The words were correct, but there was a thread of disapproval. Jerusha Earnshaw might not mind sharing a titbit or two with me, but she did not much care for gossiping with her mistress.
I looked at the tea tray, puzzled. “There is only one cup. Don’t you mean to join me?”
Her mouth was prim. “I would not dream of imposing, Lady Julia.”
“Don’t be silly. Go and fetch another cup. I would be glad of the company. If you like,” I finished feebly, realising how imperious I had sounded.
But if I had been bossy, Miss Earnshaw did not mind. “I will be but a moment.”
She fetched another cup and returned swiftly. I motioned for her to pour out and she did so with the same deft economy of motion I had come to expect of her. Her gestures, like her words and even her clothing, were just right, never too bold or too retiring. She was an unusually comfortable person to be around, an invaluable quality in a member of staff. For a moment I regretted not having children merely because I could not engage her.
“Miss Earnshaw, I confess, I had an ulterior motive for inviting you to take tea with me, beyond the pleasure of your company.”
She did not seem at all surprised. “You want information.”
“What makes you say that?”
She sipped placidly at her tea, and very good tea it was. Indian, with broad black leaves instead of the weedy dust that is so often used instead.
“You are a naturally curious person, Lady Julia, if you will forgive the observation.”
“Oh, entirely,” I told her, reaching for a scone.
“And the last time we spoke, I sensed a certain frustration. I think you would have liked to have asked me more, but you were hampered by the presence of Lady Bettiscombe.”
“Miss Earnshaw, you are a witch. I adore my sister, but there is some business too private even to share with her.”
She offered me a subtle smile. “I am, to the public eye, a miner’s daughter from a thoroughly insignificant village in Yorkshire with an indifferent education. I would never have risen to the position I now occupy without learning first the complementary skills of observation and discretion.”
One could make a similar comment about Brisbane, I reflected. “Very well, I wish to know things.”
We settled in for a chat then, and I asked her many questions. Some answers she knew, others we were forced to cobble together from bits and pieces she had collected over the years. In the end, I believe we pieced together a fair representation of what had happened so many years ago in her little village, what ghosts had been raised, and which ones still walked their uneasy path.
“Thank you, Miss Earnshaw,” I said at length. “You have been most helpful. If there is ever anything I can do for you—”
Her gaze sharpened, and I smiled. “Ask.”
“Well, I have put a bit of money aside. I mean to open a school for young ladies. Not a finishing school, but a proper school where girls may learn mathematics and the hard sciences as well as dancing and deportment. I realise it is a radical proposition, but if your ladyship could perhaps mention it to a friend or two, should they have daughters to educate…”
She trailed off hopefully. I waved a hand. “It would be my pleasure. In fact, I would be happy to write a general letter of recommendation. You may use it in your advertisements, for whatever it is worth.”
She thanked me effusively, and I thanked her again for the tea and the conversation, and I think we both parted feeling quite kindly disposed toward the other. I was waiting alone by the time Brisbane finally came to collect me. He looked exhausted, his face drawn with fatigue.
“Are you ready?”
I rose at once and collected my things. “Of course.”
“Thank God,” he said fervently. “I want to get the hell out of here.”
Brisbane’s language was frequently inappropriate, but there was an urgency to his tone that I had not often seen before. His pace was rapid as well, and by the time we reached the path to Grimsgrave, he was nearly a dozen steps ahead.
I stopped by the stone wall and waited. After half a minute he realised I had not kept pace and returned to fetch me, clearly battling his temper.
“I am sorry,” he ground out through clenched teeth. “I did not mean to rush you. I want to get back to Grimsgrave.”
“Quite all right,” I told him with a smile. He offered his arm very civilly and I took it. He matched his steps to mine with great deliberation, and as we walked I felt the tension ebbing from him. The fresh moorland air blowing about seemed to clear the cobwebs and the anger away. The muscles under my hand relaxed, and the tightness at his jaw eased.
“I was rather surprised at not having to testify,” I began.
He snorted. “Yes, well, it seems I underestimated the power of the March name.”
I shrugged. “It is an illusion, really. People think it means something to be the daughter of an earl, so they treat you differently. And then you come to expect it, and they think it is because you are an earl’s daughter, and really it’s only because you have always been treated differently that you expect it in the first place.”
Brisbane shook his head. “That is the most convoluted piece of logic I have ever heard.”
“No, it isn’t. And you are capable of some rather twisty logic yourself.”
“Such as?” He quirked one glossy black brow in my direction.
“Such as permitting a would-be murderess to remain under your roof to attempt your life again just so she could be caught in the act. You seem to have entirely forgot that she might well have succeeded,” I pointed out acidly.
He shrugged. “Oh, that. I took precautions, you know. I am not completely helpless.”
“No, but you are reckless, as headstrong as any member of my family. I daresay it is bad breeding. The Aberdours always were rather flamboyant.”
“And my mother’s people,” he put in. “Not exactly the reticent sort.”
“True,” I agreed. “They are a singular people. I quite like your aunt and uncle. Tell me, is Rosalie very like your mother?”
It was the first time I had raised the spectre of Brisbane’s mother in conversation. He answered, but only after a moment, and his voice was low.
“Yes, I suppose she is. Same colouring, same graceful gestures. But there was something otherworldly about my mother. Rosalie is as plain as salt, for all that she is a Gypsy.”
The fact that Brisbane could have described Rosalie thus was an excellent indication of his upbringing. Rosalie Smith was one of the most exotic creatures I had ever known. Mariah Young must have been something out of myth.
We walked on in silence for a moment, but his arm was tense again under mine.
“Portia asked me why Ailith was so determined to kill you,” I began conversationally. “I told her it was because she meant to set up her mother to hang for your murder, but that is not the whole story, is it? No, I think she meant to punish you for ruining Redwall. You did, didn’t you? During the 1884-1885 expedition? You needn’t bother to deny it. I saw the photograph of the expedition party. You look rather dashing with whiskers. I wonder that Lord Evandale trusted you near his daughter. The poor girl must have been quite smitten.”
Brisbane said nothing and I continued on, keeping my tone light. “It must have been terribly easy to bring Redwall down into disgrace. Was he stealing from Lord Evandale? Or selling faked antiquities as genuine? It hardly matters now. Evandale became suspicious, but he had so many new members to his expedition, he could not pinpoint the criminal. He asked you to join his excavation team and unmask the villain. You did so, with alacrity. It must have been so tempting to arrange proof to condemn him, but I don’t believe you did. I think you waited until he betrayed himself. I think the evidence you presented to Evandale was entirely genuine.”
“You seem to think very highly of my character,” he said mildly, but his arm twitched beneath mine.
“No, I think you enjoyed the cat and mouse game too muc
h. I believe you are completely capable of arranging for his culpability the first day. It would have been so easy for you. You are clever and deft and the coolest liar I know. Poor Redwall wouldn’t have stood a chance if you had simply picked the lock to his room and cached a necklace or statue under his pillow. But watching him go to pieces was rather more satisfying, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was,” he agreed.
“You had months together, over the long Egyptian winter, toiling in the hot sun and lingering over group dinners, and all the while you watched him. He was confident at first, believing he had the measure of you, had you at a disadvantage. How immensely pleasurable it must have been for you to watch him disintegrate as the truth slowly dawned upon him—you had come to Egypt for revenge.”
Brisbane’s expression turned to one of disgust. “You have a febrile imagination, Julia. Redwall Allenby did nothing of the sort. Until the day Lord Evandale expelled him from the expedition, he thought I was in his power. He underestimated me completely.”
I thought for a moment. “He was a singularly stupid man, wasn’t he?”
“He was. And he was already ill, desperately so. When Lord Evandale dismissed him, he was devastated. He knew it was the end of him in the Egyptological community and he went home to die, it is as simple as that. It is a measure of his depravity that he thought to defile his sister first.”
I gave him a reproving look. “It is not really that simple, is it? I cannot believe you never took the opportunity to let him know why you had come.”
“I let him know every day,” Brisbane said with a savage little smile of satisfaction.
“How?” I asked.
“Can’t you imagine? You saw the photograph.”
I thought of the images I had seen, captured in that one brief moment, stilled forever. I shook my head. “No. How did you signal your thirst for vengeance to Redwall?”
“‘Thirst for vengeance?’ Ye gods, Julia, you ought to be writing thrillers of the lowest variety.”
I gave him a little poke in the ribs, but I must have caught him on the bad side. He stumbled and righted himself, looking very pale.
“I am sorry, Brisbane. But I was right, wasn’t I? You did go to Egypt for revenge, and you had it. I finally put it all together today. I had heard of course that your mother was bound over for trial for stealing a bottle of laudanum. I knew she cursed the judge, Sir Alfred Allenby, and the chemist as well. That was Mr. Butters, wasn’t it? Poor Mrs. Butters. I wonder if she ever realised it was your mother who cursed her husband.”
“Of course she knows,” Brisbane said, gritting his teeth a little and holding a hand to his ribs. “She used to make griddlecakes for me when I was a boy.”
“Remind me to ask her what you were like as a boy. Incorrigible, I should imagine.”
“Thoroughly.”
His tone was light, but I knew he dreaded what was coming next. I dreaded it as well. I did not want to open new wounds, but so long as they poisoned him still, there was no hope for us. The only way for him to face the future was to put the past squarely behind him. I only hoped he was capable of it.
“But it was something Jerusha Earnshaw said that made all the difference.”
“Jerusha Earnshaw?” he asked, but I knew it was a bid for time. I gave him a repressive look.
“The innkeeper’s sister. She told me the charges against your mother would have likely been dismissed at the Assizes because the witnesses against her were a pair of children. Ailith and Redwall Allenby.”
His jaw hardened and his handsome mouth twisted into something most unpleasant. “Did she tell you why? Did she tell you it was because of me?”
I stared straight ahead as we continued to walk. It was easier somehow if I did not have to look directly at him as I exposed his demons.
“Well, it was,” he went on. “Ailith was not even ten, and the most accomplished liar I had ever met. I did my best to stay away from them, Ailith and her brother both, but sometimes our paths crossed. One day I went swimming in the river, where it flows calmly by the graveyard. Ailith and Redwall came upon me and began their usual habit, taunting and calling abuse. I ignored them until I realised Ailith was holding up a pendant of mine I had left on the bank with my clothes. It had been given me by my mother. She told me stories about the lady engraved upon it, a beautiful and terrible lady. I used to wonder if the woman on the pendant was my mother. It was my dearest possession. And there was Ailith Allenby, swinging it from her fingertips, saying she meant to keep it, even if it was an ugly piece of Gypsy trash.”
I had the oddest fancy then that Brisbane did not even remember I was there, he was speaking almost to himself, in a low hollow voice, his eyes unfocused, as if he only saw the past.
“I leapt out of the river and charged at her. I pushed her down and took the pendant back, and told her if she ever touched anything of mine ever again, I would kill her. Redwall tried to stand up for her, but I shoved him into the river. It might have been funny, a stupid children’s quarrel, but for the look on Ailith Allenby’s face. It was not the face of a child. It was the wilful evil of some devil straight from the pits of hell. I knew then she meant to do something terrible. And, coward that I was, I packed my things and I ran away.”
I had guessed some of what Brisbane told me, but I had not anticipated that. “I thought you ran away because the Gypsies would not have you as one of them.”
Brisbane came slowly back to himself, as if the sound of my voice had roused him. “They have more generosity than you credit them with. I was my mother’s son, and she was a powerful woman. I looked just like them, I rode and picked pockets and made harnesses as well as any other Gypsy lad.”
“You picked pockets?”
He shrugged. “Once in a while and only from people who could spare it. My mother’s people are resourceful.”
Not quite the word I would have used, but I was not surprised he still felt warmly toward his maternal family.
“And after you ran away, Ailith Allenby took her revenge upon your mother instead.”
He nodded slowly. “I am to blame for everything that happened to her. The least I could do was see her avenged. It’s come full circle now.”
We walked in silence a moment, and then I had a sudden start of realisation. I put a hand into the neck of my bodice and drew out the pendant Brisbane had given me, incised with the head of Medusa, a beautiful and terrible woman. I tucked it away, hastily. There was no need to ask. I knew now precisely what I meant to him. What I had always meant.
Just then he turned to me, and I felt a surge of joy. The past had been exorcised. I felt lighter and a hundred years younger. We were betrothed, as far as the world knew. This was the moment then, when it would all come right.
“I just remembered, I put notices in the newspaper of our engagement to lend the lie more veritas,” he said, his brow furrowing.
“Yes,” I said encouragingly. My breath felt tight within my lungs.
“I forgot to post the retractions. They ought to be printed as soon as possible. It would be more believable if you sued me for breach of promise, but the whole thing will go away more quickly if we just let it be.”
I swallowed hard, concealing my disappointment. “Of course. Breach of promise suits are so terribly louche, I always think.”
He stood for a long moment, staring at me, searching my face, and when he spoke it was without pretence and every word was its own tragic poem. “There is no money, Julia. Not a farthing. I’ve put everything I had into Grimsgrave. I was convinced there was a fortune under this moor, if only I could find it. I was a fool,” he said bitterly.
“I understand,” I said hollowly, but of course I did not. It was a very great irony that the fortune my husband had left me stood between me and my only happiness. “I could give it all away, you know. I am sure there is some home for elderly cats or something that would quite appreciate the money.”
He laughed, and I heard the sharp edge of despair in t
he sound, and perhaps anger as well. “I will not touch you again. It isn’t fair, to either of us.”
I nodded. “I won’t kiss you either. You might get ideas and I am a very respectable widow.”
We stood a foot apart and yet with worlds between. He reached out then and crushed me to him, heedless of his newly-stitched ribs. I clasped my arms around him, holding him as tightly to me as my own flesh.
“For the love of God, don’t cry,” he ordered, his face muffled by my hair. My hat had gone tumbling over the moor, bowled along by the wind, but I did not care.
“I won’t,” I promised. “But I am feeling rather fragile, so you might want to look away in a moment.”
He pulled back, and I saw a thousand emotions warring on his face. He seemed to be memorising my face, his eyes lingering on each feature in turn.
Finally, he released me. “Ailith will be buried the day after tomorrow. I will make arrangements for you and Portia to return to London the following day. I will be closing up the house. I am leaving England for a while.”
“For how long?” I asked him, determined to keep my composure.
“Until I am quite recovered from you,” he said evenly.
“When will you return?”
“Never.”
He turned and left me then, walking slowly toward the village. I stared after him for a long time, until I could no longer see the strong form and the witch-black hair tumbling in the wind. And then I turned and set my face for Grimsgrave Hall.
THE THIRTY-FIRST CHAPTER
All gold and silver rather turn to dirt.
—William Shakespeare
Cymbeline
And so Portia and I made our preparations to return to London. I expected her to pry and fuss, but she took one look at my face and put me straight to bed with a hot whisky.
The next morning I gathered up Redwall Allenby’s things, the journals and photographs and the little amulets from the babies’ coffin. I replaced them in his desk, wondering if they would ever again see the light of day. I almost opened the priest’s hole, but in the end I left the children where they lay, hoping they were at peace. Brisbane would have to make arrangements for them to be buried secretly.
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