Midwinter Nightingale (9 page)

“So old Marty Stokes-Belvoir—British ambassador in Muscovy, old schoolmate of mine—so he says. No modern infantry corps should be without em.”

“Electric boots,” repeated Jorinda, a shade of doubt in her voice. “What exactly
is
electricity, Granda?”

“Just a natural force—knocks trees over in storms— produced by friction,” grunted her grandfather. “Find it up there in the sky—two clouds thumpin' together. That's all I know. Rub a lump of amber on a piece of woollen cloth—makes scraps of paper fly about.”

“I don't see how that can make you walk faster,” argued Jorinda, munching a piece of toast, which she had spread with anchovy paste. “And suppose you are on horseback?”

“Oh, you couldn't
ride.
No, no, that would never do, give your wretched mount a wicked shock. But the boots will be just the article for foot soldiers—get them
across country at the devil of a pace. Save issuing them with horses.”

Jorinda's eyes sparkled with interest.

“Which side are you on, Granda? The Burgundians? Or the United Saxons'?”

“Hold your tongue, miss! Walls have ears. And it's none of your business.”

“Granda, it's common knowledge in Bath that if the Burgundians get into power, they are going to ban foxhunting.”

“What?”

“Because hunting makes such a mess of the vineyards.”

“Who says so?”

“Everybody. So, which are you—?”

“Hold your tongue, I said!” Sir Thomas, dangerously purple, opened one of his last two letters and stared at it in furious perplexity “What the flaming blazes is
this?
Knights Templar of Palestina? 'Chain of heroic love and good luck around the globe. All sanctified by His Reverence the Ninth in Succession to the Throne of the World Soul given on the fourth day of revelation at the New Olympus.' What the
deuce
is all this driveling balderdash, may I ask?”

Jorinda jumped up from her chair and went to read over her grandfather's shoulder.

“Oh, it is one of these chain letters, Granda. I know people at school who have had them. Yes, yes, you see, it says you must send it on within twenty-one days, and if
you do that, some tremendous piece of good fortune will come your way.”

“Send it on where? Send it to 'whom?” demanded Sir Thomas.

“Oh, to anybody you choose. Send it to friends”—or to enemies, Jorinda was on the point of adding, but she caught Gribben's eye, gave him a wicked grin and slid her hand over her mouth.

“And if I don't send it on, but drop it in the fire, as such a parcel of trumpery foolishness deserves?” snapped Sir Thomas.

“Let's see, umm …” Jorinda studied the page of small, densely packed handwriting with a frown creasing her black brows and, after a moment, said, “Oh, well, some misfortune will happen to you then; it doesn't tell you what.”

“So who in the world sent me this piece of rubbish?”

“Goodness only knows, Granda. One of your friends, I daresay—somebody who wishes you well.” A glint in Jorinda's eye suggested that there was plenty of choice, but she made no suggestion. “I'll help you reply to it, Granda. It will be no trouble at all. Have you any paper? I'll do the twenty copies they say you have to send on. It will be good practice for me; Miss Gravestone kept saying that my handwriting was not sufficiently ladylike.”

“Twenty copies? I'm supposed to make twenty copies of this total rubbish?”

In his outrage at such a suggestion, Sir Thomas nearly drank off the boiling balloon glass of brandy. It was
deftly fielded by Gribben, who slid it out of reach and substituted the coffee cup.

“Now, now, sir! Best you take it easy for a minute on the settle, until hounds have met. I'll call you in good time before they draw off; don't you fret your head.”

But Sir Thomas was reading his last letter, and its contents caused him to explode into a seething incandescence of rage that made his previous vexation seem no more than a mild murmur.

“What's this, what is this? That pestilent boy—can I never have a day's peace from news about his horrible doings?”

“Oh, dear, Granda, is it about Lot? I'm very sorry if he has done something to upset you. What is it now?”

“That brother of yours—oh, very well, half brother— it's not sufficient that he's been expelled from that school of his, Fogrum Hall, for outrageous behavior and burning the headmaster's book—”

“Burning his book—oh, yes, he did say something—” Jorinda began, then clapped her hand over her mouth.

“Some book the fella, Pentecost, wrote, was writing— ask
me
, headmasters ought to be teaching, not writing books; however, that's neither here nor there—your half brother took and burned it. Not only that, but now, it seems, he's been and gone and
bought
the place, Fogrum Hall, so he can't be turned out. What next?”

“Bought
it?” Jorinda exclaimed in a tone of slightly overdone astonishment. “How could he buy a whole school?”

“That perditioned father of his—yours—came out of jail, as you may have heard.” Jorinda nodded. Her eyes were very bright and she had trouble holding her tongue.

“Well, it seems there is a law—Hogben's Law—prevents prisoners in the Tower from making use of any funds they may have in banks—but that don't apply once they are let out, parently Anyhow, it seems your father, Baron Magnus, seems he has assets, estates, overseas in Midsylvania. Settled a sum on your brother Lothar, bought up Fogrum Hall. And the two of them are living there.”

“Well, is not that convenient! Are you not delighted? Now Lot and I have somewhere to live and we need not trouble you anymore,” Jorinda suggested innocently.

“I'm still your guardian till you are of age, miss!” he growled. “And a pesky thankless task it is, let me tell you!”

“Oh, Granda!” She twitched his wig aside and planted another kiss on the red-hot brow. “You know that you love us, really”

“Not that diabolical half brother of yours, I don't! I don't love him at all. He's no kin of mine, I thank my stars. The sooner I'm quit of him, the better I'll be pleased. I wish the foul fiend would carry him to Tophet.”

“But, Granda, if my papa is now so rich from estates in Midsylvania, have you not considered he might be of some
help
in the Saxon uprising? Or is it the Burgundian?”

“Fiddle-de-dee, girl!”

But just the same, despite her grandfather's snub, Jorinda observed a thoughtful gleam come into his eye.

The kitchen of Edge Place was a modern installation; that is to say, it had been improved by Sir Thomas's wife, Theodora, after their marriage fifty years earlier. The lady came from the ancient Palaeologos family and could trace her forebears clean back to the tenth century, when they were Highnesses of Byzantium. She wished her food to be properly cooked and demanded a high-class Roman cuisine requiring charcoal braziers instead of an open fire in the middle of the kitchen. When she had come to Edge Place, the stable was next door to the kitchen, screened off only by a wooden partition, and sparks frequently set fire to this. Theodora had the kitchen moved upstairs to the living quarters and insisted on a granite sink, cupboards and a table made from a four-legged tree fork with a slab of oak the shape and thickness of a mill wheel jammed between its boughs. There were also wooden stools, for the comfort and respite of the kitchen workers, and on a couple of these, eating oatcakes spread with honey and drinking flagons of mead, were Mrs. Smidge and Nurse Mara.

“Vegetablarian now, is it?” said Mrs. Smidge. “That won't last. Do you mind when she wouldn't eat any food that had wheat in it?”

“Ay, and before that she wouldn't touch honey because she said it was robbing the bees?”

“And the same caper with eggs and hens before that?”

“And when she was in love with Dr. Fribble she would only wash in water that had been boiled?”

“That was one of the quickest. Came to a stop when he had to lance a boil on her backside.”

“And the dentist? Remember the dentist?”

“Ah. She brushed her teeth five times a day for three weeks.”

“With a shredded birch twig.”

“What brought this one on, then?”

“She fancied a young fellow on the train. He saved her from a mouse.”

At this the two ladies laughed so heartily that they were in danger of spilling their mead. “But where does the vegetablarianism come in?”

“Seems he was one. Offered our good game pie, turned up his nose. Only ate an apple. And then, lord! Didn't he kick up a dust when he saw Old Sir's sheep on their way to Marshport. You'd a thought they were his aunts.”

“Fancy! What did he do?”

“Turned them loose.”

“The sheep?”

“Ay. Every blessed one. Excepting them that had died already. Went a-capering off with the whole clutch of them following him like—like sheep.”

“Well, I'll be bothered!” Mrs. Smidge, the daughter of a shepherd, was flabbergasted at this. “Where did they go?”

“Dear knows. It came on to rain cats and dogs so you couldn't see.”

“What did
she
say?”

“Fair dumbstruck, she was. I never see her so took. Went quiet. Quiet as a railing. Didn't say a word all afternoon. All the way to you-know-where.”

“What happened there?”

“I wasn't asked in.” Both ladies raised their brows.

“This one won't last,” foretold Mrs. Smidge. “D'you mind when she was so took with the 'woodman's boy?”

“Ah. And he wouldn't stop his work to carve her a toy boat.” The ladies wagged their heads at the shocking memory.

“Well, I'd best go and put away her things.” Nurse Mara drained the last drop of mead. “Is there any company expected? That's the first thing she'll ask—after deciding
not
to stop at you-know-where.”

Mrs. Smidge shook her head. “Old Sir's fallen out with Lord Scarswood. Boundary troubles. And he was the only neighbor who'd come near the place after Miss Zoe died. As you know.”

Nurse Mara sighed. “Eh, dear. I wonder what'll happen now, with
him
coming out of pokey. And that gashly boy. He and his dad bought up Fogrum Hall. Imagine!”

“They did?”

“They did. Lot said it had been his mum's house; now it was hisn, and he'd turn out all the boys and masters and live as he pleased. That's where she went last night.
Sent me to a lodging house. But she didn't get the welcome she was hoping for. Eh, deary me! She was out of there like a pat of butter on a griddle!”

“You'd never think that boy's mum was Lady A.”

“No, you would not. She was a sweet lady”

They shook their heads regretfully.

“How did Lady A ever come to marry His Majesty? When she was married to
him
already and had a boy by him, even?”

“Null and void,” said Nurse Mara impressively “That's what His Reverence the archbishop said her first marriage was. On account of Baron Magnus being a you-know-what. Marriages to such as them don't count. His Nibs said.”

“Just the same,” Mrs. Smidge said doubtfully, “it seems a queer come-out to me. Even more so with King Dick being king. And he was only prince of Wales then.”

“Ah, but a king can do as he likes. And he
did
like Lady Adelaide. His first missus was dead, remember. It was love at first sight with Lady A. And with her too, bless her loving heart.
Her
first marriage had been none of her choosing; it was her pa and ma done that to her. She'd never have got spliced to that monster.”

“Was that really why King Jim had him sent to the Tower? To get him out of the road?”

Nurse Mara shook her head vigorously. “Never! King Jim ud not stoop to such a mean trick as that. He was a gent through and through. And so is King Dick.”

“They say he's mortal sick now.” Mrs. Smidge sighed.
“Say what you like. They can send Miss Jorinda to school. They can teach her ladylike ways, but with such a dad, who's to know how that one is going to turn out? Her and that brother both—'tis a terrible unchancy strain. I'd not wish it passed into
my
family.”

Nurse Mara nodded. “You'd not believe, even if I told you (which wild horses wouldn't drag it from my lips), the things I heard from my sis about the hard times poor Lady A had with
him
—and her only fifteen years old when her pa and ma married her off to him. Many's the time, my sis told me, she thought the poor lamb would be better off married to a wild wolf. Temper! She never saw aught to equal it. And carryings-on. Like with Miss Zoe. And when in the end Lady A decided to cut and run— oh, my word! When she told him she was leaving …”

Mrs. Smidge was big-eyed with curiosity

“What happened? Did he throw a—one of
those?”

Nurse Mara wagged her head portentously.

“One was just coming on, so his man told my sis, when His Majesty's officers come to the house and arrested him and took him off to the Tower.”

“What happened there?”

“Oh, they had a passel of doctors with herbal drops and inhalers and sufflecators to, like, nip the trouble afore it got too far.”

“But now he's come out. …”

“Ah. And just as bad as when he went in, so it's said. …”

slow progress, leading his mare through wet woodland. The ground was not completely flooded, but so drenched with rain that Magpie sank up to her fetlocks in the soggy soil at every step, and the little sharp hooves of the sheep cut even deeper; they had followed eagerly where Magpie had led, but their pace was beginning to falter and the light was beginning to fail.