When Maidens Mourn Page 11

  “I have no intention of reporting you to the Admiralty, if that’s what you’re worried about,” said Sebastian.

  “I didn’t kill her,” said Arceneaux suddenly, his voice rough with emotion. “You must believe me. I had no reason to kill any of them.”

  Some might consider unrequited love a very common motive for murder. But Sebastian kept that observation to himself. “Who do you think would have a reason to kill them?”

  Arceneaux hesitated, the wind ruffling the soft brown curls around his face. He said, “How much do you know about Camlet Moat?”

  “I know that Miss Tennyson believed it the lost location of Arthur’s Camelot. Do you?”

  “I will admit that when I first heard the suggestion, it seemed laughable. But in the end I found her arguments profoundly compelling. The thing is, you see, our image of Camelot has been molded by the writings of the troubadours. We picture it as a fairy-tale place—a grand medieval castle and great city of grace and beauty. But the real Camelot—if it existed at all—would have been far less grand and magnificent. There is no denying that Camlet Moat’s name is indeed a recent corruption of Camelot. And it is an ancient site with royal connections that remained important down through the ages.”

  “One wouldn’t think so to look at the island today.”

  “That’s because the medieval castle that once stood there was completely razed by the Earl of Essex in the fifteenth century, its stones and timbers sold to help finance repairs to the Earl’s family seat at Hertford.”

  Sebastian frowned. “I thought the site belonged to the Crown.”

  “It has, off and on. But it was for several centuries in the possession of the descendants of Sir Geoffrey de Mandeville.”

  Every schoolboy in England was familiar with Sir Geoffrey de Mandeville, one of the most notorious of the robber barons spawned by the chaos of the twelfth century, when William the Conqueror’s grandchildren Matilda and Stephen did their best to turn England into a wasteland in their battle for the throne. Accumulating a band of black knights, de Mandeville pillaged and looted from Cambridge to Ely to the Abby of Ramsey; the treasure he amassed in the course of his bloody career—a king’s ransom in gold and coins and precious gems—had reportedly never been found.

  “There is a legend,” said Arceneaux, “that de Mandeville buried his treasure at Camlet Moat. They say that when he was attained for high treason, he hid on the island in a hollow oak tree overhanging a well. The tree broke beneath his weight, and he fell into the well and drowned. Now his ghost haunts the island, guarding his treasure and reappearing to bring death to anyone who would dare lay hands upon it.”

  “Don’t tell me you believe this nonsense?”

  Arceneaux smiled. “No. But that doesn’t mean that other people don’t.”

  “Are you suggesting Gabrielle Tennyson might have been killed by a treasure hunter?”

  “I know they had difficulty with someone digging at the site during the night and on Sundays too. The workmen would frequently arrive in the morning to find great gaping holes at various points around the island. She was particularly disturbed by some damage she discovered last week. She suspected the man behind it was Winthrop’s own foreman—a big, redheaded rogue named Rory Forster. But she had no proof.”

  “She thought whoever was digging at the site was looking for de Mandeville’s treasure?”

  The Frenchman nodded. “My fear is that if she and the lads did decide to go up there again last Sunday, they may have chanced upon someone looking for de Mandeville’s treasure. Someone who…” His voice trailed away, his features pinched tight with the pain of his thoughts.

  “When you went with Miss Tennyson to the site, how did you get there?”

  “But I didn’t—” he began, only to have Sebastian cut him off.

  “All right, let’s put it this way: If you had visited the site last Sunday, how would you have traveled there?”

  The Frenchman gave a wry grin. “In a hired gig. Why?”

  “Because it’s one of the more puzzling aspects of this murder—Bow Street has yet to discover how Miss Tennyson traveled up to the moat the day she was killed. You have no ideas?”

  Arceneaux shook his head. “I assumed she must have gone there in the company of whoever killed her.”

  As she did with you, Sebastian thought. Aloud, he said, “I’m curious: Why bring this tale to me? Why not take what you know to Bow Street?”

  A humorless smile twisted Arceneaux’s lips. “Have you seen today’s papers? They’re suggesting Gabrielle and the boys were killed by a Frenchman. Just this morning, two of my fellow officers were attacked by a mob calling them child murderers. They might well have been killed if a troop of the Third Volunteers hadn’t chanced to come along and rescue them.”

  They drew up at the gate, where Tom was waiting with the curricle. Sebastian said, “What makes you so certain I won’t simply turn around and give your name to the authorities?”

  “I am told you are a man of honor and justice.”

  “Who told you that?”

  The Frenchman’s cheeks hollowed and he looked away.

  Sebastian said, “You took a risk, approaching me; why?”

  Arceneaux brought his gaze back to Sebastian’s face. He no longer looked like a young scholar but like a soldier who had fought and seen men die, and who had doubtless also killed. “Because I want whoever did this dead. It’s as simple as that.”

  The two men’s gazes met and held. They had served under different flags, perhaps even unknowingly faced each other on some field of battle. But they had more in common with each other than with those who had never held the bloodied, shattered bodies of their dying comrades in their arms, who had never felt the thrum of bloodlust coursing through their own veins, who had never known the fierce rush of bowel-loosening fear or the calm courage that can come from the simple, unshrugging acceptance of fate.

  “The authorities will figure out who you are eventually,” said Sebastian.

  “Yes. But it won’t matter if you catch the man who actually did kill them, first.” The Frenchman bowed, one hand going to his hip as if to rest on the hilt of a sword that was no longer there. “My lord.”

  Sebastian stood beside his curricle and watched the Frenchman limp away toward the river, the scruffy brown and black dog trotting contentedly at his side.

  Sebastian’s first inclination was to dismiss the man’s tale of ghosts, robber barons, and buried treasure as just so much nonsense. But he had a vague memory of Lovejoy saying something about a local legend linking some ancient Templar knight to the moat.

  “Was that the Frog ye been lookin’ for, gov’nor?” asked Tom.

  Sebastian leapt up into the curricle’s high seat. “He says he is.”

  “Ye don’t believe ’im?”

  “When it comes to murder, I’m not inclined to believe anyone.” Sebastian gathered his reins, then paused to look over at his tiger. “Do you believe in ghosts, Tom?”

  “Me? Get on wit ye, gov’nor.” The boy showed a gap-toothed grin. “Ye sayin’ that Frog is a ghost?”

  “No. But I’m told some people do believe Camlet Moat is haunted.”

  “By the lady what got ’erself killed there?”

  “By a twelfth-century black knight.”

  Tom was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Do you believe in ghosts, gov’nor?”

  “No.” Sebastian turned the chestnuts’ heads toward the road north. “But I think it’s time we took another look at Camelot.”

  Chapter 19

  Alistair St. Cyr, Earl of Hendon and Chancellor of the Exchequer, slammed his palm down on the pile of crude broadsheets on the table before him. “I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all. These bloody things are all over town. And I tell you, they’re having more of an effect than one could ever have imagined. Why, just this morning I overheard two of my housemaids whispering about King Arthur. Housemaids! We’ve heard this nonsense before, about how the time h
as come for the ‘once and future king’ to return from the mists of bloody Avalon and save England from both Boney and the House of Hanover. But this is different. This is more than just a few yokels fantasizing over their pints down at the local. Someone is behind this, and if you ask me, it’s Napoléon’s agents.”

  Jarvis drew his snuffbox from his pocket and calmly flipped it open with one practiced finger. “Of course it’s the work of Napoléon’s agents.”

  Hendon looked at him from beneath heavy brows. “Do you know who they are?”

  “I believe so.” Jarvis lifted a pinch of snuff to one nostril and sniffed. “But at this point, it’s more than a matter of simply closing down some basement printing press. The damage has been done; this appeal to a messianic hero from our glorious past has resonated with the people and taken on a life of its own.”

  “How the bloody hell could something like this have aroused such a popular fervor?”

  “I suppose one could with justification blame the success of the pulpit. When people fervently believe the Son of God will return someday to save them, it makes it easier to believe the same of King Arthur.”

  “That’s blasphemy.”

  “I’m not talking about religion. I’m talking about credulity and habits of thought.”

  Hendon swung away to go stand beside the window and stare down at the Mall. “I’ll confess that at first I found it difficult to credit that there are people alive today who could actually believe that Arthur will return, literally. I had supposed these pamphlets were simply tapping into the population’s yearning for an Arthur-like figure to appear and save England. But an appalling number of people do seem to genuinely believe Arthur is out there right now on the Isle of Avalon, just waiting for the right moment to come back.”

  Jarvis raised another pinch of snuff and inhaled with a sniff. “I fear the concept of metaphor is rather above the capacity of the hoi polloi.”

  Hendon turned to look at him over one shoulder. “So what is to be done?”

  Jarvis closed his snuffbox and tucked it away with a bland smile. “We’re working on that.”

  Sebastian had expected to find the moat overrun with parties of searchers eager for the chance to collect the reward posted by Gabrielle Tennyson’s brother. Instead, he reined in beneath the thick, leafy canopy at the top of the ancient embankment to look out over an oddly deserted scene, the stagnant water disturbed only by a quick splash and the disappearing ripples left in the wake of some unseen creature. He could hear the searchers, but only faintly, the thickness of the wood muffling the distant baying of hounds and the halloos of the men beating the surrounding countryside. Here, all was quiet in the August heat.

  “Gor,” whispered Tom. “This place gives me the goosies, it does.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts.”

  “This place could change a body’s mind, it could.”

  Smiling, Sebastian handed his tiger the reins and jumped down. “Walk them.”

  “Aye, gov’nor.”

  A distinct scuffing noise, as of a shovel biting dirt, carried on the breeze. Sebastian turned toward the sound. The site was obviously not as deserted as it had first appeared.

  The land bridge to the island lay on the eastern side of the moat. He crossed it warily, one hand on the pistol in his pocket. Sir Stanley had run his excavation trenches at right angles on the far side of the bridge, where at one time a drawbridge might have protected the approach to the now vanished castle.

  The rushing sound of cascading dirt cut through the stillness, followed again by the scrape of a shovel biting deep into loose earth. Sebastian could see him now, a big, thickly muscled man with golden red hair worn long, so that it framed his face like a lion’s mane. He had the sleeves of his smock rolled up to expose bronzed, brawny arms, and rough trousers tucked into boots planted wide as he worked shoveling dirt back into the farthest trench.

  He caught sight of Sebastian and paused, his chest rising and falling with his hard breathing. He was a startlingly good-looking man, with even features and two dimples that slashed his cheeks when he squinted into the sun. He swiped the back of one sinewy arm across his sweaty face and his gaze locked with Sebastian’s.

  “You Rory Forster?” Sebastian asked.

  The man slammed his shovel into the dirt pile and wrenched it sideways, sending a slide of dark loam over the edge into the trench. “I am.”

  “I take it Sir Stanley has decided to end the excavations?”

  The man had a head built like a battering ram, with a thick neck and a high forehead, his eyes pale blue and thickly lashed and set wide apart. “’Pears that way, don’t it?” he said without looking up again.

  Sebastian let his gaze drift around the otherwise deserted site. “Where’s the rest of your crew?”

  “Sir Stanley told ’em they could go look fer them nippers.”

  “You’re not interested in the reward?”

  Rory Forster hawked up a mouthful of phlegm and spat. “’Tain’t nobody gonna find them nippers.”

  “So certain?”

  “Ye think they’re out there, why ain’t ye joinin’ the search?”

  “I am, in my own fashion.”

  Forster grunted and kept shoveling.

  Sebastian wandered between the trenches, his gaze slowly discerning the uncovered remnants of massively thick foundations of what must once have been mighty walls. Pausing beside a mound of rubble, he found himself staring at a broken red tile decorated with a charging knight picked out in white.

  He reached for the tile fragment, aware of Forster’s eyes watching him. “Did you come out here this past Sunday?” asked Sebastian, straightening.

  Forster went back to filling his trench. “We don’t work on Sundays.”

  “No one stays to guard the site?”

  “Why would they?”

  “I heard rumors you’ve had trouble with treasure hunters.”

  Forster paused with his shovel idle in his hands. “I wouldn’t know nothin’ ’bout that.”

  Sebastian kept a wary eye on the man’s shovel. “I’ve also heard you and Miss Tennyson didn’t exactly get along.”

  “Who said that?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Forster set his jaw and put his back into his digging again, the dirt flying through the air. Sebastian breathed in the scent of damp earth and decay and a foul, dark smell that was like a breath from an old grave. He said, “I can understand how it might get under a man’s skin, having to take orders from a woman.”

  Forster scraped the last of the dirt into the trench with the edge of his shovel, his attention seemingly all for his task. “I’m a good overseer, I am. Sir Stanley wouldn’t have kept me on if’n I wasn’t.”

  Sebastian watched Rory Forster move on to the next trench. The man’s very name—Forster, a corruption of “forester”—harkened back to the days when this wood had been part of a vast royal hunting park. His ancestors would have been the kings’ foresters, charged with husbanding the royal game and protecting them from the encroachments of poachers. But those days were long gone, lost in the misty past.

  Sebastian said, “Did Miss Tennyson tell Sir Stanley she suspected you were the one vandalizing the site in search of treasure?”

  Forster straightened slowly, the outer corner of one eye twitching as if with a tic, the rough cloth of his smock dark with sweat across his shoulders and chest and under his arms. “Ye ain’t gonna pin this murder on me. Ye hear me?” he said, raising one beefy arm to stab a pointed finger at Sebastian. “I was home with me wife all that night. Never left the house, I didn’t.”

  “Possibly,” said Sebastian. “However, we don’t know precisely when Miss Tennyson was murdered. She may well have met her death in the afternoon.”

  The twitch beside the man’s eye intensified. “What ye want from me?”

  “The truth.”

  “The truth?” Forster gave a harsh laugh. “Ye don’t want the truth.”

&n
bsp; “Try me.”

  “Huh. Ye think I’m a fool?”

  Sebastian studied the man’s handsome, dirt-streaked face. “You can say what you have to say to me, in confidence. Or you can tell your tale to Bow Street. The choice is yours.”

  Forster licked his lower lip, then gave Sebastian a sly, sideways look. “Ye claim it was me what told ye, and I’ll deny it.”

  “Fair enough. Now, tell me.”

  Forster sniffed. “To my way o’ thinkin’, them Bow Street magistrates ought to be lookin’ into Sir Stanley’s lady.”

  “You mean Lady Winthrop?”

  “Aye. Come out here Saturday about noon, she did. In a real pelter.”

  Sebastian frowned. Lady Winthrop had told him she’d never visited her husband’s controversial excavations. “Was Sir Stanley here?”

  “Nah. He’d gone off by then. Somethin’ about a prize mare what was near her time. But Miss Tennyson was still here. She’s the one her ladyship come to see. A right royal row they had, and ye don’t haveta take me word for it. Ask any o’ the lads workin’ the trenches that day; they’ll tell ye.”

  “What was the argument about?”

  “I couldn’t catch the sense o’ most o’ it. Her ladyship asked to speak to Miss Tennyson in private and they walked off a ways, just there.” Forster nodded toward the northeastern edge of the island, where a faint path could be seen winding through the thicket of bushes and brambles.

  “But you did hear something,” said Sebastian.

  “Aye. Heard enough to know it was Sir Stanley they was fightin’ about. And as she was leavin’, I heard her ladyship say, ‘Cross me, young woman, and ye’ll be sorry!’”

  Chapter 20

  “You’re certain you heard her right?” asked Sebastian.

  The foreman sniffed. “Ye don’t believe me, ask some of the lads what was here that day. Or better yet, ask her ladyship herself. But like I said, if ye let on ’twas me what told ye, I’ll deny it. I’ll deny it to yer face.”