Lady Julia Grey Bundle

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  I had his attention now. He looked up from the tiny blond heads and gave me a shrewd glance.

  "As a joke on Redwall's part? Or something else?"

  "Who knows? Perhaps he paid for the children's corpses and did not like to leave them completely unidentified after he had conducted this monstrous experiment. If it was an experiment," I fretted.

  "It was." Brisbane spoke with perfect confidence. "He wrote several articles on the subject for various Egyptological periodicals. He had a mania for the subject. He was extremely well-informed, and made quite a name for himself before he was twenty. All of his writings were limited to the rituals of embalming and mummification. I believe he began with a snake. The last article he published was about a cat he had successfully mummified. It was only a matter of time before he moved on to humans."

  "That is revolting."

  "That is science," he returned, nodding toward me meaningfully.

  "If you are referring to my brother's experiments, I can only point out that Valerius has aspirations to becoming a physician. And his patients have all been willing to be butchered, unlike these poor babies," I finished, wilfully overlooking the fact that I had once suspected my own brother of graverobbing to support his studies.

  Brisbane was considering the mummies thoughtfully. "So let us suppose Redwall decides to take the next obvious step in his studies of Egyptian embalming. He brings home from Egypt an embalmer's kit, orders natron, and is wise enough to conceal his source, even in his own journal. He has only to find the babies."

  "Why babies?" I put in suddenly.

  "They are smaller, quicker to embalm. And he could handle them by himself. It takes at least two men to mummify a fully-grown man."

  "No, why babies? As in more than one," I asked again. "Why two of them? Why not just one?"

  Brisbane shrugged. "For purposes of comparison, I presume. Take two infants of the same age and subject them to the same procedures. Store them for a certain period of time, then unroll them and see which has survived intact and figure out why. Perhaps he altered the formula slightly between them. Embalmers in ancient Egypt devised their own compounds of resins and aromatics to use upon the dead. If Redwall was attempting to perfect the art of embalming, it would have served him very well to use two formulae and compare the results."

  "True," I said slowly, still fitting the pieces together. "But that leaves us with the question of where the babies were procured. Let us assume he did as you suggested and embalmed the children as some sort of hideous experiment. He would need a secure place to store the bodies for a fixed period of time—years, I imagine."

  Brisbane nodded. "Certainly. I should think at least a decade if he was quite serious about determining the rate of decay. Longer, if possible."

  "And what would have happened to Redwall if the mummies were found before he had an opportunity to conclude his experiment? Presumably he would have unrolled them, recorded his results, and then buried them secretly somewhere. He could not simply leave them tucked away behind the chimney forever."

  "Yes, he could have," Brisbane argued. "You only found them by chance. They might have lain there undisturbed for years yet. His death was untimely. He had no reason to suspect he wouldn't have years left to finish the experiment."

  "But what would have happened to him if they had been found prematurely? By someone who would have turned him over to the authorities?" I demanded.

  "Putting aside the fact that Redwall Allenby himself was the magistrate, if the mummies had been discovered in his possession, he might have been charged with graverobbing."

  "Not a serious offence in and of itself, but devastating to his family. Think of the scandal."

  "I think the Allenbys believe they are above scandal," he said slowly. "But I confess I am intrigued. Carry on."

  "Redwall would have known he was taking a risk in keeping the children here. What if he left some means of identifying the parents upon the children as a way of proving he did not actually kill them?"

  "You think the parents turned them over to him willingly?"

  I spread my hands. "How else could he have acquired them? The corpses of twin stillborn babies are not exactly littering the roadsides, Brisbane. Either a desperate and impoverished parent sold them, or a dishonest gravedigger thought to line his pockets by pretending to bury them and then selling them off—the churchyard!" I cried suddenly.

  Brisbane blinked at me. "You do have the most alarming processes of ratiocination," he said. "What churchyard?"

  "The one at the chapel ruins," I explained. "If there is a gravestone there for these children, we will know where they came from. We will know their parents' names, and when they died. And we can rebury them," I said with satisfaction. "The chapel was Roman Catholic—do you think it matters?"

  Brisbane rubbed a hand across his face. His eyes were heavy, and the lines at the corners were more pronounced.

  "Julia, you are galloping ahead, as usual. We must proceed in a more orderly fashion. We know the children were mummified, that is all. We may conjecture they were embalmed by Redwall Allenby, but beyond that we simply do not know. Explore the churchyard if you must, but for the love of God, be careful."

  I blinked at him. "Careful? What possible danger can there be at this point? If anything we would be doing the children's parents a service by returning them."

  "Would we? What if the parents did sell them to Redwall for an experiment? Do you think they will want us uncovering that fact? More to the point, those children have gold hair, just like all the Allenbys. And," he added, picking up the animal-shaped amulet, "this is not just any type of livestock. It is a ram."

  I inhaled sharply. "Godwin. If the amulets were put there as a hint to the parents' identities, the ram would point directly to him. He is a sheep farmer. And the children had gold hair," I echoed.

  "Now do you see how dangerous this could become?" he demanded softly.

  "We do not know, Brisbane. It is only the wildest speculation at this point, as you just pointed out."

  "In any event, I do not want you alone with him."

  I flapped a hand. "He is no danger to me because I am no danger to him, at least not insofar as he knows. I will be careful and discreet, but if I leave off speaking privately with him, it will raise his suspicions."

  One black brow winged up. "Are you in the habit of conversing privately with him?"

  "Yes, upon occasion," I said, exasperated. "He is a part of this household for better or worse, and it would be a strange thing if I did not."

  Brisbane rubbed at his temple. "He seeks you out, doesn't he?"

  "From time to time. Brisbane, are you quite all right? Why are you pressing your head like that?"

  "Because it hurts," he muttered through gritted teeth. His eyes had glazed, and I realised with a start that he was in the beginning stages of a migraine.

  "Lie down," I ordered. It was a mark of his disorientation that he did so without question. He sat heavily, then stretched out, averting his eyes from the fire. I moved to blow out the candles and extinguish the fire as best I could, dousing it carefully with water from the washstand.

  Hastily I bundled the babies back into their coffin, heedless of either my revulsion or the dignity they deserved. I dropped one set of amulets into the coffin, and slipped the second set into my pocket before turning back to Brisbane. The room was chilly, but too smoky to risk shutting the window. Instead I took up his dressing gown and laid it over his shoulders. It was a heavy silk affair, weighty as a king's robe and I hoped it would keep out the worst of the chill.

  "Thank you," he said, ending the words on a groan. He fisted his hands and put them to his eyes, grinding against the pain. The few times I had seen him suffer the headaches before, they had come on more gradually, over the course of hours or even days of increasing pain and sensitivity to light. This had struck him with the force of an axe blow, and I wondered how long he had been fighting it off, or if perhaps his recent illness had hastened its
onset.

  I knelt in front of him and put my hands to his, bringing them down. "Brisbane, I want you to do something."

  He groaned again by way of reply.

  "I want you to give in. Stop fighting the vision. That is why the pain has come. Just let go and see what will become of it."

  "No," he growled. He moved to pull his hands away, but I held them fast.

  "You must. Brisbane, listen to me. I know the visions are terrible. I know they show you things you do not want to see. But the headaches are more of a curse. You dose yourself with God knows what sorts of vileness to keep them at bay, and it only hurts you more. Just give in to the vision and see what you are meant to see."

  He tugged again at his hands, but still I held them fast, and I fancied he did not resist as strongly. I rose up on my knees and put my lips near his ear.

  "I will not leave you," I whispered. "I promise. I will stay with you until it is done, and I will not let you come to harm."

  He opened his eyes then and I saw a torment there I had never seen on any human face. "You do not know what you are asking," he said thickly.

  "I know that if you do not do this, you will keep killing yourself with hashish and absinthe and whatever is in that red syrup of Rosalie's. Can that sort of a life be enough for you?"

  "It has to be," he told me. "The visions—" He broke off then, and with a renewed strength he tore free of my grasp and put the heels of his hands to his eyes.

  I sat back and waited. After a long moment, he rose with a tremendous effort of will, and thrust himself up from the bed. He stumbled toward the washstand and took up a bottle of poppy syrup. I did not try to stop him. He unstoppered it and drank off a deep draught from the bottle. He did not look at me as he returned to the bed, falling heavily into sleep almost as soon as he dropped onto it.

  I sat on the cold stone floor for a long time, watching him sleep, peaceful now, and free of his pain. The room grew colder, and I rose, stiff and aching. I took the coverlet from his bed and draped it over him, and brushed a stray lock of hair back from his brow. Poets say that men look like children when they sleep, but Brisbane did not. His breathing was so slow, his pallor so complete that he looked like the effigy on a prince's tomb, carved from marble, perfect and unchanging.

  There was little for me to do before I left his room. I wedged the coffin under the writing table and draped it with the sheet, hoping that small attempt at subterfuge would keep it from sight.

  And then I took the little bottle of red syrup and poured the remains out the window, poked up the fire, and closed the door behind me.

  THE TWENTY-THIRD CHAPTER

  We are yet but young in deed.

  —William Shakespeare

  Macbeth

  The next morning I left the house early after checking in on the growing menagerie in the maids' room and telling Portia to look in on Brisbane. I did not particularly want to be the first person he saw when he realised his supply of poppy syrup had been tampered with. I simply told Portia he had been unwell the previous evening and had taken a sleeping draught, neatly glossing over the fact that he had drugged himself into oblivion.

  I ate a quick breakfast alone, stopping only long enough in the hall to collect my cloak and make certain the little gold amulet was still in my pocket. I had just gained the orchard path when I heard a voice behind me, calling me to stop. I turned, fixing a smile to my face.

  "Good morning, Miss Ailith, you are about bright and early." She fell into step next to me, although I did not relish taking her with me to search the graveyard, it occurred to me this was a rather good opportunity to question her discreetly about a few matters.

  "I am glad I found you," she told me. She looked better rested than I would have thought possible, her eyes clear and her expression serene. The loss of her mother had not affected her as deeply as I would have expected, but I wondered if perhaps Ailith had known her mother was unbalanced in the mind. They had lived so closely together, she must have seen some sign of derangement in her, or malice or wickedness or whatever one might call it. Perhaps she was relieved that her mother's domination of her was at an end.

  "I have been thinking," she went on, "that it seems quite silly for you and Lady Bettiscombe to share a bedchamber. Now that Mama is gone—" She paused to clear her throat, then continued on stronger. "Now that Mama is gone, the largest bedchamber is unoccupied. I thought perhaps you or Lady Bettiscombe might prefer to take up residence in that room."

  I thought of the bloody crucifix and the weeping saints and suppressed a delicate shudder. "I am quite comfortable in the room I have at present. Portia might like to move, and I should like for her to move, I cannot deny it. She snores, although if you tell her I said it, I will call you a liar."

  Ailith's lovely mouth curved into a smile. It was one of the few times I had seen her truly happy, and the difference in her was remarkable. If she had been striking before, she was supremely beautiful now.

  She closed her eyes and turned her face to the rising sun, drawing in great lungsful of air. "It is going to be a beautiful day, Lady Julia. Can you not feel it? There is a lightness now, a freedom that was not there before."

  It was as I suspected then. Little wonder she had been vague and meek. Trapped under the thumb of a woman capable of such viciousness, her character had surely been held down, stunted as a flower in a shaded garden, choked by weeds and yet yearning for the sun. There was hope for Ailith Allenby now that she was free of her mother, and I made up my mind then to help her in any way that I could.

  "Yes, I think it will be a beautiful day," I replied firmly.

  She opened her eyes and regarded me for a moment, tipping her head to the side. "You are in love with Brisbane, aren't you? Oh, careful! You might have twisted your ankle. Did I startle you so much?"

  "No," I lied, smoothing my skirts and rolling my ankle around in a circle to make certain I had not wrenched it. "I am quite all right. I suppose I am. Does that concern you?" The words were direct, but I endeavoured to make my tone civil.

  She smiled. "Not at all. I was indiscreet when I talked of Hilda's intentions, as well as my own past with him. I hope I did not hurt you. You have been so very kind to me." I said nothing and she went on, her voice dreamy. "Mama was furious at the idea that Hilda meant to marry Brisbane. He is a half-blood Gypsy, far beneath our status," she told me, her expression serious. "She would never have permitted such a match, but I never imagined she would take such steps to prevent it."

  I thought of my own conversation with Lady Allenby and her assurance that her daughter would not marry Brisbane, her prodding of my own hopes in that direction. I felt a sharp stab of guilt that my discussion with her might have prompted the attack on Brisbane.

  Ailith shook her head. "I think I have always known there was something quite apart about her, something different. I pushed Hilda, you know, in spite of Mama. I knew she hated the idea, but I did not care. I looked after her for so many years, and she never thought to provide for us, not properly. There were no marriages arranged, no trips abroad, no friendships. It did not matter to me. I love the moor, and I should never want to leave it. But Hilda, oh, how she hates it here. She ought to have a life of some sort, some money to travel, a chance to get right away and really live." She broke off, burying her face in her hands. "So I pushed her toward Brisbane. I thought Mama would come to accept it. And instead she nearly killed him because of it."

  She lifted her face, tears sparkling like tiny gems on the dark gold of her lashes. "Can you forgive me, Lady Julia? I never thought she was capable of such monstrousness. I only meant to bring her to our way of thinking, and I was stupid, thoughtless. Please, say that you forgive me." She took my hand in hers and squeezed it hard.

  "Of course, my dear," I said faintly, slightly taken aback by the passion of her outburst. "None of us know precisely what the consequences of our actions might be. Your concern for your sister is quite commendable, and under the circumstances, I might well have
done the same myself. We will speak no more about it."

  "Oh, you are good!" she cried. "I feel free as a newborn child." She smiled broadly, then clapped a hand over her mouth to hide her immodest pleasure. She was almost giddy, but I felt a little chill at her words, and thought of the newborn children lying in their wrappings behind the chimney breast of her brother's room. Had she known, had she any reason to suppose what he was capable of? She had suspected her mother's villainy; had she intuited her brother's?

  Once at the graveyard, Ailith stopped to pick daffodils, gathering a great armful as I pretended to idly peruse the gravestones, all the while searching for some monument that might lend a clue to the identity of the dead children. Mindful of the fact that they might have been merely recorded on a parent's stone, I read them all as carefully as I could, casting the occasional glance back at Ailith and keeping my demeanour casual.

  At length, I had come to the end of the little graveyard and had to concede there was nothing to be found. The children were not mentioned, either on their own markers or those of some family member. They had not been stolen from the Allenby graveyard then, I surmised. That left the village churchyard as a possibility, and I made a note to search it as soon as possible.

  I turned to find Ailith just bending over to lay her bundle of daffodils at the foot of Redwall's gravestone. She paused a moment, her head bowed, then gave a great sigh of release it seemed to me. She caught my eye then and smiled.

  * * *

  We arrived back at the Hall to find the place at sixes and sevens, with Brisbane tearing at his hair and shouting at Portia in the kitchen while she brandished a spoon at him and shouted back. Ailith scurried to her room, and I envied her heartily.

  "I do not care if she has gone to the devil," Brisbane shouted, "but I want her back immediately!"

  "Do not raise your voice to me, you oaf!" Portia yelled back at him. "Do you think I have any control over what my sister does?"