Just as suddenly as it had begun, all at once the horse was free of their entanglement. Elizabeth lay still, listening to the retreating hoofbeats, willing the animal and its rider to leave, to hurt her no more.
When the hoofbeats had been swallowed by the night, Elizabeth moaned and forced herself to roll to her knees. The action assaulted her mangled heel, and some violated muscle in her right shoulder protested with a wrench. Her vision swam, and she was aware of warmth on her forehead—blood, no doubt. She knelt, gasping at the multiple pains, unable to move, unable to resume her former position, until that wave of agony passed, replaced by a less acute torment. She lifted her face from the dust of the road and looked at the smoldering ruins of the building, toward light and heat. She tried to crawl toward it.
But the pain was too much, her shock too deep. Her last conscious thought was that she was falling, although she could not imagine why or how, but then her vision and her mind both went mercifully blank.
Chapter 2
Gideon Whitbury, the fourth Marquess of Greyleigh, stood up from his kneeling position at the side of the prostrate body and announced in a quiet tone, "The woman is dead."
Talbot Wallace, Alderman of the small village of Severn's Well, nodded in sad agreement. "Like the others we've found." He kicked at the grass with one booted foot. "This makes nineteen bodies." His voice, too, was little more than a whisper, out of respect for the dead, and because he was just a little afraid of the man who had awakened him in the predawn hours.
They might as well have waited until clear morning's light, Talbot reflected, for the alarm that the asylum was burning had been raised too late to be of any help. All they could do now was recover bodies and keep the smoldering ruins from leaping back into active flame and setting the surrounding woods afire.
Talbot wondered how it was that Lord Greyleigh had been awake at such a godforsaken hour, to have even spotted the fire ... but Greyleigh's household was a strange one, and odd hours were only in keeping. The master of Greyleigh did as he pleased, and apparently this night it had pleased him to remain awake and clothed all night long.
Talbot Wallace knew what Mrs. Wallace would say to that, and her with a knowing look: "'Tis the devil who dances at night."
Talbot cleared his throat and shook his head, as though to drive out such superstitious thinking. He scented the air, a grim mix of burnt wood and other things he did not like to think about. "Do you suppose every last one of 'em in the asylum perished?" he asked.
The already grim set to Lord Greyleigh's mouth grew even more taut, and for a moment a dark shadow crossed his features. "What else is to be expected, given that half the inmates were no doubt strapped or chained to their beds?"
Talbot nodded solemnly. 'They found the warder and the two night keepers, they're fairly certain. All three dead."
Lord Greyleigh lifted his gaze to glance around, but if he sought for signs of life amongst the smoldering embers, he sought in vain.
Talbot, too, glanced toward the ruined, still smoking remains of the building, and shuddered. The nearness of dawn did naught to relieve the pall that flame and misfortune had brought to the place, and in fact only lent a ghoulish gray shroud of melancholy. A half-dozen of Lord Greyleigh's servants mixed with as many townsfolk roamed over the property, searching for someone or something to rescue. They searched in silence, with no shouts to summon help or raise hopes.
In half an hour the lanterns carried by the would-be rescuers would not be necessary, for dawn would light the scene, but for now the weave and bob of their light was the only sign of life among the ruins.
Talbot turned back to the body at his feet: it was obvious from her simple homespun night rail and her unkempt hair that she had resided here, had been one of the "lucky" asylum patients who had not been constrained within her room. Poor thing, he thought, to have lived and died in such a place.
"I wonder if there's anyone left alive to tell us the names of these poor souls," he murmured aloud, worrying his lower lip between thumb and forefinger. And who was to pay for the interments—the village council over which Talbot sat would be wanting to know that. There were so many dead, nineteen at least, so many to bury.
Talbot looked to Lord Greyleigh, but declined to ask the most powerful and richest of Severn's Well's inhabitants to donate the funds for a mass funeral. It was not so much that Talbot feared the master of Greyleigh . . . well, truth be told, that was it. But unlike others, it was not Lord Greyleigh's physical appearance that troubled Talbot—although Greyleigh was the oddest-looking bird to have ever resided in Greyleigh Manor. The man's hair was so blond it was nearly white, and worn long and often in a queue, in the fashion of twenty and more years past, an odd style for a young man closer to twenty than thirty. At first glance one could be excused for thinking he powdered his hair, which no young buck of fashion did these days, but at second glance one discovered the pale color was all Greyleigh's own. Yet, if that warlock's mane were trimmed away, the man would appear normal enough—except for his eyes.
The man's eyes were penetratingly clear; they were colorless ... but, no, that wasn't true. In bright summer's light they were seen to be a very pale blue. However, in any other light they were the palest of greys, making the pupil stand out— some said like a black well that swallowed all light. In candlelight, all hint of softer color was gone from the irises, and one felt as if one stared at a kind of silver sheen, a hint of color that made one think of steel just below a layer of water. They were ghostly eyes—there was no better way to describe them. And there was no denying that when Lord Greyleigh leveled his gaze upon a person, it made that person want to look away in discomfort, as if the man held up a looking glass to one's very soul. Others less kind said it was like looking into a bottomless well, one that led straight to Hades, and who could blame them for turning away from such a view?
Yet, despite the townspeople's inclination otherwise, it was not Lord Greyleigh's appearance that took the steel from Talbot Wallace's spine at the thought of asking Greyleigh to pay expenses. It was that the last few times Talbot had approached their village's grandest resident, Lord Greyleigh had icily denied his simple request. There had been something like frosty rage just underlying the calm tone Lord Greyleigh was usually so adept at maintaining, some boiling pot of emotion barely held in check that Talbot was loathe to disturb further. That rage had been out of all proportion to Talbot's request that Greyleigh cease employing itinerants for completing his pet tasks about the village and his own property.
The request had been hardly unreasonable, given that two murders had occurred this year, and both of them had been suspected—if not proven—to have been executed by one of the wanderers whom Lord Greyleigh employed. A hiatus from the constant influx of strangers to their community, that was all the council had wanted—but Greyleigh had coldly replied he would hire whom he liked, and when, and the devil take the council.
No one even dared to say aloud what all of them half feared—that the violence that had come into their little village was not from an outsider at all, but from within their own ranks. No one dared to voice the opinion that Lord Greyleigh, he of the white-blond mane of hair and the ghostly eyes, might have inherited a terrible sickness from his mama. Certainly there was no proof of such a thing—only fear and old rumors and an increasingly stern visage that Greyleigh displayed to the world. That is, when he bothered to be social at all.
And now there was this terrible affair of a fire, and all these bodies to be buried, and records to be found if they hadn't burnt up.
Greyleigh would certainly not lend one penny to rebuild the asylum, that was a certainty. He had long since made it clear that he wished the place closed and abandoned. It was well known that he had detested the structure ever since the tender age of eight or so, when he had visited his own poor deranged mama there. He would be glad, no doubt, to see the few remaining scorched walls torn down and never replaced, even though his mama was dead and buried these two months past.
The asylum burning was a shame, say what you would, for not even a quarter of the patients had been in the "difficult-to-manage" wing. Most of them had been mild enough, certainly harmless even if they needed to be confined to keep them from wandering away.
Truth is, the community would feel the loss of income the asylum had engendered, for there had been jobs to be had there, as warder, as keepers, as stable lads, and groundskeepers. Also, the asylum had provided custom, for the inmates had needed to be fed and clothed, however humbly. A lucky few had family who had called upon them occasionally, and those good people had brought coin to the local inns and taverns and craftspeople. Yes, the loss of the asylum would be felt, in one form or another, by the entire community.
So if Lord Greyleigh opposed the rebuilding of the asylum, could perhaps the place be rebuilt in another function? Not a hospital, with its attendant diseases and death—but a guild-house perhaps. The Needlemakers were said to desire a larger hall for their growing concerns....
"Mr. Wallace." Lord Greyleigh interrupted Talbot's municipal thoughts for the future.
"My lord?" Talbot answered at once, responding to the tone of authority.
Lord Greyleigh indicated the oval of grass upon which they stood. "I said, this is as good a place as any to bring all the bodies, that we might perhaps begin to determine who is who—" he said, only to suddenly go very still.
He did not move, except for his eyes, which cast about in the darkness, searching. Talbot turned to gaze in the same direction, until he saw what caused Greyleigh to make a small, angry sound from between his teeth.
There, through the gloom, was the outline of a man appearing oddly stooped, until Talbot realized that the man stood in a ditch. The man, his face lost to shadows, held an arm pinned between his knees. Obviously a body must lie at his feet in the ditch, only a portion of its arm visible over the grassy edge. The man worked frantically at something—Talbot realized the man struggled to remove a ring from an ungloved hand—but the stranger was not so intent that he forgot to glance suspiciously about.
When he did, Talbot did not know the man but recognized raw panic as it crossed the man's features, especially since the man gave a cry of alarm, dropped the inert hand he held, and turned and ran.
Lord Greyleigh growled again, the sound instantly catapulting Talbot into action, and both men sprang forward in pursuit.
It was too late, however, for the man plunged into the trees that surrounded the asylum property. Talbot thrashed into the woods after the man, as Lord Greyleigh did without evident consideration for his grey silk waistcoat or polished boots—but there was no light. Within five steps into the snagging brush it was impossible to make out any trail or obvious sign of the man's passing. The would-be thief was gone from sight, and within seconds from hearing as well, the sounds of his twig-snapping retreat swallowed by the night.
"He was raiding one of the bodies," Greyleigh declared, his tone incensed despite puffing a bit from his exertions.
"The scoundrel!" Talbot acknowledged with feeling. His own breathing was more labored, but then he did not cut so fine a figure as did Lord Greyleigh.
Both men worked their way free of the woods, brushing at their coats and trousers to remove leaves and debris.
"As soon as it's light, I'll have members of the Watch out after him," Talbot stated.
Lord Greyleigh nodded, even if he did not appear particularly hopeful that any lawmen would actually apprehend the villain. He moved back to the ditch, looking down at the body there. "A woman. We may as well move this body—" he began, but he was interrupted by a moan.
"Good gad," Lord Greyleigh cried, stepping down at once into the muck of the ditch. "This woman. She lives yet."
"She's alive?" Talbot echoed, moving to stare down at a pale white face half covered with a splattered dark pattern that even in the dim light looked ominous. He felt stunned, having given up any hope of finding any of the inmates alive.
Greyleigh pointed at the woman's head. "You take her shoulders, I will take her legs. We must get her out of this gutter."
The words galvanized Talbot into action. He reached down, as did Lord Greyleigh, and with hands under her arms and legs, they awkwardly brought her up from the ditch to gently lay her on the thin grass lane that ran between the dirt of the road and the ditch.
Lord Greyleigh went down on one knee and put a hand to her throat. "I feel a heartbeat, and it is fairly strong. And she is breathing. Wallace, fetch one of those lanterns."
Talbot did as he was told, quickly returning with lantern in hand, its golden glow making no difference in the coloration of the woman's hair, which was as inky a black in the light as it had been in shadow. "She's filthy," Talbot noted, meaning the mud from the ditch, but now also seeing that blood spotted her face, her cloak, her arm, the bodice of her gown. "Is she still bleeding?"
"No. I think the cuts look worse than they are. Look here, these wounds were not had from the fire," Lord Greyleigh pronounced. "See this bruise by her eye? And these cuts were made with some manner of blade, unless I miss my guess."
Greyleigh stood, removing his coat. His look was tight, even harsh, and Talbot thought, as he had more than once before, that this was not a man in whom one would seek to provoke ire. What was my lord thinking? He appeared angry—but, then, he often appeared angry, especially of late. "Hold my coat," he ordered now, giving no hint of what thoughts formed behind his strange, light eyes.
Talbot took the proffered coat, and then watched in some surprise as Lord Greyleigh stooped to take the woman up in his arms. "Put my coat over her, for warmth," Greyleigh instructed, his steady gaze brooking no questions or comments.
"Are you taking her to your home, my lord?" Talbot dared to ask anyway, because it was his duty as senior alderman to see to the well-being of those who resided within the confines of Severn's Well, including the inmates from the asylum as well.