by Gary Dolman
Runes!
There was a rune that was formed as a cross – a crux decussata. It was the rune – Atticus frantically searched his memory – it was the rune giefu, the runic character for the modern letter ‘G’ and the symbol for gift. Giefu was the seventh rune and the reason the number seven was considered to be lucky by the ancients.
Dear Lord, could that be it? The seven relics were for seven deaths; perhaps they could also be for seven gifts. But gifts from, and to, whom? And why had the hearts been removed from all of them – all of them barring Bessie Armstrong that was?
A sudden dark shadow falls across Lucie Fox as she lies in her bed and a phantom with piercing blue eyes stands, silent and perfectly still and watches her as she sleeps.
“Do you see her beauty?” whispers Skuld careful not to wake her.
He nods. “Yes.”
“And do you remember our promise to you?”
He nods once more, suddenly breathless.
“There remains only Atticus Fox to offer to us as wergild, and then we will cause Igraine’s spirit to fill her and be yours once again.”
“Thank you.” His voice is husky, barely louder than the thumping of his heart.
“Look at her,” Verthandi commands him.
Obedient to her call, he reaches down to the bedcovers. His hands tremble and his breath begins to catch in his chest. She is quite beautiful.
“LOOK AT HER! You want to, don’t you?”
Yes, he does want to so very much. Gently he lifts the bedcovers and lifts them back. Fingers of moonlight from the annulets cut into the window shutters lie across Lucie’s – no not Lucie’s – Igraine’s cotton nightdress, pure, white and virginal. They lie across her breasts, her slender shoulders, her—
“Touch her now!” Verthandi’s voice is urgent and insistent.
He nods.
His fingertips trickle across her cheek and the sculpted line of her jaw. Her skin is warm and so very soft, so feminine. She gently nuzzles her cheek into the pillow and unwinds her slender neck to his ravenous gaze.
Without waiting for Verthandi to prompt him, Sir Hugh Lowther slips his fingers behind the nape of her neck and gently traces the line of her throat with his thumb. At his touch, her breathing begins to quicken and deepen, and he watches transfixed as her breasts rise and fall in the moonlight against the thin cotton bodice of her nightdress.
“Do you see how she already responds to your touch?” Skuld murmurs, her own voice husky.
Sir Hugh cannot answer her. He stoops and gently touches his lips against hers. They are so soft, so warm, so very much like Igraine’s.
Lucie gently sighs in her sleep and he feels her lips firm and tighten, the soft tip of her tongue probing him.
“NOT NOW, LOWTHER!” Urth’s sharp rebuke shatters the tension and he starts. “She is not yet Igraine. She is still Lucie Fox and you must wait until the madman is shamed and you have slain her husband. But remember the feel of her tit. It is a sign of our promise to you.”
When Lucie Fox stirred from her sleep early the following morning, she shivered. For some reason her blankets and counterpane had fallen off her bed in the night and for some reason she had awoken feeling disturbed and discomforted, just as if she had escaped from a nightmare she could no longer recall.
On the floor below her, Atticus by contrast, was feeling more relaxed than he had in days, calm and strangely energised by his new thought and purpose. True, he was utterly exhausted and true, he could still not quite fit the piece of jigsaw that was the murder of Bessie Armstrong into the puzzle, nor fully comprehend why the hearts of the victims might have been torn out, but at least he had now, if not a theory, then at least the workable basis for one. Unfortunately, that theory also pointed to the fact that the cycle of murders was not yet complete and the knowledge of that remained to greatly trouble his mind.
As he poured the last of the now tepid chalybeate water into his glass, he thought again of his principal suspect, the one who was most likely to hang, with a deep mix of emotions. He was angry of course; angry that the lives of five people had been cut brutally short; angry that the lives of two more were in mortal peril and furious at how that of an eighth was about to be destroyed. But he also felt a great sadness for the agony of the tortured soul who could see no other option in the destiny of his life but that of murder and revenge.
Chapter 32
“Isn’t a red sky in the morning supposed to be some kind of warning?” Lucie remarked as they rounded the corner of Shields Tower to a dramatic sunrise. She linked her arm into her husband’s and frowned. It felt strangely odd, as if she had been somehow disloyal. She shook off the feeling and added, “If it is, then that is the great-grandfather of all warnings.
“So, Atticus, have you finally determined the identity of our murderer and, by and by, did you win your chess game?”
Atticus shook his head. “The game was a stalemate,” he said, “which is good. It means that my mind is perfectly objective. As for the murderer’s identity, I find myself again in something of a stalemate, and that is not so good. I have a reasonable suspicion but I would put it no higher than that.
“Lucie, you discovered three sets of fingertip prints on the sword we can call Excalibur. At least two more people are in great danger for their lives so it is vital that we identify the owners of those prints as quickly as we can. I do hope that James, the footman, has returned from Hayden Bridge. He served in the British Army with the Northumberland Fusiliers and I need to find out a little more about bugle calls.”
The whitewashed walls of Uther’s cottage seemed to glow crimson as they reflected the dying embers of the early morning sky. But just as before, they knew instantly that it remained eerily deserted.
Atticus knocked gently on the peeling paint of the door above the great, red emblem of the dragon.
“Uther,” he called. “Uther Pendragon, it is only us; Atticus and Lucie Fox.”
There was no sound. Lucie touched his arm and pointed to a small parcel lying on the hard, trodden ground by the side of the door. It was wrapped in brown paper that had been shredded and torn. Atticus stooped and picked it up.
“Bread and cheese,” he noted, pulling aside the wrapping. “Although the birds or the rats have been at it. We must have overlooked it last night.”
He knocked again, more briskly this time and then lifted the latch and pushed open the door.
Atticus and Lucie stepped inside the threshold. If anything, the short time since their previous visit had served to palpably increase the sense of desolation and abandonment within.
“This will do excellently well, Atticus,” Lucie said, picking up Uther’s glass tumbler with its dusting of orange sediment. “There is quite a full set of prints here.”
Atticus laid the ragged food parcel onto the table then moved aside a pile of mould-spattered sketches to allow space for his wife to work. Lucie took her ostrich-feather brush from the enamelled tube in which it was kept and twisted the cork lid from a jar of dusting powder. As she settled to begin her work, Atticus took the opportunity to examine Uther Pendragon’s cottage again in more detail.
“Lucie, it still bothers me that Sir Hugh continues to allow Uther to stay here in this cottage,” he said as he gazed around the squalor.
“He has the debt of honour,” she replied without looking up from her tumbler. “And I suppose that underneath all of his bluster, he must believe a man innocent in law until he is proven guilty,” Atticus grunted. “Possibly. It still seems very strange though. The man is convinced he is a five-time murderer yet he keeps him here, a stone’s throw from his own son and daughter and the rest of his household. In fact, he lets his son and daughter visit him, and he even required his housekeeper to deliver a food parcel to him twice each week.”
He nodded to the ragged remains of the parcel on the table.
“It seems so wrong. Surely Britton should be taken into the lunatic asylum at Morpeth or wherever it was.”
“It was Morpeth or Gosforth. But don’t forget he made a promise to his father, Atticus. Sir Hugh may be many things, but word and honour are everything to him.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Atticus conceded.
Lucie held up a small glass plate onto which she had stuck a number of strips of dark blue paper. There were three other identical glass plates already laid neatly side-by-side on the table.
“Here you are, Atticus,” she said grimly, “Michael Britton’s prints do match with one of the sets we took from the sword hilt. It is the set of fingerprints which show the extensive scarring.”
She shrugged.
Atticus considered for a moment, gazing at the incriminating prints through the thin glass.
“That will certainly be enough for the detective superintendent, and probably for a judge of assizes too given the force of the other evidence.”
Lucie shrugged again. “The evidence is damning, but as you said yourself, it’s not entirely conclusive given that we have two other sets of prints from the sword too. It may still be that he is innocent. We need to find the owners of those other two sets and quickly. Northumberland is a large county. Where do you propose we begin?”
“Well,” Atticus replied, “Northumberland is a vast county but all of this appears to be centred on Shields Tower and the home farm, so I suggest we begin there. But before we do, I’m going to take a look at Britton’s draw pump outside. This orange water still intrigues me greatly and I wish to look at a sample.”
There was no rear entrance to Michael Britton’s cottage so Atticus followed an obviously well-trodden path around the outside of the walls to the windowless rear. For a man obsessed by the moors and crags of Sewingshields, Atticus mused, the pump temporarily forgotten, there could be no better place to live. In front of him the ground rose steadily up, punctuated here and there by long, shallow crags and by the bright yellow mounds of scattered gorse thickets to finally break open on the rocks of the high Whin Sill. The panorama was as beautiful as it was dramatic.
Atticus’s attention returned to Britton’s cottage. There were rocks here too. In fact, the cottage had been built in the lee of one of the wide, low outcrops of rock that were repeated up the hillside beyond. The draw pump was nestled right against this outcrop. It was encased in a tall, wooden housing with an iron handle on one side and a lead spout on the other gaping over a mossy, stone trough.
Atticus lifted and then heaved down on the handle. The pump primed immediately and gently spilled its load of water from the spout. He scooped the tumbler under the flow and held it up to the light. There was a faint but unmistakeable orange hue to the water. Stepping up astride the slippery sides of the trough, he shuffled off the wooden lid of the pump housing and peered down inside.
It was still early and the low angle of the sun could illuminate only the top few inches of the bare, ochre-stained wood. Beyond that, only the wet lead of the pump mechanism glistened back at him from the shadows. But it was enough. Atticus grunted in grim satisfaction before setting the lid back into place.
Chapter 33
By the time they returned to Shields Tower, the household was only just beginning to come to life. Sir Hugh had set off early to go to Newcastle on some regimental business or other so their only company that morning in the breakfast room was that of Master Arthur and Miss Jennifer. They were bursting to know more first-hand of the Foxes’ grisly discovery in the hayloft.
“I heard that Albert Bradley’s body was almost cleaved in two, Mr Fox,” Arthur recounted breathlessly. “And that the steps of the loft were literally running with blood. Is it true it was Excalibur itself?”
Atticus seemed engrossed by the texture of his porridge so Lucie replied, “It was not quite such a gory or dramatic scene as you describe, Arthur, although yes, the body of Mr Bradley had been impaled on a very large, two-handed sword. As for it being Excalibur – the real Excalibur – well, we can’t be so sure about that.” She smiled indulgently at him. “It was an excellent copy perhaps.
“Now, I recall from our recent conversations that you are both sure that King Arthur and Lady Guinevere have risen from their grave?”
They both nodded and Jennifer said, “They are risen, Mrs Fox, but from an enchanted sleep, not from a grave.”
Lucie acknowledged the correction with another gracious smile.
“You also agreed that Mr Fox might be taken blindfolded to this vault where you discovered them.”
Artie glanced at his half-sister and shifted nervously in his seat.
“We have discussed it again since and Jenny agrees that we may show you the vault, but only on the strict condition that you both come, that you are both blindfolded and that you both swear that you will not breathe a word of it to a single, living soul.”
Atticus and Lucie both frowned. Neither said anything.
Artie saw their expressions. “We have to be certain that the location of the vault remains a secret.”
“Of course you do, and thank you.” Atticus looked up from his porridge. “Mrs Fox and I will discuss your kind offer after breakfast. For now, we have examined the sword we found in the groom’s body, be it Excalibur or not, and discovered three sets of fingertip prints on the hilt. I must explain that the patterns on one’s fingertips, what we in the profession of criminal investigation call their ‘minutiae,’ are unique to each person. If we find the owners of the fingertip prints, we almost certainly find the murderer or murderers.
“Conversely, we can also eliminate innocent persons from our investigation in the same way. Therefore it is, you will surely understand, almost as important to discover who does not own the fingertip prints as it is to discover who does. Now, Master Arthur, Miss Jennifer, would you consent before church to be the first to be eliminated by having your fingertip prints taken?”
“Does it hurt?” Jennifer asked.
Lucie chuckled. “Not in the slightest; all we do is simply spread printers’ ink across a glass plate and then gently press each of your fingertips in turn onto it. Then, we press them onto some moist, clean paper and thus produce an exact likeness of your minutiae. It will be a print utterly unique in all of God’s creation.”
“In that case we would absolutely love to be the first; how very exciting.”
Jennifer leaned across and kissed Arthur on his cheek. “I can hardly wait. The vicar won’t like it, though, if we go to church with inky fingers and leave smudges all over his hymnbooks.”
Lucie laughed. “No he wouldn’t; we will have to have some hot water and soap fetched.”
“I shall arrange that myself,” Jennifer said. “Bessie, or Miss Elizabeth as I am supposed to call her now that she is the housekeeper and no longer our governess, visited her lady-friend last night and she hasn’t returned yet.”
She giggled suddenly and Artie smiled.
Atticus glanced at Lucie who shook her head fractionally. It was not their place to break such dreadful news to them and they still urgently needed their fingerprints.
Immediately after breakfast had been cleared, Lucie set up her glass plate on a card table in the orangery and smeared a film of black printing ink evenly across the surface. Another table held an enamel basin full of steaming hot water and a square of hand soap.
Jennifer insisted on being the first of the pair to have her prints lifted.
“May I have a copy of my own and Artie’s fingertip prints as a keepsake?” she asked as Lucie gently took her hand and extended her slim forefinger towards the plate.
“Of course,” smiled Lucie.
“May I have them on the same sheet of paper?” Jennifer continued, a little more nervously.
Lucie noticed a slight blush appear on her cheeks.
“I do not see why not.”
Several minutes later, Atticus and Lucie had an excellent likeness of each of the Lowther siblings’ fingerprints and, as promised, had made a second, identical impression for them to keep as a souvenir. Artie and Jennifer huddled togethe
r on a settee, poring excitedly over the paper and compared it with their own, freshly scrubbed fingertips.
“I shall have it mounted and framed and put next to my bed,” Jenny announced. “Oh, Papa, look here, we have had our fingertip prints lifted. Isn’t it fascinating?”
Sir Hugh had returned from Newcastle and chosen that moment to enter the room. He glared furiously at the proffered square of paper, snatched it from her fingers, tore it venomously into a hundred pieces and hurled them savagely against the glass of the orangery walls.
Jennifer looked at him, her expression stricken and then picked up her skirts and ran from the room as the fragments of paper began to fall softly onto the tiled floor.
“Jenny,” Artie called and rushed after her.
Sir Hugh turned his full fury onto Atticus Fox.
“How dare you?” he bellowed. “How dare you abuse my hospitality and my hand of friendship in this manner?”
“Sir Hugh, we must—” began Atticus.
“I am your employer. I pay your fees. I commissioned you in the first place, by God. Yet you take the fingerprints of my own family, under my own roof as if they were some common criminals.”
He pointed a trembling finger towards the scattered pieces of paper that littered the floor.
“That is what I think of your evidence, Fox. You will leave this house forthwith. You are dismissed.”
“Not the woman, you fool!” Verthandi reminded him.
“Very well. Lucie will stay. Submit your own account, sir. There is a money order office at the railway station and I will settle it directly. Then, by my oath, I will see to it that you never work in Northumberland again.”
“Very good, Sir Hugh,” Atticus replied with a dignity he did not feel. “So be it. We will pack our belongings and we will leave your house as you wish. Quo Fata Vocant.”
“And don’t you dare take that motto in vain, Fox. Strike it from your calling cards immediately. I’ll have you horsewhipped, damn you! But Lucie stays here with me. I need… I need this murderer caught.”
