“Nothing at all,” Agnes said proudly. “Her clothes are still in the wardrobe, just as she left them. We replaced the charcoal she used against moths with camphor balls. Oh, and we put up new curtains, to match the rest of the front windows, and Jimmy did some repair work on the wainscoting in the study, but otherwise everything is just as it was. Mr Pierce was most insistent that it was for you to decide what to do with those rooms.”
“Well, I had better look at the bedroom first, I suppose,” Felicia said, although her stomach felt like lead at the prospect. She had rather hoped that the bedroom, at least, had been cleared out and refurbished, like her own room, but there was no point in postponing the inevitable.
Miss Armiger’s bedroom was shockingly familiar. Nothing had been changed from those last dreadful days except that the body had been removed and the bed stripped. The folded blankets still sat at the foot of the bed, the press still held the neatly folded chemises, stays and petticoats, and a modest number of gowns.
“They are sadly out of date,” Felicia said, pulling out a gown with full skirts and stomacher. “I suppose they are only good for burning.”
“The materials are of excellent quality,” Agnes said. “If you were to allow Mr Vickery to distribute them to the paupers in the village, they could still be of some use.”
“Very well. Let it be so, but for Heaven’s sake burn the mattress, and perhaps with some fresh paint the room could be put to use again.”
Agnes laughed and agreed to it. Then they went down to the front parlour. This room was, if not exactly cosy, at least less sparsely furnished. There was a tall bookcase, quite full, and two more shelves of books. In a corner was a stack of copies of the Gazette, the London newspaper that Miss Armiger had read with religious fervour. The only time Felicia could remember her losing her temper was when the carter had failed to bring an expected issue, and no amount of pleading about flooding on the London road had appeased her.
In front of the window was a small desk, with nothing on it but a pen stand. She already knew that the drawers contained neat sheets of household accounts, translations of works in Greek or Latin, and plans for Felicia’s education, but nothing else. Not a single letter, nor a journal. She had already gone through everything in her search for something — anything! — related to her own origins, but without avail.
“I shall bring you my account book, Miss Oakes,” Agnes said. “I’ve noted every expense since we moved in, and Mr Pierce has approved it all, so I’m sure you will find everything in order.”
Felicia smiled at her. “Agnes, you must stop treating me as the mistress of the house. At Summer Cottage, we worked together and ate together, did we not? We were all friends.”
Agnes’s face softened. “True, but even so, you were always above us. We were merely servants, but you were more than that, as the governess. Here, you’re the mistress and we must respect that.”
“I am somebody’s illegitimate daughter,” Felicia said softly.
“Makes no difference,” Agnes said stoutly. “You own this place, and have money of your own besides. We’re very grateful to you for allowing us to stay here free of rent while you were up north, and we’ll be happy to stay on, either as your servants or as your lodgers, whatever suits you, but you will always be the mistress here.”
“What do you wish to be — servants or lodgers?”
“That’s up to you,” Agnes said, a flicker of uncertainty crossing her face.
Felicia considered that. “It is awkward,” she said, frowning. “I would feel uncomfortable treating you like servants, and yet — you ought to have an income. I should pay you for the work you do. That is only right.”
Agnes’s face cleared. “We’d be happier with a small salary, too. That way, we can save a bit, and if ever your circumstances change or you sell up here, you’d be able to give us all good references.”
“So I would! Let it be so, then. I had better look at your accounts so I can talk knowledgeably to Mr Pierce and Mr Vickery tomorrow.”
While Agnes went off to fetch her account book, Felicia went through the drawers looking for Miss Armiger’s accounts for comparison. In one drawer, she found a leather-bound notebook, rather battered, that she had not seen before. Inside, the pages were covered with Miss Armiger’s cramped handwriting, all in Ancient Greek.
“Agnes, where did this come from?” she said, when the housekeeper returned with her account book.
“Jimmy found that behind the wainscoting when he was fixing it. There was quite a big gap, and the book must have fallen over the back of the desk sometime and got stuck there. It’s all that foreign writing, so I put it in the drawer with all the other foreign stuff.”
“Hmm. But the others have a page of Greek and then a translation. This is all in Greek. I wonder what it means?”
“It can’t be important, or she’d have noticed it was missing,” Agnes said.
“Perhaps she hid it there deliberately!” Felicia said, excitement bursting over her. “Perhaps it is a journal! It might even tell me who I am!”
“Maybe it will, at that,” Agnes said, but there was a sadness in her voice.
“You think I should not care,” Felicia said slowly. “That I may never find out the truth of my origins.”
“There’s plenty never do,” Agnes said. “The Vickerys had a foundling left on their doorstep, years and years ago. Never found out who left him there, but he’s a fine young man now, making his way in the world. Apprenticed to a clockmaker in Portsmouth. Sometimes you just have to get on with life, and accept that there are some things only God knows.”
“There are things only God knows, that is perfectly true, but my ancestry is not one of them,” Felicia said firmly. “There are — or were — at least three people in the world who know who I am, namely my mother, my father and Miss Armiger. Miss Armiger is dead, but the other two may still be alive, and any one of them may have told others of me, or written something down. For I was not left on a parson’s doorstep as a foundling, Agnes. Someone took great care to ensure I was raised safely and taught properly, or else why entrust me to someone like Miss Armiger?”
“That’s a question I’ve asked myself many a time since we came here,” Agnes said. “Why choose someone so miserly and reclusive as that? You make light of it, but it must have been a miserable childhood. You’d have been better off on the parson’s doorstep, if you ask me. But fretting over it is no use, it eats away at your insides, something like that, so if that book really is a journal, or something about you, maybe it’ll set your mind at rest.”
“Yes!” Felicia said eagerly. “I just want to know! I shall fetch my old Greek primer and see if I can make anything of it. Just think, Agnes — perhaps at last I will know the truth!”
Agnes smiled sadly.
22: Mysteries
Fin grew increasingly impatient to receive a reply from Felicia to his letter. Each time Bagnall brought a fresh batch of letters and hers was not amongst them, he fretted a little more. He went every day to see Arnwell, rain or shine, but he had heard nothing further, either. And what was Giles up to? If he should be making up to Felicia—!
He was too distracted to paint, but there were one or two projects to occupy his hands, if not his mind. Juliana’s paintings had arrived from Southampton, and he had placed them all in an unused bedroom, together with the three from his sitting room, so that he could properly catalogue them and decide how best to display them. He tried to suppress the slight feeling of disappointment as he looked through them initially. The originality and promise he had seen so clearly in her earlier work was muted in the later efforts. The subjects were trite — flowers or garden views, and a multitude of likenesses of her daughters — and the execution, while competent, showed no improvement over time. If anything, the later works were more sketchy, less satisfying, but perhaps her final illness was bearing down on her by then. He began a proper listing, but it was tedious work.
The removal of three paintings from his sitting
room left an expanse of wall to be filled, and he knew at once what to place there. The larger space would be perfect for his twin paintings of the temple in tempest and calm, and Felicia’s painting of the ballroom would fit neatly into the smaller space. The estate carpenter was engaged to construct the frames, and that was a pleasant way to pass an hour or two, gazing at the paintings and deciding on the most suitable shape and quantity of ornamentation.
For the ballroom scene, he had settled on an illusion of a pillared surround with an arched top. It would hide a small amount of the top corners, but it gave a magical sense of observing the ball from the outside. Such a glorious scene, and not just because he himself was in it. The movement and life she had captured always made him smile, and there was Arnwell, looking like any other genial old man. He should be invited to dinner, Fin decided, so that he could see how Felicia saw him. On the spot, he scratched a hasty note. ‘Come for dinner on Sunday. I have something to show you. Finlassan.’
His other project was less satisfactory. He had made several attempts to unravel the meaning behind the coded letter he had received, but to no avail. Sometimes the key to such a code was a passage from a book held by both parties, but more usually it depended upon a simple transposition of letters. Then he remembered that his father had possessed some kind of wheel as an aid to decoding letters from his cronies. Fin spent a frustrating day in the attics until he thought to ask Bagnall.
“His lordship kept his translating device in his desk in the library, my lord.”
“I went through every drawer and shelf there not long ago, when I was looking for the wretched seal,” Fin said. “It was not there.”
“It is in the hidden drawer, my lord.”
“The devil it is! Show me, man.”
He strode off to the library, leaving Bagnall to follow at a pace commensurate with the dignity of a butler in the household of an earl. When Bagnall arrived, he reached behind the desk, something clicked, a small door shot open and there was the wheel.
“Why did my father show you how to open his secret drawer?” Fin said suspiciously.
“Oh, he did not, my lord, but housemaids who dust thoroughly discover such things and Mrs Shayne quite properly reported it to me. I have several times observed his late lordship using the device, so I understood its purpose. I do not know how the device works, however, my lord.”
“Father told me how to use it, many years ago, but I never had his need for conveying government information secretly, nor brothers with whom I might have wished to communicate privately, so I never bothered with it.”
Bagnall said nothing, but clearly he wondered why Fin had developed a sudden urge to find the wheel. His expression was such a comical mixture of rabid curiosity and professional dignity that Fin almost laughed. He was not about to explain himself to a butler, however.
Fin carried off the coding wheel in triumph to his sitting room and settled down to a sustained attempt to interpret the letter. Almost at once his head jerked up again. Giles! There had been a previous letter in code, but Giles had whisked it away. What had he said? Something to the effect that it was written very ill, or was a mistake. Then he had pushed it hastily into a pocket. He had been so flustered by it, so he must have known—
There was more to it, he realised. Until recently, Fin had never read his own letters, in fact he had not even seen them. They had been left to accumulate and every few weeks or months, Giles had gone through them. The coded letter was for Giles! Fin had never been meant to see it.
But who was it from? What did it mean? Was Giles, too, involved in secret government work? It seemed highly implausible that a reclusive country clergyman should be passing coded information about, and yet, here the letter was, and it was clearly not intended for Fin.
There was only one way to resolve the mystery and that was to read the message hidden in the letter.
~~~~~
Felicia’s excitement at finding Miss Armiger’s lost notebook evaporated very quickly. An hour of wrestling with her Greek primer extracted the words on the first page of the book: ‘The History of Miss Margaret Pickering, being an account true in every particular of her humble birth, her education, her rise to a distinguished and responsible position, and her present circumstances, including many adventures and trials of her fortitude.’
That was puzzling. Her first thought was that it must be a novel, and she was disgusted that Miss Armiger had wasted her time on such a pointless exercise, and yet never bothered to write a single word about Felicia’s origins, or how she had come to have charge of her. She had always been adamant that she was not Felicia’s mother, and that seemed true enough. They were so unlike, and surely she could not be so unfeeling towards her own flesh and blood? Impossible! But then she remembered Lord Arnwell’s suspicion that Fidelia Armiger was a false name — faithful esquire in Latin. Perhaps Margaret Pickering was her real name? Or the name of a good friend, perhaps, and there might still be something to be learnt from it. So she soldiered on with her Greek translation, but it was slow, difficult work.
She took to taking long walks. Sometimes she walked towards Delstone and its tiny shop selling a great profusion of goods. Often she met people she knew from church, who greeted her as a friend and invited her in for tea. Once she met Mrs Wellings and one of her daughters, and was invited back to the farm for buttermilk and plum cake. The following day, Mrs Wellings and two different daughters called at Boscobel Cottage. Felicia had friends!
Most of the time she walked far away from any houses, through the woods or onto the common beyond, and tried unsuccessfully not to think about Fin. She thought about Juliana and Margarita, too, and hoped they were getting on well with their new governesses, and that Fin was remembering to give them art lessons. She thought about the marquess, and hoped he was not sinking back into bitterness and loneliness. She even thought about Hercules, and wondered whether she should get a dog for herself.
Still, no matter how hard she tried not to, her thoughts were drawn mostly to Fin, and the letter he had written her. She had made a little case, painfully stitched over several days, to hold the several notes from him. The sorrowful ‘Forgive me. Fabian.’ The more formal ‘I should very much like to talk to you, if not inconvenient. Fabian.’ The pleading tone of ‘Please come out.’
And now, ‘Dear Miss Oakes, I am to hold a ball in September. Please say you will come. Finlassan.’ More formal, since he had gone back to calling himself Finlassan. But a ball? Fin holding a ball? What on earth had got into him?
Always, when she thought about it, she wondered if she could bear it. To travel all that way, to see him again, perhaps even to dance with him… and then leave again as though nothing had happened. It was too much to expect of her, when she could hardly bear to be without him as it was.
So she walked, striding fiercely through the summer-green woods, head down, tears splashing unheeded down her face. There was a small pool buried deep within the woods that she remembered from her wood-gathering expeditions with Miss Armiger. Here she would sit and rest, weeping and rocking gently, aching to see Fin again and yet knowing that she must not. Each day she told herself that she was a little closer to peace of mind. She would never forget him, perhaps, but one day, sooner or later, she would be able to think of him with composure. And then she wept even harder.
It was on her return from one such walk that she first saw one of the Watchers, as she called them. She thought nothing of it, not then, for he was just a boy of perhaps sixteen or so, wearing the sort of rough clothes any of the farm labourers might wear. She heard a twig snap behind her, turned suddenly and there he was, not a hundred yards away. He froze and then, like a startled deer, ran off. The next day, she caught a glimpse of an older man, perhaps the boy’s father. After that, she looked out for them and spotted one or other of them almost every time she left the house. They were not local, for the parish was very small and she would have noticed them at church. If they had been carrying tools or bags, or had contin
ued on their way like honest folk, she would have thought nothing of it, but they did not. Instead, when observed they ran away or melted into the woods. They seemed harmless, but how could she be sure?
One day, she decided to find out if they were truly following her or whether they were simply walking through the woods for reasons of their own. There was a path that curved around some dense bushes. Having discovered that the boy was following her, when she turned the corner, she stepped off the path and hid behind the bushes. In a very short time, the boy came round the corner and stopped with an exclamation, surprised by her disappearance.
Felicia scrambled out of her hiding place. “Looking for me?”
The boy jumped, then licked his lips. He swayed a little, as if poised for flight, but he did not run. Instead he held his hands up appeasingly. “We mean you no harm!”
“Who are you? What do you want?”
“We are friends, I assure you.” His voice was cultured, educated. She saw now that his clothes, although plain, were of good quality, and the linen at his throat, even though it was carelessly knotted like a workman’s, was freshly laundered. He was older than she had thought at first, perhaps twenty or so.
“Who are you? Why are you following me?” She took a step towards him and he turned and ran. Instantly, she gave chase, and at first she lost little ground to him, for he kept to the path. But then he plunged aside through a thicket of brambles, and she was not so incensed that she wanted to tear her skirts to shreds. “I will find out who you are!” she called after him.
But he was gone, and her threat was an idle one.
At dinner that night, she said, “Has anyone else seen two strangers wandering about, a young man of twenty or so and a man in his middle years?”
“Wandering about how?” Agnes said, eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“In the woods. I have seen them several times now, sometimes the younger man and sometimes the older.”
“That will be the natura— um, nature… butterfly people,” Jimmy Temple said. “They’re staying over at the Nag’s Head on the Fordingbridge road.”
The Painter Page 23
