A Grave Matter

by Anna Lee Huber

  Gage turned to the maid. “And what of you Miss . . .”

  She glanced at her employer before replying. “Peggy, sir.”

  “Peggy,” Gage replied, offering her a smile as well.

  A slow flush began to burn from the neckline of her brown serge gown up into her cheeks.

  “Surely you must have been up and down, tending to Miss Musgrave so admirably, missing out on the Hogmanay festivities yourself.”

  Miss Musgrave frowned, not seeming to like his supposition.

  “Did you by chance hear or see anything unusual when passing a window?” Gage persisted.

  The maid stood silent, as if considering her words, and I thought for a moment she might be about to share something. But then she replied simply, “No, sir.”

  I withheld a sigh. There was certainly something Miss Musgrave and Peggy were not telling us, but now was not the time to press. Not with Mr. Musgrave present, in any case.

  So we excused ourselves, gathered our outer garments, gloves, and hats, and made our way back out to the carriage. However, the maid had one more surprise for us.

  I turned to say something to Gage when I heard a hiss from the corner of the building. Peggy darted her head around the corner and gestured to me before ducking back behind the wall, lest she be seen by the pretentious butler still standing by the doorway. I looked up at Gage to see if he’d seen the maid as well.

  “Oh, let’s stop and admire the view for a moment. It’s such a lovely one.”

  Catching on to my ploy, Gage flashed me a secret smile. “Yes, shall we.” He grinned broadly at the butler, who I swore sniffed before closing the door.

  We strolled unhurriedly toward the corner where Peggy stood, in case we were being watched through a window.

  “I canna be caught . . .” she stammered, glancing behind her “. . . or it’ll mean my post.”

  “We understand,” I said.

  She looked behind her once more and nodded. “On Hogmanay, I did step ootside once. For fresh air.”

  I suspected it had more to do with escaping her charge.

  “And . . . and I saw lights. O’er at the ole abbey.”

  I exchanged a knowing glance with Gage. It was nothing more than we already knew, but it was confirmation, nonetheless.

  “Do you know about what time that was?” he asked.

  “Eleven? Half-past? ’Twasn’t yet midnight.”

  “Thank you,” I told the maid and she nodded and turned to go. “Peggy.”

  She looked back over her shoulder at me.

  “If ever you should find yourself in need of a position, go to Clintmains Hall. Tell them I sent you.”

  Our eyes held for a second longer in mutual understanding and then she was gone.

  I sighed and allowed Gage to escort me back to our carriage. “Do you think she was seen?” The wind lifted the hems of my cloak and his great coat, tangling them around our heels.

  “No. But perhaps it would be better if she had been.” The look in his blue eyes told me he’d observed as much as I had. Mr. Musgrave would not be an easy man to work for. Or an easy man to call father.

  “Do you think Miss Musgrave was really ill?”

  Gage tilted his head, considering the matter. “I don’t know. But you’re right. There was something she was keeping from us. Something she was anxious her maid would reveal.”

  “To us and her father.”

  Gage’s gaze sharpened. “Yes.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “This is the place, is it not?” Gage murmured in a hushed voice.

  Clinging tightly to his arm, I narrowed my eyes trying to pierce the shadows under the trees, but the darkness here was absolute. “Yes,” I whispered, following his lead. “My uncle said the hut was surrounded by a stand of ancient yew trees.”

  The wind sliced through the night, whistling and clattering through the branches. Like icy fingers, it crept over my shoulders and up under my skirts, making me shiver with dread. I had not enjoyed visiting the abbey on Hogmanay night, when Dodd was murdered and the late Earl of Buchan’s grave was disturbed. And I was not happy to be here again, in the cold and the dark, searching for the Nun of Dryburgh, a woman many believed to be nothing but a spirit haunting the ruins and mourning her lost love.

  I had heard tales of the brokenhearted woman who had taken to living in a vault in the abbey after her lover was killed during the Jacobite rising of 1745. In the absence of her man, she swore never to again look upon the light of day. Some said she was the lady of a local nobleman and had taken up with one of her husband’s kinsmen. When their treachery was discovered, the wife was banished and the lover sent to die on a battlefield.

  Whether there was any truth to the story, I did not know. But if the Nun we searched for was, in fact, a living, breathing woman whose lover had died in ’45, then she must be ancient, certainly the oldest person I had ever met.

  Rationally, I doubted the macabre tale. If my uncle had spoken with the Nun, and she lived in a wooden hut next to the abbey ruins, not inside one of the vaults, then the rest of the story was likely either fabricated or embellished, perhaps to keep people away from the unstable ruins after sunset. Or maybe to prevent scavengers from stealing any more of the abbey’s stones for their own building projects.

  But standing here in the dark and cold of a winter night, with the howl of the wind and the shifting shadows playing tricks on my eyes and ears, it was far easier to believe the ghoulish tale.

  “I think I see something,” Gage said.

  I gripped his arm tighter, my fingers pressing deeper into the woolen fabric of his coat. My heart leapt in my chest, pounding against my rib cage, as I tried to locate what he was seeing. When I realized he was only talking about the hut, which I could now glimpse the outline of as he lifted the lantern higher, I exhaled in relief, loosening my grasp on Gage’s arm. I breathed deep the scent of yew and the sharpness of the wind, which burned my lungs, as he pulled me closer.

  The hut was built of rough-hewn wood with no windows, and looked to be barely lashed together against the weather. It couldn’t be a comfortable place to live, even sheltered among the trees. Especially if the Nun was as old as she was rumored to be. I frowned. Why wasn’t she better cared for? Where was her family?

  Or did she not have need of one? After all, if she were a spirit, I doubt she felt the cold.

  I swallowed and glanced over my shoulder as Gage reached up to rap gently on the door.

  The pale light of a fire spilled out from beneath it, letting us know someone inhabited the abode. Someone who felt the bite of cold and needed the light by which to see. When there was no answer, he knocked again, but no one came to the door.

  “Madam,” he called out hesitantly. “We’re sorry to disturb you. We’re friends of Lord Rutherford.” He paused, but there were no sounds of movement from within. “If we could just have a word with you, we’ll be on our way.” Gage’s plea was greeted with more silence. “Madam?”

  “Maybe she’s not here,” I whispered.

  He frowned and nodded.

  If she only emerged at night, then surely she must run her errands under the cover of darkness as well. But where had she gone? To the village? Or was she much closer?

  Gage pivoted us so that we could see the craggy outline of the abbey in the pale moonlight penetrating through a break in the clouds.

  My heart began to beat faster again at the thought of entering the ruins, but I knew there was no help for it. They would have to be searched. Given the Nun’s propensities, it was the likeliest place to find her. And, in fact, the place we hoped she’d been three nights past when the grave robbers were at work.

  Gage and I did not speak, both knowing what must happen, and that I would insist on joining him, no matter his protestations to the contrary. He merely nodded in resignation, and we set off down a path through the trees.

  This time we approached the abbey from the southeast. Gage hesitated at the entrance to the covered
stone passageway that led through the eastern wall. It was thick with darkness, and though we could see some moonlight at the other end, there was still a good fifty feet of blackness before us. We turned toward the south, but the ditch that ran southeast to northwest along the southern edge of the abbey blocked us from reaching the other side of the ruins. There was no choice but to pass through the slype or retrace our steps to our carriage and find our way around to the West Door.

  “Follow me,” Gage ordered, nudging me behind him. His hand reached inside the pocket of his greatcoat and extracted the pistol I’d grown accustomed to seeing in the back waistband of his trousers.

  I followed suit, edging my hand into my reticule to wrap my fingers around the Hewson percussion pistol my brother-in-law, Philip, had purchased for me before I left Edinburgh. After the two spots of danger I’d found myself in during the last two investigations I’d assisted with, I’d vowed never to go anywhere unarmed again. Trevor had not been happy when I asked him to teach me how to use it, but he’d complied, knowing I would have stubbornly tried to teach myself, risking injury in the process.

  Hefting the lantern high, Gage inched his way through the tunnel, twisting from side to side to sweep the darkness for any movement. I followed a short distance behind, my shoulders up around my ears as I periodically glanced behind me, mistrustful that something was tailing us. As before, the cloying scent of mold and must surrounded us, reminding us how old these buildings were, and how long they’d been exposed to the elements.

  When we reached the other side, Gage still did not put his pistol away, but kept it at the ready. I wondered if he felt the same uneasiness I did. We searched the rooms to our left and to our right, open to the elements, and then the ruins of the refectory directly in front of us. The soaring western wall of the room remained mainly intact, with its beautiful twelve-lighted rose window.

  Turning to the right, we climbed the chipped flight of stairs up to the cloister.

  “Mind your step,” Gage told me.

  I hefted my skirts, trying to recall where the uneven patches of stone were from descending them earlier that day.

  At the top we turned to survey the open grassy area just as the moon passed behind a bank of clouds. I shivered, clinging to his side and the ring of light cast by the lantern. Everything was silent, save for the gust of the wind and the creaking of the lantern.

  And then a short tapping sound reached us, like that of metal against stone.

  We turned as one to stare at the doorways to our right opening off the cloister. Side by side we moved forward, listening for the sound. It was several moments later, as we were considering entering the Chapter House, that we heard it again, coming from a room farther down the wall. We paused at the entranceway to the library and then realized it was emanating from the next door. The one leading to the room we had not searched earlier that day for fear that it looked too dilapidated. The vault.

  Gage lifted his hand, telling me to stay back, and then inched closer to the door. The sound had stopped, likely because whatever was making it had seen the light of our lantern approaching.

  “Is someone there?” he called.

  I could not hear an answer and so inched closer to be able to see around Gage’s shoulder inside the blackness of the open doorway.

  “We mean you no harm,” he tried again. “But if you do not come out, I will come in after you. And I warn you, I am armed.”

  Several seconds passed, and I began to worry that Gage would indeed have to go in after them, when suddenly a form in gray seemed to materialize out of the darkness.

  I gasped and shrank backward, pressing a shaking hand to my mouth.

  When the visage before my eyes began to take on more depth and texture, I realized it was human. An old woman, to be exact, with long, flowing gray hair and a wrinkled face that still managed to retain some of the great beauty it must have shown at a younger age. She stood with her hands wrapped in the folds of her coarse gray garments, silently observing us as we observed her, the only difference being that her countenance appeared unconcerned, even accepting of our presence.

  I took another step closer, drawn by the serenity and sorrow that seemed etched into the lines of her face, almost at odds with one another. Her eyes were a pale crystalline gray, like the ice at the edge of a loch. They regarded me, first with indifference and then growing curiosity, as if she saw in me more than she expected.

  “You’re the woman they call the Nun of Dryburgh,” I said, interested in her reaction to the sobriquet.

  But there was none. “I am.” Her voice was oddly flat, but still pleasing.

  “My uncle, Lord Rutherford, suggested we speak with you.”

  “About the diggers.” It was a statement, not a question.

  I turned to look at Gage to see his reaction to the woman before us. He had dropped the pistol to his side, but had not replaced it in his pocket. And his eyes, they seemed . . . muddled, as if uncertain what he was seeing. But when he caught me looking at him, he righted himself, his gaze turning firmer.

  “You saw them then?” he asked her. “On Hogmanay. The men disturbing the late earl’s grave.”

  Her eyes trailed into the vault through which she’d emerged, and she spoke, not to us, but to herself or perhaps someone else. “I told you to be buried here. Where you’re safe. But you did not listen.”

  I glanced at Gage again, not knowing what to make of her words.

  He shook his head. “Did you get a good look at these diggers? Did you hear any of them speak?”

  She turned to look at us, her expression resigned. “No. It was best to stay away.”

  I couldn’t argue with her about that—not when poor Dodd had been shot to death for disturbing them—but it was still frustrating to hear.

  “So you noticed nothing that would help us identify them?” Gage persisted, aggravation stretching his voice. “The type of clothes they wore? The number of men?”

  Her head tilted to the side as she studied his features more closely and answered abstractly. “Four. They spoke oddly. It hurt my ears, so I didn’t listen.”

  What that meant, I couldn’t have guessed, though he tried.

  “You mean, they didn’t speak English?”

  “No. It was English. Just not the way I speak it. And not like the man with cotton in his nose.”

  Gage’s brow creased in confusion. “Was it harsher? Coarser? More genteel?”

  She shrugged, as if the matter no longer interested her. “Tell me, have you seen Sir Godfrey?” She turned to stare out over the dark cloister, her voice fading. “I’ve been waiting for him so long.”

  My eyes widened, but I shook my head when Gage’s uncertain gaze pleaded with me to make sense of her words and I could not.

  “No, madam,” he replied hesitantly. “I’m afraid I have not.”

  She sighed with such heartbreak that I wished there was something I could do for her. Something I could say. How had she come to this?

  But before I could offer her any comfort, she began to murmur under her breath. “Young lovers, young lovers everywhere. But mine is lost to me.” Then she lifted her gaze and spoke more directly. “They’re a plague, you know.”

  “Young lovers?”

  “Yes.”

  “They come here?”

  “Some do.”

  I thought of the bundle of lady’s clothing we’d found that morning. “Do they go to the Chapter House?” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gage’s stance sharpen in interest.

  But the Nun’s attention had already wavered, and she was staring forlornly off into the distance. I opened my mouth to ask again, but Gage shook his head, moving forward to take my arm.

  “Thank you for your time, madam,” he told her politely, recapturing her attention. “If you think of anything else, well . . .” He paused, clearly recalling the difficulty of receiving communication from her. “If you can get word to Lord Rutherford, he’ll let me know.”

  She nodded sl
owly and I reluctantly allowed Gage to turn me away.

  “Hold him close,” she spoke to my back, and I stopped to look over my shoulder. Her serene face was creased into lines of worry. “That one has a shadow hanging over him.”

  My heart stilled at the pronouncement, but before I could ask more, she was gone, disappeared back into the darkness of her vault.

  “What was that?” I asked Gage as we climbed the stairs into the ruins of the abbey church.

  “Nonsense.” His voice, like his footsteps, were sure, unshaken by the Nun’s words.

  But I didn’t feel so confident.

  • • •

  In contrast to the dark shadows of the abbey, Clintmains Hall was bright with light when we returned. I welcomed the glow of the warm candlelight and the heat of the fires, still trying to shake away the chill of the night and the Nun of Dryburgh’s words. We were invited to stay for dinner, which we were told would be quite informal, saving us embarrassment since we had no evening clothes to change into.

  We informed Uncle Andrew of our discoveries, which were few. It was frustrating to know we’d achieved almost nothing but to confirm information we already had, and wheedle some unclear statements about the body snatchers’ odd manner of speech from the Nun. The day felt wasted.

  I hoped to steal a moment alone with my brother, but he seemed determined to avoid me. Whenever I entered a room, he was drawn to another one, or asked to turn the pages of my cousin Gilly’s sheet music, or requested as a fourth for a hand of whist. There was no obvious evasion on his part, but some deft maneuvering was made, nonetheless. It only made me worry all the more that I had missed something important while so preoccupied with my anger and grief. I considered questioning our uncle, but this was a private matter between Trevor and me. He deserved the chance to tell me before I expressed my concern to anyone else.

  At dinner we passed around the sketches I had made of the body snatchers from the innkeeper’s recollections. No one remembered seeing them, but my cousins did have fun speculating on the criminals’ more interesting features, with Jock offering the wildest conjectures, of course, despite our Uncle Andrew’s efforts to turn the conversation.