by Gary Dolman
Most strikingly of all however, and painted directly onto the plaster above the bed-head, was a large and wonderfully detailed fresco of a fiery, red dragon. It had a long, exuberantly coiling tail and a head which, although fearsome and bestial, somehow possessed an expression of fragility and angst that was almost human. It was curled around as gaoler, or protector, or perhaps even captive of a beautiful, naked, copper-haired maiden.
Atticus had never seen the fresco before, but it disturbed him that the maiden seemed somehow familiar.
“What a very modern room, Sir Hugh!” exclaimed Lucie, interrupting his thoughts.
Lowther was silent for a moment. “Modern? It is hardly modern, Lucie. Would you believe that the decoration of this room was conceived and laid out well over twenty years ago? This was the room I shared with Lady Igraine, my first wife. She personally designed and commissioned everything here.”
He smiled and sudden pain haunted his eyes.
“Igraine was something of a ‘free spirit,’ shall we say, and she wanted the house and gardens to reflect that. That fresco over the bed there was painted by the madman, Michael Britton, before he went insane for the final time. My second wife Victoria restored the house and the gardens to the classical style – all except this room. I forbade her to change this room because it somehow represented the very essence of Igraine and I needed something to remember her by.
“After Victoria died, I moved into the farthest room of the north wing myself – right at the eastern corner. The room is by no means as grand as this one but it is handsome enough, and I am afforded a wonderful view of the moors and the loughs from my window.
“So this house is a mix of my two wives’ characters do you see, Lucie? My own single contribution is the sculpture of Die Schreiberinnen, or The Writing Women, at the foot of the stairs.”
“The three figures from Norse mythology?” asked Lucie.
“Bravo, my dear. I’m very impressed!” Sir Hugh clapped his hands together in delight. “Norse and Teutonic mythology actually, but yes, the very same. The Writing Women are also known as the ‘Norns’ or the ‘Sisters of the Wyrd,’ and they are to us and our Anglo-Saxon ancestors what the Fates were to the ancient Greeks. They have the task of writing all the deeds of our past, our present and our futures in mankind’s great Book of Destiny.”
He smiled grimly.
“Whither do they call us, Lucie Fox; whither do they call us.”
“I have to confess that I was a little unnerved by the statue of the crone pointing up the stairway,” Lucie admitted. “It seemed as if she was pointing right at me – just as if she were accusing me of something. Her eyes seem to be following me every time I look at her.” She turned and peered down the stairwell through the open door. “Look! Even now, she stares at me still.”
Sir Hugh was silent for a moment.
“The Norns see all… and yes, they are exceedingly well sculpted, almost as if they might be alive. I commissioned the piece from Mr John Taylor, a rising star in the world of art and it cost me a small fortune. It was worth every single farthing though and it suits me much better than the coats of armour it replaced. They weren’t even authentic, just a pair of reasonably good reproductions.
“But do not worry, Lucie, the Norn watching you now is Urth: ‘That Which Is.’ She is concerned only with the deeds of our past, unless of course there is something in your own past which might trouble her.”
His eyes lingered on Lucie for a moment, as St Peter’s own eyes might at a fresh-dead soul at the Gates of Paradise.
“But I think not.
“Verthandi, the figure that is depicted as embracing the entire household is the ‘Present,’ or ‘That Which Is Becoming.’ She examines our current deeds.
“My Lady Skuld or ‘That Which Should Become,’ the youngest and the most beautiful of the Norns and my own particular favourite, the one who writes and directs all of our futures faces, well she just faces out towards the moors actually. All our futures are like bleak moorland, do you see – a wilderness where there are no roads and no paths, where we all need direction lest we lose ourselves and perish.”
He closed his eyes and was silent for a moment.
“Quo Fata Vocant,” he murmured at last. “Whither the Fates call. It’s my old regiment’s motto. It’s also what attracted me to commission your own services. You use the same motto, do you not? You hear them too.”
Atticus nodded. “Yes, I suppose in a way we do. My two great passions in life are chess and reading. A writer called Arthur Conan Doyle has just had a story, The Sign of the Four, serialised in Lippincott’s Monthly, which I take for its scientific articles. Mr Doyle created a detective character called Sherlock Holmes whose methods I very much admire. Of course I understand that Holmes is merely a character of fiction, whereas we obviously are very much flesh and blood, but Holmes’s pen-and-ink companion Dr Watson supposedly served in your own regiment: the Northumberland Fusiliers. I knew of the motto from there and Mrs Fox and I decided to adopt it as our own. It seems somehow so appropriate to this profession.”
Sir Hugh smiled wearily. “Then bravo, the both of you; it’s a first-rate choice.” He pulled a handsome silver Hunter watch out of his waistcoat pocket and stared at it for a moment. “I’ll leave you to have your discussions now and see you at dinner. Bessie Armstrong, my housekeeper, will call on you shortly to see if there’s anything you might need to make your stay here more comfortable. We might not have the grand facilities of Harrogate here at Shields but we are, in our own way, just as hospitable.”
As if to cue, there was a sudden, loud knock on the door.
“Come in, Bessie,” boomed Sir Hugh.
Atticus and Lucie turned to see a broad, rather mannish looking woman in middle-age filling the doorway. She stepped obediently inside the threshold, bowed deeply and introduced herself as the housekeeper. Addressing Lucie, she asked if there was anything else they might require. Lucie replied politely that everything in the room appeared to be just-so and quite in perfect order.
“If there is anything you would like, anything at all, you have only to ring down.” The merest hint of a smile broke the cast of Miss Armstrong’s face and softened the gruffness of her voice just a degree.
The Foxes’ room was situated at the very front of the ancient tower, on the first floor. It had a large, mullioned window, which not only made the room very airy and light, but also afforded them a wonderful view of the long, straight avenue of yew trees which drew their eyes constantly to the hills and fells beyond it and the chameleon Northumbrian sky.
Atticus settled himself into the deep, leather cushion of the window-seat and gazed out at this panorama. Part of Skuld’s wilderness perhaps, he mused before he gathered together his thoughts and brought them back to the matter in hand.
“So, Lucie, we’ve had a very interesting first afternoon here, have we not? The case is quite as intriguing as I had hoped it would be, far more interesting than our usual fare.”
Lucie had freed her long, brunette hair from its ribbon and let it tumble down onto her shoulders. She began to methodically brush it out.
“Perhaps so, but the long-lost cousins and the straying wives pay the housekeeping, Atticus, never forget that. Nevertheless, it was a particularly brutal and bloody murder and if we should happen to find the murderer before the police do, it might just seal our reputation. It’ll be in all the newspapers, even the nationals.”
“Was it actually a murder though?” Atticus continued. “To approach the case in the proper manner, we need to ask if Elliott was killed in some other way, by accident or by suicide perhaps.”
“Oh, Atticus, that would be ridiculous. It has to be murder; Elliott wouldn’t have beheaded himself, would he?” She giggled suddenly in spite of herself.
“I suppose not,” Atticus agreed, a little irritably. “So I’ll inform Sir Hugh that that is our starting supposition.”
Lucie stopped brushing and pursed her lips. “I’m not
sure that would be such a terribly good idea.”
Atticus turned away from the window, the low rays of the sun accentuating the lines of puzzlement on his face. “But we’ve just agreed it, haven’t we?”
“We have, Atticus. It’s just I am not so sure that Sir Hugh would be too delighted if, after having spent most of his afternoon showing us around the trail of evidence, we then tell him we’ve discovered his Gypsy was murdered. I think he’s probably guessed that part already.
“I know, I know,” she continued as Atticus opened his mouth to protest. “I know it’s all proper method, but I still feel it would be much more prudent just to say that we have some early theories that require the further gathering of evidence.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Atticus conceded. He turned back to his window. “So, what are our early conjectures to be, other than it’s the work of Sir Hugh’s madman, of course?”
Lucie carefully inspected her hair in the looking glass.
“I would much prefer it if you wouldn’t use that term, Atty. ‘Madman’ is such an awfully derogatory word, as if he is some kind of drooling, murderous beast or something.”
Atticus shrugged. “It sounds as if he might be.”
“Even so, I would much prefer it if you would call him ‘lunatic’ or ‘insane.’ Most people who are mad look no different to you or to me or to Sir Hugh, himself.”
“Or to Jennifer,” Atticus added drily. “She must have been either mad or joking when she suggested that Elliott’s killer was the risen King Arthur.”
Lucie stopped brushing her hair once more and frowned.
“I’m not so sure it was a joke. She seemed deadly serious about it to me.”
She turned in her chair to face him.
“There was something else about Jennifer and Artie that seemed a little bit odd too. I just can’t quite put my finger on it.” She stared past Atticus and through the window as her mind flickered once more through their brief meeting.
“I know what it was! They were close – intimate even – far too close for a brother and sister, even a half-brother and sister. They seemed to me to be more like sweethearts.”
“Sweethearts!” Atticus gasped. “But surely that can’t be possible?”
“As you always take care to remind me, Atticus, anything is possible.”
“I suppose it is,” he admitted. “But sweethearts? We must speak with them tomorrow and see if you feel the same. I should like to re-examine the murder field again tomorrow too, but at very first light while the sun is still low over the horizon.”
He pulled his old Wehrly watch from his waistcoat and glanced at the face.
“For now Lucie, I suppose we ought to change for dinner. It wouldn’t do to keep our patron waiting.”
Chapter 10
“You are giving her to me? But how? She is another man’s wife?”
He feels the panic and the dread he has been holding back these past long hours suddenly break free.
“But you promised to give my love, my own Lady, back to me.”
“BE SILENT!” The voice seems to hiss from the shadowy, black walls of the vault itself. “We know very well what we promised you.”
He falls to his knees in despair and deep obeisance, and presses his face against the cold rock of the floor.
“My Lady Urth, I am truly sorry; I was thoughtless. I meant no disrespect.”
The voice crackles with scorn and derision. “Sorry, sorry, sorry. Always you beg and always you are sorry. You are a craven abomination to man, do you know that?”
“Yes, my Lady.”
“That is why your wife ran to the arms, and to the bed, of another.”
His eyes creep along the floor of the vault to gaze up at the motionless figure of Lancelot, the plate of his armour picked out of the shadows by the flickering light of the lantern. He knows it is the truth.
“Let me tell him, Sister – let me be merciful.” His heart leaps. It is Skuld.
“Be careful, Skuld.” Verthandi’s strident tones swell and roll around the vault. “Don’t be too soft with him. The mortal already yearns to have you.”
He cringes and the voices of the three Sisters of the Wyrd, even Skuld’s, dissolve into peels of mocking laughter.
And then Skuld, who reminds him so much of his true love, of his Lady as she was before the bad times, before he put her to eternal slumber in this very vault, speaks to him.
“Your lady will wake. Once your tasks are complete and the blood-gift is sealed, by our power she will be awoken and by our power her spirit will take the body of the other woman yet living.”
He opens his eyes. The ripples and fissures of the whinstone floor dance orange in the lantern-light.
“She must take the place of the other woman?” he asks, puzzled now.
“She must,” Skuld replies. “The natural balance of order must be maintained. If her spirit is to take its place once more in this world, then another must be removed. We have decided that she will assume the body of the woman Lucie Fox.”
He feels the cold seeping into his skin from the black stone beneath it and he sobs. He understands now and he sobs in gratitude for their great mercy.
Chapter 11
Although she kept scolding herself that she was being silly, that she was a grown woman after all, Lucie Fox felt an inexplicable but overwhelming sense of unease as she sat in the grand dining room of Shields Tower. The reason for her discomfort lay in a row of three large and very life-like portraits, which were hanging on the wall directly opposite her place at the table. They were all of men, all in full military uniform and all bore varying degrees of likeness to Sir Hugh Lowther.
Mounted horizontally on the wall beneath each portrait was an obviously well-used regimental sword.
“Those portraits, Atticus; they seem to stare at one so,” she finally whispered after Sir Hugh, purple-faced with fury, had barked his apologies and stormed out to personally fetch Artie, Jennifer and Sir Douglas Lowther, his father. All three had unaccountably failed to respond to the butler’s dinner gong.
Atticus stood and turned to examine the paintings.
“First the statue of the Norns staring at you up the stairway, and now the three portraits there watching you too; I do declare, Lucie, you’ll be quite as insane as Uther Pendragon by the time we’ve finished this investigation.”
“Atty!” hissed Lucie as the door almost exploded from its frame and Sir Hugh, still ruddy-faced and blown-up as a bullfrog, re-entered the room. He was followed by Jennifer and Artie.
“I apologise for our lateness, Mr and Mrs Fox,” Artie explained sheepishly. “But Jenny was feeling a little… a little unwell. She was sleeping and I didn’t like to wake her.”
“Didn’t like to wake her, didn’t like to wake her, by gad! There’s nothing amiss with my daughter that a plate of good, hearty, Northumbrian fare won’t mend.”
Sir Hugh glared at him as he took his place once more at the head of the table.
“She is a Lowther after all!
“My father is nowhere to be found though,” he added after a moment. “Collier tells me he went up to the loughs for the day. He seems to spend all his time loitering around Broomlee these days. Probably fallen asleep in his chair. Collier’s sent angel-faced James, the fart-catcher, to seek him.”
“My wife and I were just admiring the portraits, Sir Hugh,” remarked Atticus, changing the conversation. “I presume by the likenesses that they are forebears of yours?”
A broad grin swept away the scowl on Sir Hugh’s face.
“Two of them are, Fox, yes; my father and my grandfather.” He stabbed towards each of them in turn with the handle of his soup spoon. “The third one is actually me… in my younger days. We’re all in the uniform of the ‘Old and the Bold’ of course, and those are our regimental swords under.”
“They are noble blades, Sir Hugh. May I?”
Lowther nodded affably. “Please do.”
Atticus gently lifted t
he farthest sword, that of Sir Hugh himself, from its mount. Even with his untrained eye, he could see that it was a very handsome weapon with a long, slim, razor-sharp blade and finely-wrought hand guard. It had also plainly been forged for war. Atticus curled his fingers round the grip and made a gentle, experimental lunge into fresh air.
“Do be careful, Atticus,” warned Lucie.
Sir Hugh hammered his spoon on the table in glee.
“Bravo! You have the makings of a fine swordsman, Fox. If ever you give thought to enlisting, be sure to come to the Fusiliers first. I won the British Army fencing championship with that sword. In fact, I won it thrice, which is to say I was the finest blade in the country, as was my father before me.”
“Now, Papa, don’t be boastful!” Jennifer admonished him, giggling.
“By God but it’s true nevertheless, Jenny.” Sir Hugh was chuckling now; Jennifer’s laugh was infectious.
“It’s all about speed do you see, Fox; speed of the eye, speed of the arm, and most importantly of all, speed of the brain. I have the reactions of a viper.”
He became suddenly serious.
“And you need a first-rate sword too, of course. My father swore by the Shotley Bridge blades, made just over the hill from here, Durham way.” He glared. “But not me; I had one as a boy and I found it to be shoddy. I use Sheffield steel.”
“Is your son intending to follow you into the Fusiliers, Sir Hugh?” Atticus asked.
A sudden and oppressive silence settled over the room and Sir Hugh and Artie exchanged sharp, resentful glances.
“There is nothing in this world I would love more,” Artie said.
The ticking of a great brass wall clock steadily ratcheted up the tension until it became almost unbearable.
“But I have forbidden it, Fox,” Sir Hugh growled at last. “I have set him to work in the commercial businesses instead. Commerce suits his… character and constitution much better than ever a life in the army would.”
