That I looked undoubtedly like a man run amok entirely escaped me until I crashed through a pair of elegant doors in the Calligraphic style and nearly knocked Mrs. Etaris into the moat.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“I beg your pardon,” I said, catching hold of her shoulder and arm with a tight grip unfortunately rendered even more awkward by the knife. Mrs. Etaris regained her balance, and frowned quizzically at me.
“Please,” she replied, with a vague gesture at the knife point just touching her jugular. “Don’t let me detain you.”
“Mrs. Etaris!” I hastily removed the knife and stepped back, bumping Mr. Dart, who was peering out the doorway beside us. Mrs. Etaris did not look in the least bit at a disadvantage, or even flustered, unless you count a sparkling eye and wispy hair escaping tight braids as flustered.
She peered a second time at me, and covered her face with a gloved hand. “Mr. Greenwing, as I live and breathe.” When she lowered her hand she hadn’t fully stopped smiling. “What a clever disguise. However did you come to think of it?”
It was my turn to frown quizzically. She was wearing an ordinary dark blue dress, nothing of the disguise or the costume about it. The fine leather gloves she wore … well, it was cool this evening, colder than the night before. The same probably went for the dark wool scarf that had slipped from around her head and which she now rearranged to cover her mouth and hair.
“Uh … by happy coincidence, I suppose you could say.”
She nodded vigorously. “Serendipity. Always increases when there’s adventure afoot and magic in the air—although you’re not sneezing, Mr. Greenwing. I’d hardly have recognized you!”
I flushed and held up my hand, ring glinting in the werelights illuminating the house like a fairy palace.
“Is that not Master Roald’s ring?”
“No.” I explained, as concisely as I could, my encounter in the Green Dragon.
“I’m glad the constabulary didn’t catch you there,” was her slightly distracted response; she had caught sight of Mr. Dart, who was now crouched down looking at the moat and making tender quacking sounds. “He’s under an enchantment,” I said. “I believe.”
Mrs. Etaris looked at me with such a sarcastic eye I wanted to sink down next to him. “Indeed.” She took the knife from my lax grip and examined it in the next patch of yellow light. “This is Master Roald’s, is it not?”
‘’Yes …” Wincing, I explained the rest of my evening so far, or at least up to my arrival at the Talgarths’, Mrs. Etaris nodding thoughtfully all the while and bouncing the dagger from one palm to another. She looked as if she did it all the time.
Rather disconcerted, I launched into an account of the odd conversation in the kitchen, but before I could expand on my surmises of what was going on, or on the various even-more-confusing elements of it, I was interrupted by a door banging on the other side of the nearest shrub.
Mrs. Etaris lit up with what I considered misplaced excitement. She raised a finger to her lips to silence me, and set off towards the noise. She kept close to the house wall and moved branches with care. I crept behind her, reflecting that I was wearing bright pink and gold satin and no amount of caution was going to make me inconspicuous, and that Mr. Dart was protesting leaving his birds despite my efforts to shush him.
On the other side of the shrub one of the kitchen-maids was arguing with a parlour maid in pink. I recognized Violet’s voice immediately.
“… Why did you start already?”
The kitchen-maid shrank back. “You said when the strangeness started—”
“If they complete the incantation now, the whole effort will be for naught! Alisoun, you only had three tasks!”
“I’m sorry,” she wailed.
This was Alisoun Artquist? And Violet knew her? Well enough to set her tasks? I glanced at Mrs. Etaris, who was regarding the two women with a pleased, indeed nearly smug, expression. I frowned painfully. Surely I hadn’t just missed that part of some conversation?
“I did the first two right enough, and it wasnae easy getting the Cook to—what’s that?”
I shrank back into the dubious cover of the shrub, but they were looking at the water near their feet. “A goose, maybe,” Violet said cautiously, but then something large and smooth and glistening broke the surface in a silent arc, and Alisoun cried shrilly. “It’s the Lady-monster! I knew this was impious and wrong, I knew it wasnae right to trust you, I knew it, I knew—”
“Hush,” said Violet firmly, and, looking after the ripples, saw us.
Mrs. Etaris lowered her scarf from around her face and stepped forward with as pleasant a smile as if we’d met on her shop step. I trailed behind like an assiduous footman again. Somehow it didn’t bother me so much when it was Mrs. Etaris rather than the Honourable Rag I was following.
I tugged Mr. Dart along to where Mrs. Etaris had stopped near the bank. “Miss Redshank, how … serendipitous. Miss Artquist, I presume? And—Miss Shipston?”
Miranda Shipston rose dripping from the amidst the arrowroot plants and rushes, looking like some Calligrapher’s painting of a Collian legend.
I wished I had a handkerchief to worry—and a clue to explain everything. Perhaps the ring suppressed only my sneezes, and this was all an elaborate hallucination brought on by far too much persiflage and an empty stomach. I clutched the soiled glove.
“I found it,” the mermaid said happily. “Right where you thought it would be, Mrs. Etaris.” She held up the shining black stone the Silver Priest had called the Heart of the Moon.
I sneezed.
Violet immediately swung round, eyes narrowed beneath the rouge and powder. “Jemis?”
I caught my breath. “I’m honoured you recognize my sneezes so immediately.”
“I’ve listened to them this past twelvemonth and more, they become distinctive.”
Alisoun twisted her hands in her apron. “Miss,” she said beseechingly, “I’m going to get in sore trouble. You dinnae know the Cook. She’s nae good woman, she’ll tell the Mistress on me.”
Mrs. Etaris considered her for a long moment. “Why don’t you go inside, Alisoun? We have some things to discuss out here, and I’m sure Miss Redshank will be able to fill us in on your involvement.”
“I’m nae involved, Miss, I swear I had nae to do with any of it but passing the messages! There dinnae seem no harm in it, not but my Gilbert is going to be sure mad, and if he won’t marry me after he finds out these carryings-on I don’t know what I’ll do, miss, I’m sure I don’t.”
“Never cry for the future before it’s happened, my dear,” Mrs. Etaris said soothingly. “We shall do our best to see it all sorted out properly.”
“I hate it here, I hate it!” Alisoun said, looking around at us and at the gaudy lights up the building. “All this magic, and people drunk or drugged or worse half the time, and the Cook …” She shuddered. “It’s nae right, what’s been going on, that’s that. The Justice wouldnae like it. When he was here it wasnae like this.”
“The Justice will be here soon, tomorrow, I expect,” Mrs. Etaris said matter-of-factly. “Go in, Alisoun, and get back to work.”
Alisoun protested a few times, until Violet nodded sharply at her, whereupon she gulped back her tears, opened the nearly-hidden door beside her, and slipped inside. Violet, Mrs. Etaris, Miss Shipston, and I all looked at each other. Mr. Dart sat down in the grass and leaned his head against my leg.
“I have to admit,” I said presently, when it appeared no one else was going to say anything, “that I am somewhat puzzled.”
“Why is that, Mr. Greenwing?” Mrs. Etaris asked.
So many questions rushed to mind I stumbled on which to ask first, and finally blurted out the last: “I still don’t understand what’s going on with the pie!”
Mrs. Etaris and Violet broke eye off staring at each other so they could look instead at me and laugh merrily.
“My dear Mr. Greenwing,” Mrs. Etaris said presently, “I must
admit I have yet to answer that question to my own satisfaction. Nor indeed what Domina Ringley thinks she’s playing at. Unless you can shed further light on either of those matters, Miss Redshank? For I believe you have been looking for this stone.”
Violet shook her head slowly. There was another silence, broken only by the sound of Miss Shipston swishing her tail in the water and some raucous merrymaking coming from a window high above us. Mrs. Etaris smiled expectantly at Violet, without any appearance of awkwardness or disappointment or anything besides mild expectation. I frowned so hard my forehead hurt. My head really was absurdly cold without the wig on.
Finally a timid voice from the water said, “I don’t understand why you’re wearing serving garb, Mr. Greenwing. Do you work here?”
I looked down at Miss Shipston. She looked significantly happier than she had earlier, though not much saner, her pale blue eyes still far too fixed and intense. “It was serendipity that I was brought in as a servant, but I wanted to be here because I was worried about Mr. Dart coming to dinner here.”
“Were you?” Violet asked in surprise. “You didn’t seem to be earlier.”
“That was before I got hired as a servant by the Black Priest because I was hanging around the crossroads at sunset on the night of the new moon and sent to go serve a phial of suspicious liquid to the guests at Dame Talgarth’s dinner party.”
“What happened to the phial?” Mrs. Etaris asked curiously.
I drew it out of one of the gores in the doublet, where it had been pressing coldly and malevolently against my waist. The black liquid caught the werelights with disquieting iridescence. “I rather forgot about it,” I added, “because I think I figured out one part of things—or I thought I had, until you turned up with Miss Shipston and the stone and Violet turns out to know Alisoun Artquist and—and, well, I really didn’t think Miss Carlin existed—”
“She doesn’t,” Violet said, sighing.
“But she does. Or at least …”
“What did you figure out, Mr. Greenwing?” Mrs. Etaris asked.
“I think … well, I don’t know how it fits in with anything now.”
“Never mind that, dear. We all appear to have pieces of the puzzle—it’s time to lay them out and work together.”
That was presumably directed at Violet, who didn’t seem inclined to comment, so I cleared my throat and rallied my thoughts and tried to ignore the trills of laughter and flute music coming from upstairs. Some of the laughter was unmistakably lascivious; maybe Dame Talgarth had found dancing girls from somewhere after all.
Or perhaps this was the hard work after dessert my fellow footman had winked at me about. O Lady, I thought, glad Mr. Dart was down here with me, if none the wiser. I cleared my throat again. “You see … I mentioned that sweet peas were my mother’s favourite flower.”
Mrs. Etaris twirled the dagger around one finger in the hand not holding the stone. She looked as if she did that all the time, too. She was still gazing at Violet, who was staring at the knife; Mrs. Etaris’ voice was again abstracted. “Yes …”
I gestured at the darkness on the other side of the moat. “When Mr. Dart and I were blundering through Justice Talgarth’s sweet peas the other night, I didn’t notice it, because I was sneezing too hard, but when I saw the sweet pea blossoms on the table, I realized they weren’t exactly right. I mean, they’re obviously related, but they’re the wrong shape.”
“Sweet peas come in all sorts of colours,” Violet said. “And all the pea family has the same sort of flower. Beans, too.”
“So does clover, but it doesn’t look like a pea blossom unless you look at the individual florets. And that was what these are like—they’re not a spray of blossoms like sweet peas or garden peas or runner beans—”
“I’m so glad you know your vegetables,” Mrs. Etaris murmured.
“Uh, thank you,” I said. “We took turns in the gardens at Morrowlea. That’s why it went all year round. … Anyhow, the flowers in the table are like giant clover heads. The same way a cowslip is like a primrose, but in a cluster.”
“Fascinating,” Violet said flatly.
I flushed, grateful (marginally) for the rouge. “It got me thinking why that would be, and I remembered—that book you lent me, Mrs. Etaris, only talked briefly about wireweed, but it did mention it’s a legume. From Kilromby. And Mr. Dart was worried about the plants washing down again because the cows were getting the staggers and jags from them.”
Everyone looked at Mr. Dart, who said dreamily, “Dame Talgarth sat in the fish.”
“Ah,” said Mrs. Etaris, as if everything fell into place for her.
Miss Shipston still looked confused, and Violet pensive, and there didn’t seem to be anything to do about Mr. Dart, who was now humming, so I continued.
“Justice Talgarth has been breeding sweet peas for years. You told me, Mrs. Etaris, that he’s been trying to breed for a perennial type. The book said that wireweed comes from Kilromby … where Domina Ringley has a position. We saw that she’s taking wireweed, and is clearly under the control of her attendant—Mr. Dart and I saw them out here in the middle of the night, talking about how the rainy weather had delayed them, and how they needed to harvest something before the new moon. Domina Ringley could well have been passing wireweed seeds to Justice Talgarth to use in his breeding regimen for years, but I don’t know about that. It seems risky, unless he’s in deeper than I imagine.”
“And this year?” Violet asked.
“This year the Justice spent the entire summer in Ormington teaching a course. Domina Ringley had a sabbatical, so came to keep her sister company for the summer, keep an eye on the gardens—and if she planted wireweed instead of sweet peas, who would know besides Justice Talgarth?”
“His gardener, presumably.”
Mrs. Etaris shook her head. “Except that he does all the sweet pea trials himself. Mr. Greenwing is quite correct that no one would suspect anything if Domina Ringley made the argument that she was trialling a new species for the Justice to consider on his return, and planting a large number of plants. That’s what one does to domesticate a wild species, one plants a good number in order to see the natural variety of the species. Well, well, well.”
“I suppose that means,” I added, with a sinking feeling as I considered the warren of hidden stairs and corridors in the house behind me, “that there are boxes and boxes of the stuff hidden in there.”
“That seems quite likely,” Mrs. Etaris said. “Good work, Mr. Greenwing. … Miss Redshank, do you have any thoughts?”
There was a long pause. Miss Shipston swished her tail some more. Violet frowned at the stone in Mrs. Etaris’ right hand. I leaned against the wall, heedless of my pink satin, and listened to the faint music above us. Mrs. Etaris continued to smile expectantly and look utterly normal, apart from the dagger in her hand.
Violet sighed. “Jemis, Mr. Greenwing, why did you say you thought you were wrong about Miss Carlin?”
“Oh … the reactions of the other footmen when I asked if there was a Miss Carlin working here.”
“You actually asked if she were there?” Violet sounded aghast.
Mrs. Etaris sounded as if she were trying not to laugh. “It has the merit of directness.”
“I don’t have your evident experience with espionage,” I retorted. “I thought it was worth a try.”
“Dinnae fash yourself,” Violet said with a fair imitation of Alisoun Artquist’s Kilromby accent. “What did they say?”
“The footman just laughed at me and said ‘good one,’ but when we were down in the kitchen he pointed out the undercook, a sallow woman with dirty fingernails, and said she was Miss Carlin.”
“The things you notice.”
“She’s a cook, Violet. Her hands should be clean.”
“The things you care about.”
Mrs. Etaris interrupted gently. “Are you sure he said she was Miss Carlin? Did he say so directly? What were his exact words?”
I cast my thoughts back with some difficulty. Back through the hallways—past the Honourable Rag—hell, I’d left the Honoruable Rag on the floor in the snow!—and there were cultists on the loose!—through the dining hall—the footman flirting with the kitchen maid—the potion—the Black Priest!—Corwil winking at me and saying … I spoke the last aloud: “‘She’s your Miss Carlin.’ That’s what he said.”
“Could be she is or …”
“Or she has,” Mrs. Etaris finished for Violet. She tapped the dagger hilt against her cheek. The carbuncles glittered in the werelights. “If it is the code word for wireweed, which is at least possible …”
“You don’t seem to think Miss Carlin exists, either?”
Mrs. Etaris looked with surprise at Violet. “Miss Redshank, it was a nicely plausible reason for your coming to Ragnor Bella, but I believe events have outpaced it.”
“I’m so confused,” Miss Shipston said plaintively, just beating me to it. Mr. Dart started to snore.
Violet opened her mouth, closed it, frowned, and finally said: “Perhaps you could explain why you think I’m here looking for this stone?”
Mrs. Etaris nodded placidly. “Indeed. There are two explanations, I think I can say. First of all, I was thinking about your name, Miss Redshank, and that of your alleged cousin, Daphne Carlin. Mr. Dart expressed some worries to Mr. Greenwing and myself that we didn’t, after all, know much about you; he seemed to feel you had further motives for being in Ragnor Bella than your stated intention. On reflection, I agreed with him, since I had noticed a few oddities of your behaviour myself.”
Violet spoke with composure. “What were those, Mrs. Etaris?”
“As I mentioned to Mr. Greenwing and Mr. Dart, Redshank is a name common to Eastern Oriole, to Pfaschen, Obforlen, the Little Kingdoms. I went to university in Galderon, and as I have always had an interest in folklore and rural legends, I happened to remember songs I heard there about a certain baker of prodigious magic named Daphne, and her shepherd lover, who was named a variety of things, but often Carling or Carlend or, indeed, Carlin. So for you to have as a cousin a baker of magical pastries named Daphne Carlin, well, my suspicions were aroused.”
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