The Nightingale Legacy

by Catherine Coulter

  She turned it over and over in her palms, just feeling it, not looking closely at it. He said, “Are you reading it with your fingers?”

  She gave him a smile. “Actually, I really don’t have to. It’s the mate to the other one, and since the other one says REX, I have no doubt that this one says REGINA.”

  “Oh no, it’s much more specific than that,” North said. “It says Guinevere.”

  40

  THE EARL AND Countess of Wyndham were seated in the drawing room, the Duchess frowning sadly into her teacup. “To think, Marcus, we missed all the excitement, every drop of it, and only by three days. It’s not fair.”

  “You must have just missed my messenger,” North said.

  “Your messenger,” the earl said, “is right this minute very likely enjoying himself greatly. My servants will feed him and cosset him and will no doubt wring every scrap of information out of him, count on it, then they’ll probably send him back with advice, the bloody meddlers.”

  “Now, Duchess, it is fair,” Caroline said. “It was our adventure, not yours. Now, since you and Marcus just might have been the ones to save the day, North and I wish to thank you both very much and to give you this.” Caroline handed the Duchess a beautiful gold necklace, thick and rich-looking, so very old, yet shining and vibrant, warm to the touch.

  “You can wear it with your pearls,” the earl said, lightly touching his fingertips to the rich gold links.

  “As for the remaining jewels and gold coins and jewelry, like you and the Duchess, Caroline and I are sending some to the British Museum, giving the chalices to the Salisbury Cathedral, and displaying the remainder here at Mount Hawke so all can come and see them.”

  “If we ever lose all our groats, we can always sell a bracelet or two and save ourselves,” Caroline said.

  “Ha, you’d send me to work in the tin mines before you’d part with a single piece of jewelry we found,” North said, lightly stroking his fingertips over her arm.

  She smiled, and for a brief moment it was a faraway smile, one that severed her from all of them completely, but then she was back again, and her smile was warm and filled with mischief and happiness. She looked over at the bed of crimson velvet. In it now were two armlets, touching each other, together again for as long a time as the Nightingales existed. As for the sword, she and North had agreed that it be left where it was and that no one else should know about it, not even their family, not even the Earl and Countess of Wyndham. He’d told her that same night, “The fewer who know, the better. Rafael Carstairs won’t say a thing, I’ve already spoken to him, and naturally Coombe won’t.”

  Caroline had frowned, saying, “It still isn’t enough, North. We don’t want anyone accidentally stumbling upon it. Indeed, from the beach you can see the shadows there in the middle of the cliff, see there’s something strange. Anyone with a whit of curiosity would investigate. I know I would. The last thing we want is scavengers going in there and trying to steal it. No, what we need is a nice explosion of some kind. The good Lord knows there are enough of them at the damned tin mines.”

  “We need a bloody miracle,” North said. “God, I’m so tired I can’t think anymore. We’ll worry about it in the morning.”

  Both of them had indeed considered it a miracle. Near to dawn that same night, when they’d finally fallen into their bed, so exhausted they could barely think, the wind had risen to gale force, the rain had pounded the earth and uprooted trees, sending even huge rocks tumbling over the cliffs and into the water, and the cliff had collapsed in on itself, sealing away forever that chamber and the sword Excalibur embedded in that slab of stone.

  Caroline said now to her mother-in-law, “You refused to tell me what you wanted of the treasure. Please, you must have whatever it is you desire. Marie, too.”

  Cecilia Nightingale said, “I’ll ask Marie. Doubtless she would enjoy one of the armlets. As for me, my dear, I would just as soon never touch any of those things again for as long as I live.”

  “Why ever not, Mother?” North said, his head cocked to one side in question.

  “Er, it’s rather difficult, North,” she said, looking down at her hands, which were whiter and softer now since she’d come to Mount Hawke. “I saw the armlet Caroline placed over there on that crimson velvet, the one your great-grandfather supposedly found here on Mount Hawke land. And the one beside it that you found, Caroline, in the cliff.”

  “Yes,” Marcus Wyndham said. “I found the first one in that croaking old clock. It was the reason the thing sounded so bloody ugly, like a sick person trying to cough.”

  Caroline said, “I guess it will remain a mystery. Who put it there and why? When was it done? Why didn’t any of the Nightingale men ever say anything about it?”

  “It’s not a mystery, Caroline,” Cecilia Nightingale said.

  “What do you mean, Mother? Do you know anything about the damned thing?”

  “Ah, well, I did it, you know.”

  “Did what, Mother?”

  Cecilia Nightingale looked at her son and said, “I overheard your grandfather speaking to your father. It was one of the very few times your grandfather wasn’t screaming at your father to rid himself of me. Anyway, I eavesdropped. Your grandfather was showing your father the armlet. He was stroking it as if it was alive, as if it was the most precious thing in the world. He said that the Nightingale men kept it close, never showing anyone else. You see, North, your great-grandfather, who had found the wretched thing, had nearly had it stolen, and thus he hid it away. He didn’t tell your grandfather about it until he was dying. Your grandfather, who’d been ill the previous winter, decided it was time to pass the armlet down to his son, your father. I’ll never forget how he stroked the thing, caressed it as one would a man or a woman. It was obscene, and rather pathetic. I watched when your grandfather placed the armlet reverently back into the safe. I saw the combination. Late that night, I opened the safe and took the armlet. I wanted to get back at your grandfather, North, as simple as that. He loved the armlet as much if not more than a human being loves another human being. I hated it and I hated him, so I took the damned armlet and hid it in the clock. Paltry of me, I know, but I wanted him to suffer, to lose something he valued above all else. No one said a word. It was as if the thing had never existed, but I knew the pain he must have felt, knowing someone had stolen it and not knowing who had done it. His own son? I do wonder if he blamed his son, your father, if he even accused him of taking it. Or perhaps he believed it was one of the male martinets. And I was pleased because I knew he’d never know. He would listen to that bloody clock for the rest of his days and never realize what was inside it. And now you found its mate.”

  “Where the devil do you think that first armlet came from?” North asked no one in particular.

  “Well,” Caroline said slowly, eyeing the armlet, “it must have been accidentally dropped by those people who were carving the chamber into the cliff. Good Lord, at least a thousand years ago, don’t you think? There was no reason for your great-grandfather to lie about where it was found.”

  “Near the barrows and that stone fence and the copse of trees,” North said. “It’s the only explanation, I guess.”

  “And to think,” the Duchess said, “all this time everyone believed that if any king were here, it was King Mark.”

  “But King Arthur isn’t buried there.”

  “Just the treasure and the s—”

  “The what, Caroline?” the Duchess said, raising a graceful dark eyebrow.

  “Nothing. My mind is just meandering. Goodness, here’s Miss Mary Patricia with two babes!”

  The cooing and laughter, the pats, the kisses, the pained looks from Coombe, and the occasional yells for food from Little North and Eleanor became the focus for the remainder of the afternoon.

  Coombe came into the drawing room that evening, his arm resting in an interesting sling, cleared his throat, and announced, “Dinner is served, my lady.”

  “Ah, Coom
be, thank you,” North said. “You’re looking quite the romantic hero. How are you and Polgrain doing?”

  “We will survive, my lord, we will survive, but it is difficult. One thinks that one knows another, but in this case, it wasn’t true. Poor Mr. Polgrain deeply regrets that he wasn’t conscious enough to aid you that night, my lady, but Mr. Tregeagle had drugged him as well as her ladyship, as you know. It was only me he believed would succumb to his plot. It has depressed us profoundly.”

  Perhaps disappointing and depressing for him, Caroline thought, eyeing the very neat sling he wore around his shoulder and under his elbow. It made him look very dapper. The memory of that night was clear and sharp. All that had happened, the terror, the grinding pain, and finally the triumph, all of it was there deep inside her, and would be with her always. But most of all what would remain with her until she died was the image of herself easily drawing Excalibur from the stone, feeling how it had been made just for her, that it was part of her. It would always be with her, that aura of being touched by something beyond herself, beyond this modern world. She’d been touched by magic, by ancient magic that had no explanation, but it did have reality, it did have meaning. It had saved her life. No, it had given her the gift of enabling her to save her own life.

  “You’re looking deep and thoughtful,” North said to her as he placed her hand over his forearm to lead her into dinner. “Are you perhaps considering the use of those wrist cuffs on me tonight?”

  She grinned up at him. “Yes, that just might please both of us mightily.”

  It did please both of them, North in particular, who lay sprawled on his back, staring up at his wife’s flushed face, wondering how she could look more beautiful than she had just that morning. Her breasts were larger, and he gently pulled his hands from the cuffs and cupped them in his palms. “I love you,” he said, and she leaned down so he could kiss her.

  “Come lie next to me,” he said, and pulled her down, gently pressing her cheek against his shoulder. “Now, let me tell you about Dr. Treath. He is leaving next week. I spoke to him this afternoon. He blames himself, which perhaps he should do, I don’t know. I don’t understand how he could be so blind to what happened to every woman who ever came into his orbit, but there it was. I didn’t ask him if he remembered taking his own fourteen-year-old sister to bed. I didn’t think it mattered. Everyone knows about his sister now, just as everyone knows that Tregeagle drugged you and helped her take you away to St. Agnes Head. Thank God she had to leave for a while to go back to her brother, for he would have missed her. But it gave you the time you needed.” He leaned over and kissed her forehead. “You’re still damp from our lovemaking. I like that. Also, let me tell you that I admire you, Caroline. You’re brave and loyal and inventive, but then again, it was those qualities that drew me to you in the first place, those qualities, your beautiful self, and that mess of problems you carried on your back. But, you know, there’s something new about you, something that happened that night—” He paused, and she felt his shrug.

  “Perhaps it’s a new strength I sense in you, a deeper understanding of why we mortals are here, why it’s important for us to be decent, to cherish those important to us. Ah, I’m making no sense at all.”

  She kissed his shoulder. “I received a letter today. The painter will be coming with the man who will restore all the Nightingale women’s portraits. Can we be painted together, North, after he paints your mother and Marie and you with both of them?”

  “So we’ll be hanging about forever and ever?”

  “Yes. I want our great-great-grandchildren to know that we were together always and we loved each other and there was nothing that ever set us apart. Just as those two armlets are together again.”

  “Shall I be painted with my wrist cuffs on?”

  She laughed into his shoulder, licked his warm flesh. And she thought, I’ll be touched by magic every day of my life.

  Epilogue

  MOUNT HAWKE, CORNWALL

  MARCH 1815

  NORTH WALKED INTO the drawing room, several pieces of folded paper in his right hand, an odd look on his face.

  Caroline looked up from her embroidery and said, “Look at this, North. Even Miss Mary Patricia approves. I’ve managed to stitch a Nightingale bird here on the corner of your handkerchief.” She picked up the piece of fine linen and stared closely at it. “Yes, you can tell it’s a bird. I know that Nightingale men detest the thought of also being birds, but what can you do? I say flaunt it. I say learn how to warble. North? What’s wrong?”

  He looked distracted. He sat down then and put his hand on her belly and began to caress her. It was an automatic gesture. He’d told her it helped him think, to solve problems. The babe obligingly kicked his palm, and North blinked and grinned.

  “Hello.”

  “What have you got there?”

  “A letter from Boston.” He drew a deep breath. “ Remember when we discovered that my great-grandmother had had an affair with that rogue named Griffin? And then they both disappeared, my great-grandfather putting it about that she’d died, even going so far as to bury her? Then we found out that the rest of the Griffin family left Cornwall for Boston in the 1780s?”

  She nodded, leaned over, kissed him, and said, “You’ve found her, haven’t you?”

  “Yes. It appears that she and Griffin ran away together to Boston. My God, Caroline, I have lots and lots of family over in the Colonies. Cousins by the score. It also appears that both my great-grandmother and Griffin outlived my great-grandfather. When Griffin’s family wrote him of my great-grandfather’s death, the two of them got married and legitimized all their children.”

  “She was happy.”

  “It would appear that Griffin was indeed a rogue, but he fell in love with my great-grandmother and became constant. How would you like to visit Boston? The blasted war ended last fall.”

  The babe kicked North’s palm again. He grinned, leaned down, and put his cheek to her belly. “He wants to go meet all his cousins,” he said.

  Caroline laughed, grabbed her husband’s ear, and pulled him up. She kissed him. “I think it’s a wonderful idea. At least they’re not named Nightingale so I don’t have to stitch a lot more silly birds on handkerchiefs. Now, I have something to tell you as well, North.”

  He cocked a dark eyebrow.

  “Coombe is marrying Mrs. Mayhew.”

  He choked, stared at her, dropped the papers on the floor, then threw his head back and laughed and laughed.

  “I thought you had all the magical experiences in this family,” he said at last, “but it appears that Mrs. Mayhew has performed the greatest magic of all time.”

  Author’s Note

  KING MARK, IF he really did exist, was most likely buried near Fowey, in the south of Cornwall, as most legend believers claim. As for King Arthur, everyone wants to lay claim to him and insist he was as real and as powerful and as noble as Malory’s book painted him way back in the fifteenth century in his Le Morte d’Arthur. The Scots, the Welsh, the Cornish, the English, all want him to be of their soil, of their blood, of their character. All of them want him buried in a hidden cave on their land.

  If by chance Arthur did live and die in Cornwall, I choose to believe it was near Tintagel, which lies only about forty miles northeast of Mount Hawke. It certainly makes a romantic setting for Camelot.

  Did either of these kings really live, or were they just the stuff of legends and myths, stories to be added to, like squares of a quilt, many hands making it grow and change continually, making it more and more complex, destined to enrich the minds and dreams of generation after generation?

  Mark, that duped nitwit of a king, wasn’t ever real to me. As for King Arthur, he was always more than real. Indeed, he is legend, an epic spirit. He can’t be allowed to pass into the mists of time. He will always be here with us, to inspire us, to ennoble us, to touch our souls with his special magic, to show us greatness tempered with failure, to show us grace and humilit
y in the face of devastation and loss.

  As for Arthur’s sword, Excalibur, I know deep down that it exists somewhere. It’s as real as King Arthur.

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note