by Sean Russell
Perhaps the fact that she turned the head of every man in Farrland had made her a bit odd, but then this was something that was lost on him. Oh, she was an attractive woman, there was no doubt of that, but there were others he found far more lovely, and they did not act so strangely around him. As though he’d made them some promise that he had not kept.
His eye came slowly back from the lake, just visible over the slate roofs of the houses. Skye wondered what the countess had learned from Flattery; certainly her note gave no clue. Perhaps Flattery had been unpleasant to her and that explained her manner—she was angry at Flattery, not him.
His eye came to rest on the small park across the street from the house he let. Nannies watched over playing children and gossiped among themselves as they did handcrafts, apparently without devoting any part of their awareness to the activity.
On one of the benches a man sat reading a book, one of the men who always seemed to be in the park—leaving only when Skye left his house. Agents of the Farr government, he was sure, and felt the fear that seemed always to tighten around his bowel.
“They would have arrested me by now,” he muttered. Certainly they had no evidence. Their attempt to compromise him had failed, thanks to an unknown woman and her friends. He thought of her often, fearing that she had somehow fallen into the hands of the Admiralty. Who in this round world was she, and how had she gotten wind of Moncrief’s plot? Meeting her had been one of the oddest experiences of his life. Thank Farrelle she had been there or he would likely be in the gaol, now.
“They cannot touch you,” Skye said, squaring his shoulders. They had tried and failed. And now he was on his guard. The King was still an admirer. Moncrief would get what he deserved for this travesty, in time. Let him sweat a while.
The man in the park appeared not to notice when Skye emerged onto the street, but Skye knew he was there. Half a block behind, perhaps on the street’s opposite side, but he was there.
Put him from your mind, he told himself. There is nothing the man can do now but follow. Follow rather impotently.
As it was a fine day, he decided to walk the short distance to the house where the countess was staying.
* * *
* * *
So absorbed in thought was the countess that she had lost all awareness of her surroundings. She sat on a small terrace, the warming sun touching her, protected from the small breeze by a stone wall. Though there was increasing warmth in the sun, the air still bore the cold of the recent winter, which lingered in the shaded valleys and on hilltops.
“The pleasures of the day to you, Lady Chilton,” Skye said, startling the countess from her thoughts.
She rose immediately and curtsied, wondering if her manner was as guarded as it felt. Skye, of course, showed no sensitivity to her mood, as she had come to expect. “Please, Lord Skye, sit. Be at your ease.” She took her own seat and faced him, silent for a moment, wondering if he would ask about her meeting with Erasmus or if he would pretend that visiting her was more important than anything she might have learned. When he did not speak, she began to feel foolish.
“Your paintings are ready. Shall I have them taken to your carriage?”
“I walked, in fact, Lady Chilton.”
“Then I shall have them delivered to your place of residence, if you will but give directions to my servants.”
He nodded his thanks.
“You would like to hear of my meeting with Erasmus Flattery,” she said.
“You have met with him already?” he said as though the thought had not occurred to him. As if he had come here merely to stare at her in anticipation.
“Mr. Flattery was kind enough to visit me.” She met his eye suddenly. “I had not realized he was a man of such charm.” Her gaze dropped to her hands. “I showed him your paintings. He divined immediately that I was your agent . . . I’m not sure how.” She looked up at him as though he might explain, but he only shrugged. “I managed to charm a few things from him, all the same. He admitted that the script on the Pelier, or rather the copy, was likely known to the mages and might even be similar to the script on the Ruin of Farrow, as you expected.” She looked up to see Skye’s reaction to this news, and though he sat perfectly still, she could see the excitement on his face. “He claimed not to be able to read the script, however.” She felt herself shrug. She had almost blurted out the truth. Anything to please him. A shudder of revulsion ran through her at what she would do to attract this man.
“But can he? Did you sense he was telling the truth?” Skye had leaned forward in his seat, staring at her intently.
She shrugged again, feeling that she looked at him a bit hopelessly, trying to hide the excitement she felt in his presence. If he would only look at her so for the proper reasons. . . .
Skye turned suddenly in his seat, and stared off at the view. “But if it is the script of the mages . . . ? How could Pelier have known?”
“He did not merely adapt it from the script on the Ruin, I collect?”
“No, I don’t think so. Flattery would know better than I, but no, I think it has come from some other source. Perhaps from ‘inspiration’ as Pelier claimed.” Skye ran his right hand back into his thick silver hair, as she had noted he did when deep in thought.
“But why does this interest you so?” she asked softly.
Skye looked down on her as though surprised by the question. “It is difficult to explain.”
“I have no pressing appointments. Take all day if you like. In fact, I think I will be free tomorrow, as well, if a story could take so long.”
He seemed to measure her for a moment, with that gaze that never looked upon her warmly. Then he shifted in his chair, as though to speak with her more intimately, but still he said nothing. The countess remained silent, waiting, afraid to push now. The slightest misstep and he would decide to say nothing—all chance of intimacy would be gone.
Twice he turned his attention to her, and drew a breath as though to speak, but both times his resolve failed or he could not find the words, and he looked away.
“I shall swear myself to silence, if that is a concern,” the countess said softly, hardly daring to utter a word.
Then she saw his face change, the tension draining from it, and he nodded unconvincingly. “The story of the Stranger of Compton Heath has intrigued me since the day I first heard it, and the more I learned the more fascinated I became. You see, I don’t believe it was merely a local myth, as do many, nor do I think it was a hoax. The priest, Baumgere, met the Stranger, and I think there can hardly have been a shrewder man than this priest. No, his knowledge of languages was far too deep for anyone to deceive him. The Stranger unquestionably spoke a tongue that Baumgere had not encountered before.
“So where did this Stranger come from? Some unexplored part of the world is the accepted explanation, and one can hardly imagine a more convincing answer, but I have reason for doubt. You see, there have been other such occurrences in history, all thought to be hoaxes for one reason or another, and likely some were. Of course one would have to ask what purpose they served other than gaining the impostor some brief notoriety. But some are of such a nature that I wonder if, indeed, they were hoaxes.
“A boy was discovered in Doorn, nearly frozen on a winter’s day, and he soon succumbed to his ordeal. But he, too, spoke a strange tongue and was dressed oddly and found his surroundings unfamiliar. He seemed altogether foreign to the people who found him.
“Seventy years ago a woman dwelt in the mountains of Entonne, a hermit who was said to sing songs in an unknown tongue and had knowledge of healing that others did not. She was a little mad, some thought, for she always claimed that she had been spirited here from another place—a place one could not reach by land or sea. And a boy of about twelve appeared near Tremont Abbey. A shepherd and his son found the child, wandering the hills, frightened, speaking a language the man had
never heard. They took him to a physician in the town, and as happened at Compton Heath, a carriage came late at night, and the boy was never seen again.”
“And last, and strangest of all, the case of the Milbrook children. You must know it? The three children and the nanny all disappeared from a room while others were outside. It was a great mystery seventy-five years ago, and rewards were offered for the nanny, who was thought to have abducted the poor children. But they were never found, nor could anyone ever explain how they had disappeared from the room without anyone seeing. The laughter of the children stopped, and the parents thought they had fallen asleep, or listened raptly to a story. But when they opened the door later, there were no children to be found. Gone. Impossibly gone.” He fell silent.
“They could not have disappeared into the air,” the countess said, strangely affected by this story of lost children.
“Not into the air, no.” Skye paused, thinking. “In ancient times there was a belief among a group of scholars—they called themselves the ‘lunarians,’ for it was their habit to meet at the full moon—thus the terms ‘fool’s moon’ and ‘lunatic’ were born—and they had many strange ideas about the nature of the world and the heavens, and have been much scorned by men of learning ever since. But even so, they were some of the earliest to believe that the earth was a sphere, and even calculated its circumference very close to our present value. They also believed that the netherworld was a real place. They believed it lay within our world, which they hypothesized was hollow at its center. To this end they explored some very deep caves and even tried to enter a marginally active volcano, with near disastrous results. This belief that another world lay within was part of a larger cosmology—if one can call it that—a hypothesis that there were other worlds ‘infinitely distant, yet near at hand.’ It was their belief that these worlds were, at times, so close that people could pass from one to another, and that sometimes, though not by design, they did.” He gave her an odd defensive look as though he expected her to laugh, but when she did not he continued.
“It sounds foolish, I know, but where did the Stranger of Compton Heath come from? And where did the Milbrook children go? Somewhere. Somewhere that is not explained by our present description of the heavens. I am a practitioner of natural philosophy, and it is my belief that we will one day come to understand the laws of nature in all of their vast intricacy. I am also an empiricist and believe only in knowledge that can be confirmed by empirical methods—but what if our perception of the world is . . . incomplete? What if there are worlds ‘infinitely distant, yet near at hand’ that we cannot detect by any method yet devised? If this were possible, then our entire view of the cosmos would be ludicrously narrow. If such a thing were possible, then we must begin rewriting the few natural laws we have recorded—my own laws of gravity among them.”
He stopped, gazing at her, judging the effect of what he’d said.
“It is . . . astonishing. I hardly know what to say. If such a thing could be proven, it would stand all orthodox theory on its head. Are there others who share this view?”
“This is the worst of it,” he said, his face twisting in anguish. “The only men who give voice to such beliefs are charlatans and fools. Not real empiricists at all, but buffoons who believe in fairies and spirits. Table knockers who claim to receive messages from the dead, who conduct spirit readings and perform trumped-up ‘rituals’ at midnight on the solstice.” He shook his head, his face turning a bright red. “That is why I keep my interest to myself and tell no one. I would become a laughing stock. I cannot think what cruelty I would meet. No, you are the first I have told.”
“I am honored that you would trust me with this confidence, but what will you do? Will you keep such thoughts to yourself forever?”
“Yes, unless I can find proof. Thus my interest in this priest Baumgere. He met the Stranger in Compton Heath and, I believe, spent his life trying to discover where the man had come from. He had access to all the books and documents collected by the Farrellite Church, and I believe he found evidence there. Some information that brought him here to Castlebough where he spent the rest of his life in this pursuit. I had hoped to find this information—I still hope to find it.” His manner changed, and he blinked several times quickly, turning slightly away from her.
The countess could not miss his distress. “What is it?” she blurted out, unable to stop herself.
“Nothing, I . . . I have not been sleeping well. My thoughts will not leave me alone. I sometimes think that they will drive me . . . to utter distraction.”
“If you will permit me to say,” the countess pitched her voice to its warmest most compassionate tone, “I think you spend too much time alone with your own thoughts, and though this may produce much for the good of the world, I cannot think it is best for the Earl of Skye, and it is he that I am concerned with. You should spend more time in society—oh, it need not be with the crowds, which I know you dislike. But with your friends who care for you.”
He nodded, pulling himself up, almost reanimating himself after looking so dejected. “I’m sure what you say it true.”
“I have been invited to a dinner this evening—at the home of one of Castlebough’s leading families. I thought I might accept. Would you care to accompany me? It could be the beginning of your new policy.”
“This evening? I—I would dearly love to, but I have foolishly committed myself elsewhere. I am sorry.”
“Oh, well, not to worry. I only thought . . .”
A clock chimed in the village, and he rose suddenly. “You must forgive me, Lady Chilton, but I am called elsewhere. I cannot thank you enough for your efforts with Mr. Flattery—and for listening to my rambling. You are too kind.”
When Skye had gone, the countess stood on the terrace staring at the door. He had run out on her. After what she had offered, intimacy, friendship . . . more. After what she had done for him, pumping poor Erasmus Flattery, she expected at least a little gratitude. At the very least, politeness.
“I have never been treated so . . .” She could not find a word, nor could she find words to express the pain and confusion she felt. “Perhaps he is mad.”
* * *
* * *
“It is unsigned,” Marianne said. “Your admirer does not want to be known—he even keeps the identity of the painter he engaged secret so that you will not find him out. You think it’s Skye, no doubt?” Marianne and the countess stood looking at a painting, which had been delivered to their abode without so much as a card. It was a portrait of the countess sitting upon a divan, and Marianne had already said she thought the artist was more than a little in love with his subject.
“I don’t know who it is from, though I am almost certain that it is not from the earl.” She hoped her voice remained neutral, but Marianne cast a quick glance her way all the same.
“Well, whoever it is, they are likely in Castlebough. I can’t imagine that anyone would find you here to deliver such a gift, but would simply send it to your Avonel home.”
“I suppose.”
“Well, it is a painter of some skill, and therefore he will not be unknown. We’ll take it along to dinner tonight. It will be the parlor game—name the artist.”
“Oh, that would be unkind!” the countess protested.
“Nonsense. If the man has not the courage to declare himself, then he deserves nothing less. I wouldn’t be surprised to find he’s married, for Farrelle’s sake. But if we can find the artist, we will know his employer soon enough. No, no. Do not protest.”
Twenty-Four
The house was perhaps the oldest house of any size in Castlebough, and was suitably dark in its decor, with small windows, and floors of ancient tile and deeply polished walnut. Erasmus did not want to be there. In fact, he was becoming a little frantic with inactivity. At least everything was ready for their departure early the next morning, or so Clarendon claimed. They
would set out in search of Kehler and Hayes at last.
The two men had come to dinner at the Baron of Glenock’s home, and though Erasmus was not usually overly enthusiastic about such events, the baron was a member of Clarendon’s vintners group, and as such had applied pressure to the little man to bring Erasmus along. If he was honest with himself, Erasmus had to admit that his real reason for attending was the possibility of meeting the countess again.
Now that she’s learned what she wanted from you, the countess will likely not pay you the slightest attention, he thought. But I will hang back and if she does not appear to recognize me, I won’t make a fool of myself by pursuing her.
He was not quite sure why he was doing this. Certainly she was not interested in him. The Countess of Chilton was likely desired by every man of station in Farrland and beyond. Still, she had taken his hand at her door, and kissed his cheek, and for a few seconds he had felt that something passed between them. Something. . . .
The servant opened the doors to the great hall, and there Erasmus found the thirty or so dinner guests gathered in a half circle, their attention entirely taken up with something. Flames, was this how the countess was treated? People simply collected about her and stared?
“Well, it isn’t a Sir Geofry Sandler, that is certain,” someone offered. “The subject appears to be alive.”
There was general laughter.
“Vita Corning,” someone else suggested.
“No, it was done by a man, clearly. You can see the artist was enamored of his subject.”
