on the terrace railing overlooking the river. The tide was out, a damp, fecund odor rising from the expanse of mudflats exposed along the bank below as the sun began its downward arc toward the west. An aged Gypsy woman in a full purple skirt and yellow kerchief was telling fortunes beside a man with a painted cart selling hot sausages near the steps. Beyond them, a string of constables could be seen poking long probes into the mud, turning over logs and bits of flotsam left stranded by the receding water. At first Sebastian wondered what they were doing. Then he realized they must be searching for the children or what was left of them.

  He twisted around to stare back at the imposing row of eighteenth-century town houses that rose above the terrace. The disappearance of the two young children added both an urgency and a troubling new dimension to the murder of Gabrielle Tennyson. Had the boys, too, fallen victim to Gabrielle's killer? For the same reason? Or were the children simply in the wrong place at the wrong time? And if they hadn't suffered the same fate as their cousin, then where were they now?

  Sebastian brought his gaze back to the top of the steps, his eyes narrowing as he studied the thin, drab-coated man buying a sausage from the cart.

  It was the same man he'd seen earlier, at Tower Hill.

  Bloody hell.

  Pushing away from the railing, Sebastian strolled toward the sausage seller. Pocketing the drab-coated man's coin, the sausage seller handed the man a paper-wrapped sausage. Without seeming to glance in Sebastian's direction, the man took a bite of his sausage and began to walk away.

  He was a tallish man, with thin shoulders and a round hat he wore pulled low on his face. Sebastian quickened his step.

  He was still some ten feet away when the man tossed the sausage aside and broke into a run.

  Chapter 10

  The man sprinted around the edge of the terrace and dropped out of sight.

  Sebastian tore after him, down a crowded, steeply cobbled lane lined with taverns and narrow coffeehouses that emptied abruptly onto the sun-splashed waterfront below. A flock of white gulls rose, screeching, to wheel high above the broad, sparkling river.

  The genteel houses of the Adelphi Terrace had been constructed over a warren of arch-fronted subterranean vaults built to span the slope between the
Strand and the wharves along the river. Sebastian could hear the man's booted feet pounding over the weathered planking as he darted around towering pyramids of wine casks and dodged blue-smocked workmen unloading sacks of coal from a barge. Then the buff-coated man threw one quick look over his shoulder and dove under the nearest archway to disappear into the gloomy world beneath the terrace.

  Hell and the devil confound it, thought Sebastian, swerving around a mule cart.

  `Hey!' shouted a grizzled man in a cap and leather apron as the mule between the traces of his cart snorted and kicked.

  `What the bloody ell ye doin?'

  Sebastian kept running.

  One behind the other, Sebastian and the drab-coated man raced through soaring, catacomblike arches, the bricks furred with soot and mold and perpetual dampness. They sprinted down dark tunnels of warehouses tenanted by wine sellers and coal merchants, and up dimly lit passages off which opened stables that reeked of manure and dirty straw, where cows lowed plaintively from out of the darkness.

  `Who the hell are you?' Sebastian shouted as the man veered around a rotten water butt, toward the dark opening of a narrow staircase that wound steeply upward. `Who?'

  Without faltering, the man clambered up the stairs, Sebastian at his heels. Round and round they went, only to erupt into a steeply sloping corridor paved with worn bricks and lined with milk cans.

  Breathing hard and fast, the man careened from side to side, upending first one milk can, then another and another, the cans rattling and clattering as they bounced down the slope like giant bowling pins, filling the air with the hot splash of spilling milk.

  `God damn it,' swore Sebastian, dodging first one can, then the next. Then his boots hit the slick wet bricks and his feet shot out from under him. He went down hard, slamming his shoulder against a brick pier as he slid back down the slope and the next milk can bounced over his head.

  He pushed up, the leather soles of his boots slipping so that he nearly went down again. He could hear the man's running footsteps disappearing around the bend up ahead.

  Panting heavily now, Sebastian tore around the corner and out a low archway into the unexpected sunlight of the open air. He threw up one hand to shade his suddenly blinded eyes, his step faltering.

  The lane stretched empty and silent before him.

  The man was gone.

  After leaving Carlton House, Hero spent the next several hours at a bookseller's in Westminster, where she selected several items, one of which proved to be very old and rare. Then, sending her purchases home in the charge of a footman, she directed her coachman to the British Museum.

  It was at an exhibition of Roman sarcophagi at the British Museum that Hero had first met Gabrielle Tennyson some six years before. Initially, their interaction had been marked more by politeness than by cordiality. Both might be gently born, well-educated women, but they belonged to vastly different worlds. For while the Jarvises were an ancient noble family with powerful connections, Gabrielle Tennyson came from a long line of barristers and middling churchmen gentry rather than noble, comfortable rather than wealthy.

  But with time had come respect and, eventually, true friendship. Their interests and ambitions had never exactly coincided: Gabrielle's passion had all been for the past, whereas Hero's main focus would always be the economic and social condition of her own age. Yet their shared willingness to challenge their society's narrow gender expectations and their determination never to marry had forged a unique and powerful bond between them.

  Now Hero, much to her mingling bemusement and chagrin, had become Lady Devlin. While Gabrielle...

  Gabrielle was dead.

  The bells of the city's church towers were just striking three when Hero's coachman drew up outside the British Museum. She sat with one hand resting casually on the carriage strap, her gaze on the towering portal of the complex across the street as she listened to the great rolling clatter and dong of the bells swelling over the city.

  Built of brick in the French style with rustic stone quoins and a slate mansard roof, the sprawling mansion had once served as the home of the Dukes of Montagu, its front courtyard flanked by long colonnaded wings and separated from Great Russell Street by a tall gateway surmounted by an octagonal lantern. She watched a man and a woman pause on the footpath before the entrance, confer for a moment, and go inside. Then two men deep in a heated discussion, neither of whom Hero recognized, exited the gateway and turned east.

  One after another the bells of the city tapered off into stillness, until all were silent.

  Hero frowned. She had come in search of an antiquary named Bevin Childe. Childe was known both for his formidable scholarship and for his fanatical adherence to a self-imposed schedule. Every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday between the hours of ten and three he could be found in the Reading Room of the museum. At precisely three o'clock, he left the museum and crossed the street to a public house known as the Pied Piper, where he ate a plate of sliced roast beef and buttered bread washed down by a pint of good, stout ale. This was followed by a short constitutional around nearby Bedford Square, after which he returned to the Reading Room from four until six. But today, Childe was deviating from his prescribed pattern.

  The minutes ticked past. `Bother,' said Hero softly under her breath.

  `My lady?' asked her footman, his hand on the open carriage door.

  `Perhaps...' she began, then broke off as a stout man in his early thirties dressed in a slightly crumpled olive coat and a high-crowned beaver came barreling through the museum's gateway, his head down, a brass-headed walking stick tucked under one arm. He had the face of an overgrown cherub, his flesh as pink and white as a baby's, his small mouth pursed as if with annoyance at the realization that he was nearly ten minutes late for his luncheon.

  `Mr. Childe,' called Hero, descending from the carriage, her furled parasol in hand. `What a fortunate encounter. There is something I wish to speak with you about. Do let's walk along for a ways.'

  Childe's head jerked up, his step faltering, a succession of transparent emotions flitting across his cherubic features as his desire to maintain his schedule warred with the need to appear accommodating to a woman whose father was the most powerful man in the Kingdom.

  `Actually,' he said, `I was just on my way to grab a bite...'

  `It won't take but a moment.' Hero opened her parasol and inexorably turned his steps toward the nearby square.

  He twisted around to gaze longingly back at the Pied Piper, the exaggerated point of his high collar pressing into his full cheek.

  `But I generally prefer to take my constitutional after I eat...'

  `I know. I do beg your pardon, but you have heard this morning's news about the death of Miss Tennyson and the disappearance of her young cousins?'

  She watched as the pinkness drained from his face, leaving him pale. `How could I not? The news is all over town. Indeed, I can't seem to think of anything else. It was my intention to spend the day reviewing a collection of manor rolls from the twelfth century, but I've found it nearly impossible to focus my attention for more than a minute or two at a stretch.'

  `How distressing for you,' said Hero dryly.

  The scholar nodded. `Most distressing.'

  The man might still be in his early thirties, not much older than Devlin, she realized with some surprise but he had the demeanor and mannerisms of someone in his forties or fifties. She said, `I remember Miss Tennyson telling me once that you disagreed with her identification of Camlet Moat as the possible site of Camelot.'

  `I do. But then, you would be sorely pressed to find anyone of repute who does agree with her.'

  `You're saying her research was faulty?'

  `Her research? No, one could hardly argue with the references to the site she discovered in various historical documents and maps. There is no doubt the area was indeed known as Camelot for hundreds of years. Her interpretation of those findings, however, is another matter entirely.'

  `Was that the bas
is of your quarrel with her last Friday? Her interpretation?'

  He gave a weak, startled laugh. `Quarrel? I had no quarrel with Miss Tennyson. Who could have told you such a thing?'

  `Do you really want me to answer that question?'

  Her implication was not lost on him. She watched, fascinated, as Childe's mobile features suddenly froze. He cleared his throat. `And your... your source did not also tell you the reason for our little disagreement?'

  `Not precisely; I was hoping you could explain it further.'

  His face hardened in a way she had not expected. `So you are here as the emissary of your husband, not your father.'

  `I am no one's emissary. I am here because Gabrielle Tennyson was my friend, and whoever killed her will have to answer to me for what they've done to her to her and to her cousins.'

  If any woman other than Hero had made such a statement, Childe might have smiled. But all of London knew that less than a week before, three men had attempted to kidnap Hero; she had personally stabbed one, shot the next, and nearly decapitated the other.

  `Well,' he said with sudden, forced heartiness.

  `It was, as you say, a difference of opinion over the interpretation of the historical evidence. That is all.'

  `Really?'

  He stared back at her, as if daring her to challenge him. `Yes.'

  They turned to walk along the far side of the square, where a Punch professor competed with a hurdy-gurdy player, and a barefoot, wan-faced girl in a ragged dress sold watercress for a halfpenny a bunch from a worn wooden tray suspended by a strap around her neck. A cheap handbill tacked to a nearby lamppost bore a bold headline that read in smudged ink, KING ARTHUR, THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING!