“He does, but today he was feeling a little stronger and thought to take a walk over the moor. The moorland air has recuperative powers,you know. When it is warm enough, I encourage him to go, each time a little further than the outing before so as to build up his stamina. He was desperately ill for so long. His color is much better now,” she said with satisfaction. “You may put that down to my excellent nursing.”
“Oh?” I said, spooning up a bit of thick soup.
“Indeed,” she told me, fixing me with her beady bird’s stare. “I sat at his bedside and read to him for a quarter of an hour every day without fail. And I instructed Mary and Anjali and Effie how best to care for him, how often to change the bed linen, when to feed him beef tea and nourishing jellies, how much mustard to put into the plasters for his chest. I was extremely thorough. I quite overtaxed myself in my zeal to care for him,” she added with a martyred air. “And now I must walk with a stick until I have recovered my health.”
“You must have a greater care for your own strength,” Stoker said, keeping his expression entirely serious. “It is very dangerous to let oneself become overtired. It makes you susceptible to all variety of ailments.”
“Ailments! My dear Mr.Templeton-Vane, do not speak to me of ailments, I have so many,” she said plaintively. “I suffer so. The damp, you see, is a trial to my bones. And we shall not speak of my gout. Some days it is utterly beyond my abilities even to rise from my bed. Only my devotion to my grandchildren and my own will sustain me. I cannot be enslaved to this feeble body,” she said, striking one hand against a drooping breast. “I must rally myself in order to see to them. I have no wish but to make certain they are happy.”
“How fortunate that your eldest grandson has been returned to the fold,” Stoker said gently. I grimaced into my soup. Stoker’s natural sympathy with women was a dangerous thing. From infants in the pram to women with half a foot in the grave, they fell at his feet, swooning. I put it down to the strange juxtaposition of his appearance—that of a mildly dangerous Elizabethan buccaneer—with his exquisitemanners. He was courtly as a Spanish grandee, with an innate kindness that spelt instant attraction for the fairer sex. To encounter a man who looked like a ruthless brigand only to find him sublimely courteous was as intoxicating as it was unexpected.
And Lady Hathaway was already thoroughly enchanted with him, I realized as I finished my soup. It was to our advantage, of course. The more she liked Stoker, the greater the possibility that she would confide in him, share details of Jonathan Hathaway’s story that might provide us with an opportunity either to confirm or deny his identity. I had little doubt that in her desire to acknowledge the putative Jonathan, she would dismiss any snippets of information that indicated he was a pretender. The situation called for rationality, logic, and a dispassionate assessment of the fellow’s bona fides.
“It is the answer to prayer,” she said, touching the exceptionally ugly jewel at her throat. I had noticed the brooch—it was impossible not to, for the thing was the size of a child’s hand—but only then realized it was a piece of mourning jewelry. She beckoned me to come close and inspect it.
It was carved of jet, with loops of ebony beads set in gold. The large central medallion depicted a skeleton weeping over a gravestone, its hideous face grinning out from behind its bony hands. I deplored the current fashion—begun by my grandmother, Queen Victoria—for exuberant mourning, and this piece was one of its more gruesome examples.
“Very moving,” I said, returning to my seat. Mrs.Desmond had just served a succulent-looking roasted duck and I was determined to eat it hot.
CHAPTER
9
After luncheon, Stoker and I returned to the Long Gallery, but I found I was in no fit state for the work. I poked and prodded and scribbled notes, yet my mind wandered continuously. I had just mistaken a tray ofAphrissa statiraforEurema hecabewhen my attention failed completely. I flung my pencil aside, breaking the point.
“I must have air,” I told Stoker. He was on the far end of the room, his head under a dust sheet as he examined some enormous trophy. He grunted a reply and I left, not bothering to stop for a hat as I strode out of doors. The gardens of the Hall were extensive, planted in the Italian style with shrubs instead of flowers, perhaps a wise choice in the difficult growing conditions of the area. Long lawns led to a summerhouse, which gave onto the rise of moorland beyond. This must be the summerhouse where they discovered Jonathan Hathaway, I realized as I passed inside. It smelt strongly of new wood, the lavish gingerbread trim so freshly installed it was still shedding sawdust and had not yet been painted. Nor had all the repairs been completed, I saw. A bench sagged along one wall, piled with cracked, empty flowerpots and a large tin watering pot that had once been gaily painted but hadfaded to an indeterminate grey. New boards were neatly stacked against another wall, along with a variety of woodworking tools.
The structure, for all that it was open to the elements, felt oppressive, overlooked as it was by all the rear windows of the Hall. There would be little privacy anywhere in the gardens, and privacy was what I craved. I hurried out onto the moor with a sense of escape. It was a different world here, wilder, with long swathes of heather and grasses forming a sort of patchwork against pockets of bracken that swayed in the wind. The expanse was punctuated by boulders that rose from the earth, shrugging off the damp soil like giants rousing themselves from sleep. Narrow paths crisscrossed the moor, and a signpost indicated the direction of the nearest village—Shepton Parva with its tiny railway station—and the closest tor.
Feeling a climb would be just the thing to blow the cobwebs from my head, I chose the latter, glad I had worn stout boots instead of slippers. I began to climb, pausing only once to look back at the Hall. It was rather less forbidding by day. In the light, it seemed almost embarrassed at its own decline, the very walls appearing to draw back against the hills rising on the other side. The uneven roofline was dotted here and there with gargoyles that I could now see were a sort of stylized sheep, nothing monstrous at all. Against one stone wall, a series of scaffolds had been erected, no doubt for the purposes of repointing and cleaning, for the ivies and mosses of the ages had been tidied away, and the stone glittered starkly grey in the afternoon light.
I turned and continued on my way, fairly scampering up the side of the tor. The air was crisp here, smelling of peat and new grass and sheep. The sound of the bellwether rose on the wind, guiding me upwards, and I stopped to admire a small flock in the distance.
“Those are our sheep,” a voice called. I turned to see Effie Hathaway hurrying up behind. “I hope you do not mind,” she said, raising her chin. It was almost a challenge, and I was glad of it. She seemed tohave recovered a little of the spirit Sir Hugo had missed, if his description of her lowness had been accurate. “I saw you leave the Hall and thought I would join you.”
“You are a most welcome companion,” I assured her.
“Say rather I am a guide,” she corrected. “The moor is dangerous for those unfamiliar with its perils.”
She raised her hand to point out the dark patches dotted about the moor, some quite near to the paths. “Bogs,” she pronounced. “You must be very careful not to stray into one. They have claimed any number of the sheep, poor stupid things.”
“I shall be entirely careful,” I promised her.
“You must not venture here without one of us,” she insisted. “It looks safe, but it is deceptive.”
“I have traveled the world in the course of lepidoptery, Miss Hathaway. I am familiar with every sort of terrain—jungle, forest, alpine meadow. I can acquit myself perfectly well here,” I said, beginning to lose patience. In my current state of agitation, I was not prepared to endure a lecture from someone half a decade my junior. I had been in such difficulties before—the jungles of Costa Rica, while teeming with butterflies, are also lavishly dotted with patches of quicksand. I had been taught by my native guide how to extricate myself safely and indeed had done so upon numerous occasions, though not without incident. Quicksand, it must be noted, is almost always ruinous to one’s hat.
She was not cowed. “The moor is different. It’s haunted, you know.”
I laughed. “Miss Hathaway, I am no schoolchild to be frightened with spectral tales.”
“It is true,” she insisted. “There is a grey lady that goes abroad in the night. No one knows what she portends, but such things are never good. Then there is the black dog which is seen roaming the moors when a Hathaway is going to die. There are faeries, as well, and piskieswho steal babies and confuse travelers. And lately, folk have seen a spectral orb bobbing over the moor. A phantom ball of light that simply vanishes,” she added, snapping her fingers.
“You are a person of science,” I reminded her. “There must be a rational explanation for these sightings.” In fact, I was far likelier than Stoker to entertain the notion that there might be more in existence than our mere mortal senses could discern. I am a firm believer in open-mindedness in these things. Stoker, on the other hand, holds such notions in rank contempt. Whether one should blame his gender or his education for this failure of imagination is a subject for debate at another time.
“Who has seen this spectral orb?” I inquired. “And where?”
Miss Hathaway pointed and began to climb. “Just here, along the path between the Hall and the little cluster of cottages on the other side of the tor. It has been seen several times by cottagers returning home from the village pub.”
