The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi (39 page)

Swinburne gazed up at the treetops. “My hat! What a ruckus those ravens are making.”

Burton gave a distracted sound of agreement. He stopped and squatted, examining a patch of mud between the gravel and the wooden boards of the bridge.

“What have you found?” Swinburne asked.

“A partial print, made by a woman's bare foot. We're lucky we caught it. The rain will have it washed away soon enough.”

“That's rather incongruous—a barefooted woman out in this weather.”

“She was here last night, Algy. I saw her from my bedroom window. I thought I was dreaming a ghost. Apparently not. Hallo! There's Tom Honesty.” Burton raised his stick and called to the groundsman, who'd just come into view ahead of them. He was dressed in waterproofs, pushing a wheelbarrow filled with cut logs, which he lowered as the explorer and his companion crossed the bridge and approached him.

“Morning, sirs. Nasty weather.”

“Good morning. It is indeed. I say, Mr. Honesty, this path—where does it lead?”

“Past High Wood, sir. Through Ark Farm. Continues on to the old castle.”

“We can follow it through the farm?”

“Yes. All a part of the estate.”

“Thank you. I think we'll go and have a look at the ruins.”

“Mind how you go, sir. Walls. Unstable.” Honesty peered up at the flat layer of cloud. “Rain'll get worse, too.”

The groundsman hesitated.

“Is there something else, my man?” Burton asked.

“Haunted, sir.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The castle. It's haunted.”

“By whom?”

“Lady Blanche Arundell. Mistress of the castle when the Parliamentarians attacked it. 1643, that was. Her ghost walks the battlements.”

“I presume the current Miss Blanche was named after her.”

“That's right. Legend has it that the ghost also appears as a white owl whenever there's a death in the family.”

“I hope, then, that we don't see one. Good day to you, Mr. Honesty.”

Burton and Swinburne touched the brims of their hats and moved on. As they passed by the edge of the woods, the poet said, “Was your lady of the night the spook, do you think?”

“More likely it was Isabel.”

“Isabel? Really? What the dickens was she up to?”

“I have no idea,” Burton replied. “But as soon as I heard she had a restless night, I realised the figure I saw resembled her, though I glimpsed it only vaguely. She may have been sleepwalking. She spent her childhood on this estate, and in those fields—” he employed his cane to point ahead at the farm's pastures, “—there was often an encampment of Gypsies. She became rather fond of one of them, a woman named Hagar Burton, who predicted that Isabel would fall in love with a man who had the Burton surname.”

“Fate, irreversible and inscrutable,” Swinburne murmured.

“Perhaps. Of course, when Isabel and I met in Boulogne back in 'fifty-one, she immediately placed great stock in the childhood prophecy. For the past eight years, while I was overseas for extended periods, she drew much comfort from the idea that we were destined to be together. Unfortunately, earlier this year, she bumped into Hagar Burton again, and this time received an utterly preposterous but very upsetting forecast. The gypsy told Isabel that I would murder her while she was still wearing her wedding dress.”

“By James! How positively macabre!”

“If someone you've had faith in for a long time told you something you cannot give any credence to, would you not suffer a degree of nervous excitement?”

“And it's to that you ascribe her sleepwalking?”

“That and her being overwrought about the party. I think she came to these fields unconsciously seeking the gypsy.”

They climbed over a stile and followed the path along the edge of a sloping meadow in which sheep were sat with legs tucked under them and heads hunkered into shoulders. The animals regarded them nervously but didn't move, unwilling to abandon the dry patch beneath their bodies.

The rain fell harder.

They crossed another field, passed a small lake, and ascended a wooded bank toward Old Wardour Castle. The ancient edifice loomed over them, a massive hexagonal structure of grey stone. The Arundell family had acquired it in 1544 but a hundred years later it was partially destroyed during the Civil War. The southwestern corner was completely wrecked, its walls collapsed, what remained of them ragged, and the rest of the castle had been gutted and badly damaged. Deep cracks were visible in its moss-clad walls and piles of fallen masonry still lay all about.

There were ravens everywhere. Huddled against the downpour, they watched the two men approach, their eyes glittering blackly.

Burton and Swinburne passed beneath the remnant of a barbican and entered through an east-facing arch. They walked along a short passageway into a central courtyard upon which the rain was splashing noisily. The entrances to vaulted rooms lay to the left and right of them, and ahead a columned portal arched over the foot of a spiral staircase.

Swinburne gazed at the irregularly placed windows, the towering walls, the projecting stumps of lost floors and ceilings, and declared, “Rossetti would be transported into a state of ecstasy by this place. He'd have visions of white knights and fair damsels, of courtly manners and just crusades.” He twirled his umbrella and pronounced:

In the noble days were shown
Deeds of good knights many one,
Many worthy wars were done.

It was time of scath and scorn
When at breaking of the morn
Tristram the good knight was born.

Burton looked at a dark entrance beyond which steps led down into darkness. He shivered. “You and your fellow Pre-Raphaelites might realise the romance of it but I see dank cellars, cobwebby dungeons, and claustrophobic corridors. Let's get back to the house, Algy. I have little immunity to British rain, and ruins make me melancholic.”

“That's because you see in them the remorselessly degenerative attentions of Chronos,” Swinburne murmured as they turned and exited the castle. “Who, we now know, is not at all as we conceive him.”

An immense unkindness of ravens watched them depart.

A little over an hour later, they'd changed into dry clothes and were warming themselves by a fire in the manor's principal sitting room. They were joined by various of the other guests, including Doctor John Steinhaueser, who'd arrived while they were out and was now enjoying Blanche's undivided attention, despite the indignant presence of her husband.

Isabel was also with the party, looking wan and listless but stubbornly refusing Doctor Bird's insistence that she return to bed.

“Then humour me by drinking beef broth,” the physician advised her. “It'll help you regain your strength.”

“I concur,” Steinhaueser said. “And chamomile tea before bed, hmmm?”

Sadhvi interjected, “I can mix a herbal brew of slightly greater potency.”

“Good idea,” Bird responded. “You have to sleep more deeply, Isabel. We can't have any more somnambulism.”

“Ah,” Burton exclaimed. “So it's confirmed? You've been sleepwalking?”

Isabel nodded. “Yes, Dick. My feet are all cut up. It seems I walked barefoot on a gravel path in the gardens. I remember nothing of it.”

“Doctor Steinhaueser,” Blanche said, “may I call you Styggins?”

“By all means.”

Smythe Piggott cleared his throat.

“Styggins,” Blanche went on, “do you agree with George that my sister's symptoms are those of a headstrong and totally unreasonable young lady who steadfastly refuses to allow anyone a say in the arranging of her engagement party, who is deaf to all opinions other than her own, and who really is the silliest thing ever?”

“Um, I don't recall putting it quite like that!” Bird interrupted.

Steinhaueser laughed. “If you're suggesting that Isabel should allow others to take some of the responsibility, then you are entirely correct.”

Isabel raised her hands. “Enough, please! The work is done. I can afford to rest now.”

Burton took her hand and squeezed it. “See that you do. We've waited a long time for this. I'll be demanding many a dance from you come Saturday. I expect you to be your sparkling best, is that understood?”

“It is, Dick.”

The conversation moved on to other topics. Eliphas Levi was asked about his background, and talked at length about how his desire to be a Catholic priest proved incompatible with his radical beliefs, which had twice resulted in prison sentences. Uncle Renfric didn't approve of this revelation at all, and hobbled from the room muttering, “Charlatans, atheists, and criminals! Hah! I suppose I'll have the chapel to myself, at least!”

Swinburne was next to stoke the furnace of indignation. At lunchtime, he drank too much wine and mused that any flower probably enjoyed a closer relationship with the divine than even the most pious human could achieve. “What shrubbery doesn't pass the day in silent meditation upon the pure and joyous elegance of existence?” he pondered.

“The cognisance of God in all His glory is exclusive to Man, Mr. Swinburne,” Eliza Arundell objected. “That is why we have dominion.”

“Really, ma'am?” Swinburne drawled. “Do you include the Brahmin and the Muslim? What of the African tribesman or Australian aborigine?”

Mrs. Arundell bristled. “Outside the Church there is no salvation, sir. Those you mention will go to the everlasting fire unless, before the end of life, they have joined the one true Church of Jesus Christ, the Saviour.”

Swinburne threw up his arms and squealed, “My dear lady, if a faith, in order to feel secure in itself, must condemn anyone whose opinion differs from its own, then it is a faith with no faith at all!”

“Algy, please,” Burton growled. “This is neither the time nor the place.”

Mrs. Arundell pushed her chair back and stood, her back stiff. “For once, I'm in agreement with my future son-in-law. If you feel it appropriate to question the beliefs held by your hosts, sir, then you are not a gentleman. I insist that you hold your tongue. If you cannot, you will oblige me by leaving this house.”

With that, she turned and stalked from the dining room.

“I say!” Swinburne muttered. “I never claimed to be a gentleman.”

“Pretend to be, lad,” Monckton Milnes advised. “Pretend to be.”

After lunch, the remaining Arundells made their excuses and left their wayward guests to their own devices.

Isabel returned to her bed. Isabella Beeton, Sister Raghavendra, and Lallah Bird settled in the drawing room.

Swinburne found a desk and set to work on his poem,
Tristan and Isolde
. Monckton Milnes and Levi buried themselves in the depths of a philosophical discussion. Sam Beeton and Doctor Bird played billiards. Burton chatted with Steinhaueser.

The afternoon passed, the rain pattered against the windows, and at seven o'clock everyone reconvened for dinner. Mrs. Arundell kept the length of the table between herself and Swinburne. Monckton Milnes assiduously regulated the poet's drinking and Burton was at his sociable best, charming the gathering with tall tales of Africa and, quite remarkably, managing to keep those tales clean and palatable. Isabel, too—having napped for four hours—was effervescent and witty, which prompted Sam Beeton to say to Burton during the post-prandial smoking, “You two belong together, that much is obvious to all.”

“I never felt I belonged anywhere until I met her,” Burton replied. “Now I feel I can belong any place at all, provided I am with her.”

Beeton smiled and nodded. “I understand exactly what you mean, old man. Why, before I married, I was—Good Lord! What was that?”

A loud scream had echoed through the manor.

“
Les femmes!
” Eliphas Levi exclaimed.

Without another word, the men crashed out of the smoking room and raced along the hallway to the drawing room, where they found the women gathered around Lallah Bird, who'd apparently swooned onto a chaise longue.

“Stand back, please,” John Steinhaueser commanded. “Allow Doctor Bird to attend his wife.”

“What happened?” Burton asked.

“I don't know,” Isabella Beeton answered. “She opened the curtain—” she pointed toward a nearby window, “—to see whether the moon had pierced the clouds, then screamed and fell back in a dead faint.”

“It was a face,” Blanche said. “I saw it, too. A terrible face!”

Smythe Piggott moved to his wife's side and put a comforting arm around her.

“I need to get smelling salts from my bag,” George Bird muttered.

“Here, I have some. I always carry them with me,” Steinhaueser said, handing a small bottle to his colleague. He turned as a footman entered the room. “Would you fetch a glass of brandy, please?”

The clockwork figure clanged its assent and hastened away.

Burton moved to the window and looked out. The rain was still falling and the night was pitch dark. He couldn't see a thing.