“Instead of wandering a w-woods filled with rakish sorts participating in things which it is n-not fit to mention!” she finished with a grin. She appeared to be applying herself further to the pros and cons of her idea while she spun the bookstand idly with one finger. “I wonder, Liza,” she said finally. “Do you think that Robert’s read
that
b-book?”
I didn’t make the error of supposing she meant the book on supernatural phenomena. “I don’t know. Why don’t we ask him?”
“I wouldn’t doubt he’d turn us s-straightway in to my mother. Mostly he thinks I’m a b-baby… I wonder, Liza. D-did you remark the name of that volume?”
“
The Adventures of Countess T.,
” I responded helpfully. “It’s there; no, you’re passing it. You put it back on the first shelf.”
“D-did I?” she said with careful disinterest. She went back to her feather picture, poured some water into a basin, and worked at her sticky fingers with a tiny chip of soap. “Really,” she said as she scrubbed, “I don’t know why m-men would want to have a b-book like that around. It’s d-disgusting, isn’t it?”
“Very,” I agreed cheerfully, coming over to inspect her picture. The rabbit in her picture looked rather like an irritated mole. Aloud, I said, “You know, Ellen, rather than calling this a forest scene, I think you should tell your aunt that this is a picture of the Eygptian pyramids. See the shape of the trees?”
Ellen, drying her hands on her apron, looked over my shoulder to view her handiwork. “You’re right, it d-does. But what’s the rabbit, then?”
“The Sphinx,” I said. “You see, if you add a turkey feather here, like so, and a bit of crow down…”
“That’s wonderful! Much m-more original than a f-forest, don’t you think?” Ellen glanced back at the bookcase. “Liza, don’t you think women should t-take some kind of action about men reading b-books like that?”
“Destroy them, you mean?”
“Oh, no. We couldn’t d-do that. My father would turn over in his g-grave at the thought of a book being destroyed! I d-don’t think we should do anything so drastic.”
“Oh. Well, I suppose we could just”—I waved my hand and lifted my eyebrows—“carry it away. To the sunroom, for instance. There’s never anyone in there at this hour.”
Ellen was quick to enter into the spirit of the idea. “I’ll bet it would fit behind a copy of
Young Ladies’ Household Companion
. I d-do think we should read it so w-we can learn what we are struggling against.”
With this praiseworthy object in mind, we proceeded to the sunroom to follow up on the adventures of the Countess T., the slim green volume concealed under a stack of commendable books for young ladies whose excellent authoresses would have been much surprised if they had known they were being used for such a shady purpose.
We had just broached the third chapter, which concerned the Countess’s encounter with the ninety-two-year-old Caliph of Baghdad, when Lord Brockhaven came in upon us. He was carrying a blue ledger, his purpose evidently to check some correspondence filed in the bound volumes of household records which filled the better part of a long cabinet in the room.
His inky curls were a bit more disarrayed than usual, which meant that he had been up working since early this morning, and I remember Mr. Cadal’s repeated assurance to me that I could never have found a more able or intelligent guardian to have the charge of my land. I wonder if it wearied him, to have that charge on top of his own property, but there was no trace of tiredness in his taut, healthy skin and athletic strides. He hadn’t been in to breakfast with Lady Gwen, because he had no jacket covering his thin lawn shirt, and the collar lay open without the respectability of a neckcloth. Gwen had forbidden him to appear at breakfast in that condition, saying it was
too
hard on her nervous sensibilities, particularly at an early hour. He had laughed at her, of course. Secretly I agreed that she was quite right.
He gave Ellen the faint, uncritical smile he reserved for her, and looked at me with all the affection one would reserve for the doorknob. Ellen, who says that nothing makes her more nervous than awkward silences, straightway piped up, “Good m-morning, my lord.”
It’s not hard to irritate Lord Brockhaven. “How many times do I have to tell you that I wish you would call me Alex? I’ve only been an earl for two years! Someday I’m going to be standing in the path of a falling boulder and
you’re
going to call ‘Jump, my lord,’ and I won’t know who you mean. Did you know you have two goose feathers sticking to your hair?”
“Yes, sir. Liza’s tried to g-get them out; they s-seem to be stuck fast. We are going to t-try soaking them out this afternoon.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear it. If that doesn’t work, you should paste more on because two look ridiculous. I hope this isn’t some new fashion in female ornament.”
“N-no. It’s from my feather picture, the one you b-brought the eagle feathers for when you w-went to the lakes last fall.”
“Oh, yes,” he said, opening the sliding cabinet door and scanning the volumes. “The feather picture. I remember last year when you made the colored sand arrangement and spilled a cup of rosined sand on the piano keyboard. When you had your lesson that afternoon, it took us an hour to pry your Italian piano master from the keys.” With deliberate civility he said to me, “How did you like your first taste of our polite society?”
“I thought some members were more polite than others,” I said, trying to match his casual tone.
“Very subtle,” he said, pulling a bound volume of correspondence from the pile, one marked 1806–1807 in gilt letters. “Gwen must be teaching you about the gentle reproach. I expect you didn’t like me threatening to beat you.”
“It’s not so much that I minded you threatening to beat me,” I said sweetly, “but when you specified that it would be with pleasure…”
Brockhaven gave me one of his smiles that makes my heart feel like it’s going to collapse. “Do you think it was because I felt my authority was being questioned?”
It seemed to me that his anger of the previous night had more to do with the fact that I was talking to Vincent than the fact that I was questioning his authority. It also seemed politic not to say so, because if he wasn’t going to explain his behavior last night, he certainly wasn’t going to do so this morning. My conversation with Robert popped into my mind like a worm suddenly appearing in a half-eaten apple. Could it be that in his talk with Brockhaven last night in the library Robert had taxed Brockhaven about the precise nature of his intentions toward me? Could that account for Brockhaven’s tautly constrained amiability? He was an amazing man in many ways, able to push one away as deftly with his good humor as with his bad, and all for a secret motive that you may not see until much later. Reasoned judgment looked back on our argument last night over Vincent and I began to wonder if even that had been a smokescreen for something else. What would he think if he knew what Ellen was planning for May Day? What would he think if he knew I had fallen in love with him?
I had to answer his question. “I think that may have been a part of it…” Hesitantly I added, “Does this mean we are less angry with each other now than we were?”
He gave me a lopsided grin. “Oh, certainly, my pet. Let’s be moderate. I’ll make you a peace offering. My brother mentioned that you’d like to visit Chad.”
“Yes!” I said, surprised that he would bring it up with such complaisance.
“Gwen will arrange with Vince and Isabella for you to visit one day next week.”
“Oh, thank you!” I cried, feeling my skin pink up with pleasure. I had been so certain that he would say no to Vincent’s idea, that I could scarcely believe his words, especially after his patent hostility to my encounter with Vincent. “I should so much enjoy seeing where my father spent his childhood! It’s very good of you to consent! Lord Brockhaven, about last night…”
Brockhaven glanced again at the volume in his hands before snapping it shut with one hand and sliding it back into sequence. He came across the room to lean easily on a chair arm near me and said, “Liza, about last night. You realize, I’m sure, that your cousin Isabella has what Gwen likes to call a hasty temper and a strong instinct toward possession? If she had come upon you in the corridor last night, alone with her husband, there would have been a scene that would have kept the county in gossip for weeks.”
Ellen was frowning at me with some concern. “Mother did tell me that you and Lord Brockhaven had argued, Liza, but I didn’t feel right about bringing it up unless you did first.
Were
you alone with Vincent in the hall? Oh, dear. Alex is right! Isabella g-gets so jealous, which is a smart bit of hypocrisy when it is s-she—ahem! What I mean to say is, Vincent knows what Bella is. Why w-would he have kept Liza talking with him, knowing there’d be a scene if Isabella saw it? It’s not at all like him! He’s usually so careful about that kind of thing.”
“He has his reasons, I imagine,” Brockhaven said dryly.
More than that, Lord Brockhaven could not be prevailed upon to say, and I felt gauche and ashamed of my angry response to his intervention. Ellen was no prude, and if she thought I shouldn’t have been in the hall with Vincent, then I must have been in the wrong. Later, in my bed that night, I would remember this conversation with disquiet. Brockhaven’s explanation didn’t quite fit with things he had said during our argument at the Perscoughs and the discrepancies would disturb me; but that morning I felt only sheepish and annoyed with myself.
As usual, my thoughts were an open door to Brockhaven. He gave the bridge of my nose a careless brush with his fingertip, saying, “Don’t look so distressed, child. It wasn’t so bad, as it happened. I was just keeping an eye on you, which is my responsibility after all.”
He looked at the pile of books that Ellen and I had scattered on the side table. “Come to think of it, the housekeeper did tell me that you two were on your way up here with a stack of improving literature.” He leaned forward to read the titles, “
Tatting for the Beginner; On the Appreciation of Floral Beauty; Sermons for the Bedridden
; and last, though I’m sure by no means least, we have
Mrs. Hobbs’ Educatorium
.”
Brockhaven’s unwelcome interest in our reading matter caused Ellen to quickly snap shut the
Ladies’ Household Companion
on her lap, trying to conceal the book which had
really
been occupying our time. It was an unfortunate gesture. The hidden volume made a starkly obvious lump and Ellen’s expression of alarm was a dead giveaway.
Lord Brockhaven was not born yesterday, and he also happens to know Ellen rather well. He directed one sardonic glance at her, lifted the
Ladies’ Household Companion
from where it reposed in her lap and gently shook out the pages.
The Adventures of Countess T.
fell out with a plop, and Ellen put it into his commandingly outstretched palm with a stiff, scared look.
Brockhaven’s eyebrows shot up when he saw the title. “Oh, Lord. You have been into mischief, haven’t you?” He flipped it open and read the first page. “Do you know, it sounds vaguely familiar. I seem to recall reading it with Dain Bredon when we were thirteen. Is this the one with the Prussian officer?”
Ellen hesitated, took her bottom lip between her teeth, and nodded.
“And who else? The French foot juggler? I see. When it comes to improving literature, I don’t think that the two of you are improving the same areas that Gwen thinks you’re improving.”
“Are you g-going to tell her?” asked Ellen, gazing up in hopeful solicitation.
“God forbid,” said Brockhaven. “I can’t imagine myself finding the tact to describe to Gwen just what it is that happens in the plot.”
No government spy, no ruthless conspirator had ever connived an escape with more verve and imagination than Ellen had in her May Day arrangements.
First there had been the horses. Ellen was sure that her pretty mare, Wendy, would be recognized anywhere, and Kory had already gained a local reputation. How many stallions stood as high as a cottage, and had a coat the color of pitch? Four shillings had bought the silence of a local farmer and the loan of two of his most disreputable dobbins. From the ready exchange of communication between Ellen and the farmer, I decided that she had done business there before.
The clothes we wore were Ellen’s, from fancy dress parties and suitably altered. She was Noah’s Ark without the ark headdress and its painted wooden giraffes. The gown was long and white, and we spent an afternoon cutting off pairs of animals and the dove of promise from the shoulder. For me, there was a costume Ellen had worn two Augusts ago to a fête in Bath, and even without changing it as much as a tuck, there wasn’t anyone in the county who would know it. It was a pretty dress with a red and white striped skirt and red tunic, with a black velvet bodice trimmed with red, so I didn’t mind a bit becoming the Goat Girl. For our faces, Ellen possessed two of something called “the loo mask” which were made of velvet and covered the top half of our faces except our eyes, and so when we were completely dressed in our costumes, masks, and two cloaks (bribed away from the serving maid), we looked comfortably absurd. I believe we would have stopped there but, since the book recommended the addition of flowers to the hair, nothing less would do than for Ellen to dig through her wardrobe and find two wreaths of artificial flowers, bluebells twisted with fern that she had worn playing one of the fairies in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
at a private revel. The bluebells seemed appropriate to her, since it was the fragrance I wore always, from a recipe made especially for me by my grandmother to celebrate my ninth birthday. It was particularly fortunate, said Ellen, that she had two wreaths, having lost one, bought another, and then found the original.
The meat was a little harder to get, and the opium a nightmare. As it turned out, Ellen was able to buy a joint of beef from the farmer with whom we had conducted our other underhanded dealings, but people who will sell two young women an amount of opium are few and far between. Even if both Ellen and I pretended headaches for a week, besides making Gwen suspicious, we wouldn’t have been able to save enough, and we couldn’t steal it from her locked cupboard for fear the blame should fall on one of the servants. Notice that I have said we wouldn’t dare to steal it from
her.
I am very ashamed to admit that we did steal it. I know there is nothing more detestable than the criminal who protests he was pushed into his crime by a forceful partner, but the truth is that I never would have gone along with the idea if it hadn’t been for Ellen. She refused to go into the woods without the meat, and there was no sense taking the meat unless it had been treated with the opium. I knew that if we didn’t go out May Day Eve, Ellen would consider her entire spring a loss, and I think I’ve mentioned before that I’d rather do anything than disappoint Ellen. Besides, and I confess this in all cravenness, Ellen assured me that if we were caught in the theft, Brockhaven would bribe us out of jail, and I knew she was right.
We took the carriage into Chipping on the pretext of wishing to visit the subscription library, which Brockhaven thought a very good idea, considering, as he said, that the paucity of proper reading material in the house had driven us to more exotic kinds of literature in our commendable thirst for the printed word. I shudder to think what he would have said had he known our true purpose.
On the carriage ride to town, we laid our guilty plans. Ellen was taken aback to hear that I didn’t know many ingenious ways to steal things because she had quite thought I would, being a gypsy. I will admit that there are gypsies who do steal things, and Grandma did once say that God had made a special rule that it was all right to steal from gorgios but only from gorgios and only if it was something you really needed, like a chicken or a blanket. But the only how-to story she had ever told me was about her cousin, Rupa, who would beg at the front door of the house while her sister, Lala, would go around to the back and whip the wash off the line. My grandmother said that for herself, she would never do such a thing because the gorgios punish you plenty if they catch you at it, and I’d better never do it or my father’s ghost would groan in his grave. But knowing my father as I did, I somehow think he would have appreciated this venture.
Ellen made a wonderfully quick recovery from my utter unhelpfulness, and soon she had conjured up a plan. We would send the apothecary to look for a hopelessly obscure item that would surely entail a trip to the storeroom and, while he was looking, we would grab the opium, leaving payment, of course, in an envelope, and run for the carriage, which would be left three blocks away by the subscription library. We spent the rest of the trip devising a suitable concoction to confound the apothecary.
Now, you might think this is just the sort of plan that was doomed to failure, but the spirits that want one to hunt werewolves on May Day were on our side. Ellen had read recently in an old herbal about “the white lillie, the roote of which makes an excellent plaister which bringeth the haire againe upon places which have beene burned or scalded.”
The apothecary was a cross-looking man with a dusty old wig and a red chin. He looked at us morosely when we asked for the white lillie and said we’d better not drink any of it because he thought it might be poisonous, and next time to have more sense than to go scaldin’ ourselves anyway. I could hardly believe our luck when he said he
did
have some for us, but it would take awhile for him to find it, yes it would. With dreary satisfaction, he warned us that it would take
quite
a while. When his shuffling footsteps faded into the basement, Ellen fairly leapt across the counter like an athlete at the Greek games, grabbed a bottle clearly labeled “Laudanum,” came back over the counter and left the envelope, bulging with money. It was Ellen’s last-minute inspiration to write “from a tormented addict” on the envelope. I don’t doubt that we were in the carriage and well on our way back to Edgehill before the apothecary discovered our crime. A most successful theft. Next to that, procuring a satchel and soaking it in wine was as easy as hopping on two feet.
We set out May Day morning two hours after the midnight church bells had rung in the summer and the May. The necessity to give any revelers who might be abroad the impression that we were girls from the village meant that we rode bareback, leaving our expensive saddles in the tack room. The night was warm and dry and the half-moon lent a silver cachet to the piles of clouds which floated between heaven and earth. Black shadows moved with the rustling leaves over our heads, and the smell of damp limestone rose from the ground. The night air tasted heavily sweet and intoxicating, like a strange potion. Twice as we wound our way uphill we heard revelers singing and laughing.
Their torches appeared first, flickering through the faraway branches like will-o’-the-wisps, and we took refuge in the shelter of the trees, and watched as they passed, their faces looking queerly distorted with hilarity and over-indulgence. It was ghostly to have them come so close without seeing us, and I had the feeling that if I were to ride in their path, they would step right through me. Then the clatter would fade in the distance, the torches would dwindle into sparks, and wink out in darkness, and we would have the path once again to ourselves.
The higher on the hillside we climbed, the quieter and darker it seemed to become. I had lived too much of my life in the woods to have any fear of these soft shadows and moving branches, and yet, I began to have an eerie feeling of being curiously unprotected. If I could have had Kory with me, or dear old Caesar, the mastiff—but as I have said, they would be too easy a clue to our identity. Poor Caesar had been left sitting grumpily in the stables tonight, waiting for Brockhaven to return from dinner and cards with his friend Dain, who was Lord Bredon, a young, unmarried landowner of rakish reputation whose land joined Brockhaven’s on the side opposite the boundaries shared with Isabella and Vincent.
I tried to ignore my uncertainty and felt for the hilt of the knife I had sheathed and attached to my sash. I knew how to throw it with some precision—it was an art Grandma and I used to practice on long summer evenings, those timeless times after the bottom rim of the sun has touched the horizon and before it dips below. Once in Ellen’s room, I had exhibited my skill, to her ecstatic delight, and there was a slash in the center of a chalked circle on her wall to testify. To hide it from Gwen’s doubtless disapproval, she had hung over it a sampler which read “I Come Not To Bring Peace, But A Sword.”
To be cheerful, I sang softly to Ellen in Romany, which is the best language for me when I feel uneasy. I taught her the words and our voices blended in the night; singing:
To the forest, go,
Dance with the fairies!
Hold the hand of time!
Feel the caress of Mother Earth…
Our first suspicion that the Palace of the Dead Arches (ruin) was haunted tonight by more than a malingering werewolf came as we crossed the stonework bridge into the oaks. We saw far distant in the woods a tower of red smoke reaching into the sky, patterned with scarlet cinders. Drawing on, we heard laughing, shouting, singing, the music of out-of-tune fiddles, screaming fifes, and a drum. We left the horses by the bridge and crept slowly closer to the ruin, Ellen dragging the satchel in both hands. Peeking through the tangle of brush around the clearing, we saw that we had come upon the scene of the May Day bonfire, the destination of the straggling groups that had passed us in the woods.
Blankets were spread everywhere on the ground. Some of the revelers were sitting; some, girls and men both, were dancing with wild abandon, black impassioned silhouettes against the leaping flames of the bonfire. To the rear, the freshly cut elm Maypole lay surrounded by five or six young people stripping off its last branches and winding its fifty-foot length with ribbons, herbs, and flowers. The workers sung May carols as they went about their task, the voices making a strangely harmonious counterpoint to the instrumental music being played by the group of musicians standing near. There was wine everywhere, in skins and bottles; we saw a man on the far side of the fire lift a flagon and pour the wine into his mouth as if it had been water and he lost in the desert for a fortnight without it. As I grew used to the brightness and jumping shadows, I found myself beginning to recognize faces: girls from the village, farmer’s sons, and here and there young men to whom I had been introduced at Lady Perscough’s soirée, every one of them looking drunker than a cork. Peregrine Absalm was playing some wild, drawn-out tune on the guitar, and near him John Lennox was wrapping festoons of flowers around and around a young, dark-haired girl whose gown was slipping perilously lower over her rounded shoulders.
I felt the pressure of Ellen’s hand against my arm. “Liza,” she whispered, “cast your eyes at
that
.” I looked in the direction she had discreetly indicated. Not thirty feet from where we were hidden was Robert, seated on a blanket with his arm around a sloe-eyed village beauty and his hands…
“I can’t bear to l-look,” murmured Ellen, holding her own hands over her eyes.
“Well,” I said in a sympathetic whisper, “if you can’t bear to look, then you had better close your fingers together, wouldn’t you say?”
Ellen’s fingers curled down into little fists on her cheeks. “I don’t know how she c-can stand to have him use her like that!”
I agreed dutifully and added for good measure, “I’m sure she must be cheap.”
“Oh, a slut!” Ellen agreed vehemently. We didn’t say anything for a minute or two, and then from Ellen came the inevitable. “I wish it was m-me.”
I tried to think of something encouraging. “He respects you too much to treat you so.”
“I suppose that’s it,” she said miserably and heaved a sigh. “If he did treat me l-like that, then everyone would t-try to make him marry me, which does, I th-think, tend to be a big deterrent. Even if he could bring himself t-to seduce me, a thought which I am sure has never c-crossed his mind, he hasn’t the least disposition t-to marry anyone, least of all me.”
From the path behind us came a crash and an incredible blare of bugles. A half dozen wild young men on horseback came into view, galloping their uncontrolled horses into the clearing through the place where we had concealed ourselves! Ellen and I clambered to our knees and fled like a pair of flushing pheasants. I ran blindly in my haste, not stopping to look back until my toe caught on a root and brought me up sharply.
I had taken cover by a large outcrop of limestone. The bonfire and its tumult had receded into the distance and my surroundings seemed strangely silent.
“Ellen?” I said, not whispering. My voice sounded so loud and sharp that I jumped. My only answer was the plaintive whistle of an owl. I stood still and then called again. This time I knew I was alone.
Hoping Ellen would come to me, I stood where I was, time like a demented spider spinning its cloying web about me. I waited until my nerves were aching and still there was yet no sign of her, so, hoping she would do the same, I slowly began to make my way back to the horses, or at least, made my way back to where I thought the horses were. I had no light, and the trees seemed to cut out the moonlight like overlapping bat’s wings. Bushes caught at my skirts and scraped my face. I knew I had gone too far and in the wrong direction when I came upon a horsetrack that I hadn’t seen before. The revelers were so far away that their noise was almost indistinguishable from the dry voice of the wind.
Then, terrifyingly, came the inhuman, crackling yowl I had once heard near the ruins, the time when Caesar had dashed into the woods to protect me. But Caesar was at Edgehill, and it was impossible to tell whether the diffuse howl was coming from two miles away or twenty yards. I drew the knife from inside my cloak.