When Maidens Mourn: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery Page 17
Sebastian remained silent.
After a moment, Winthrop gave a ragged laugh. “The current Lady Winthrop is of the opinion that my grief over the loss of my children has affected the balance of my mind. Perhaps she is right. All I know is that I find neither peace nor comfort in the righteous dogmas of her church, whereas in a place like this—” He blew out a long, painful breath. “In a place like this, I find, if not peace, then at least a path to understanding and a way to come to grips with what once seemed unbearable.”
“And Miss Tennyson? Did she come to Camlet Moat at sunset last Saturday to participate in…whatever it was you were here to do?”
“Participate?” Winthrop shook his head. “No. But she was interested in observing. I may feel no compulsion to advertise my spiritual beliefs, but neither am I ashamed of them. So you see, if you are imagining that I killed Miss Tennyson because she discovered my interest in Druidism, you are wrong.”
Sebastian said, “Were you romantically involved with her?”
Winthrop looked genuinely startled by the suggestion. “Good God, no! I’m practically old enough to have been her father.”
Sebastian shrugged. “It happens.”
“Not in this instance. There was nothing of that nature between us. We were friends; I respected her intelligence and knowledge and the strength of her will. If my own daughters had lived, I like to think they would have grown up to be like her. But that is how I thought of her—as a daughter.”
From what Sebastian had learned of Miss Tennyson, she was the kind of woman who tended to intimidate and alarm most men, rather than inspire them to admiration. But there were always exceptions.
He said, “I’m told Miss Tennyson sometimes drove herself out here in a gig. Is that true?”
“Sometimes, yes. She didn’t do it often, though.” Winthrop gave a soft smile that faded rapidly. “When her brother complained about her habit of taking the stage, she said she always threatened to take to driving herself instead.”
“But she did drive herself out here Saturday evening?”
“She did, yes.”
“Do you think it is possible she drove herself out here Sunday, as well?”
“I suppose it’s possible.”
The wind gusted up again, fluttering the weathered strips of cloth on the rag tree. Sebastian said, “What else can you tell me about Sir Geoffrey de Mandeville?”
Winthrop frowned. “Mandeville?” The sudden shift in topic seemed to confuse him.
“I understand he’s said to haunt the island.”
“He is, yes. Although the local legend that claims he drowned in this well is nonsense. He was killed by an arrow to the head at the siege of Burwell Castle—miles from here.”
“Where is he buried?”
“At the Temple, in London.”
Sebastian knew a flicker of surprise. “So he was a Knight Templar.”
“The association is murky, I’m afraid. They say that the Knights Templar came to him when he lay dying and flung their mantle over him, so that he might die with the red cross on his breast.”
“Why?”
“That is not recorded. All we know is that the Templars put de Mandeville’s body in a lead casket and carried him off to London, where his coffin hung in an apple tree near the Temple for something like twenty years.”
“A lead coffin? In a tree?”
“That’s the tale. He’d been excommunicated, which meant the Templars couldn’t bury him in their churchyard. Those were dark times, but there’s no denying de Mandeville was an exceptionally nasty piece of work.”
“‘Those were the days when men said openly that Christ slept and his saints wept,’” said Sebastian softly, quoting the old chroniclers.
Winthrop nodded. “In the end, the Pope relented. The edict of excommunication was lifted and the Knights Templar were allowed to bury him. You can still see his effigy on the floor of the Temple today, you know.”
“Unusual,” said Sebastian, “if he wasn’t actually a Templar.”
“It is, yes.”
“And the belief that his treasure lay at the bottom of this well?”
Winthrop was silent for a moment, his gaze on the muddy hole the well had now become. “Tales of great treasure often become associated with sacred sites,” he said. “The memory of a place’s importance can linger long after the true nature of its value has been forgotten. Then those who come later, in their ignorance and greed, imagine the place as a repository of earthly treasures.”
“You think that’s what happened here?”
“Unfortunately, there’s no way of knowing, is there? But the association of Camelot, the Templars, and the tales of lost treasure is definitely intriguing.”
“Intriguing?” said Sebastian. “Or deadly?”
Sir Stanley looked troubled. “Perhaps both.”
Hero spent the rest of the morning sorting through the stacks of Gabrielle Tennyson’s books and papers, looking for something—anything—that might explain her friend’s death.
She couldn’t shake the conviction that the key to Gabrielle’s murder lay here, in the piles of notes and translations the woman had been working on. But Gabrielle’s interests had been so wide-ranging, reaching from the little-known centuries before the Celts through the time of the Romans to the dark ages that befell Britain following the collapse of the Empire, that wading through her research was a formidable undertaking.
It was when Hero was studying Gabrielle’s notes on The Lady of Shalott that a loose sheet of paper fluttered to the floor. Reaching down to pick it up, she found herself staring at a handwritten poem.
Bid me to weep, and I will weep
While I have eyes to see:
And having none, yet I will keep
A heart to weep for thee.
Bid me despair and I’ll despair,
Under that cypress tree:
Or bid me die, and I will dare
E’en Death, to die for thee.
Thou art my life, my love, my heart
The very eyes of me,
And hast command of every part,
To live and die for thee.
Hero leaned back in her seat, her hand tightening on the paper, the breath leaving her lungs in a rush as a new and totally unexpected possibility occurred to her.
Chapter 29
Hero was curled up with a book in an armchair beside the library’s empty hearth, a volume of seventeenth-century poetry open in her lap, when Devlin came to stand in the doorway. He brought with him the scent of sunshine and fresh air and the open countryside.
“What happened to your sling?” she asked, looking up at him.
“It was in my way.”
“Now, there’s a good reason to stop wearing it.”
He huffed a soft laugh and went to pour himself a glass of wine. “Did Gabrielle ever mention an interest in Druidism to you?”
“Druidism? Good heavens, no. Why on earth do you ask?”
He came to stand with his back to the empty fireplace. “Because it turns out that she went back out to Camlet Moat at sunset the night before she died, to watch Sir Stanley enact some pagan ritual at an ancient sacred well on the island. Drove herself there, in fact, in a gig.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I wish I wasn’t. But Rory Forster saw her there, and Sir Stanley himself admits as much.”
“What was Forster doing at the island at sunset?”
“According to Rory? Retrieving a forgotten pipe—and hiding in the bushes. Although I suspect it far more likely that he went there with the intent of digging for buried treasure and was perplexed to discover he wasn’t going to have the island to himself that night.”
“Treasure?”
“Mmm. Buried by either Dick Turpin or a Knight Templar, depending upon which version one believes. Exactly a week before she was killed, Miss Tennyson stormed into Cockfosters and publicly accused Rory of ripping out the lining of the island’s sacred well.”
Devlin nodded. “According to the legend, Sir Geoffrey de Mandeville hid his ill-gotten gains beneath the bottom of the well, and his spirit is supposed to appear to frighten away anyone who attempts to remove it. But his ghost must have been asleep on the job, because I checked, and someone recently made a right sorry mess of the thing.”
“You say she confronted Rory a week ago Sunday?”
He drained his wine. “The timing is interesting, isn’t it? That’s the day she was out there with Arceneaux. Then, just a few days later, she drove out to Gough Hall and had a stormy argument with Bevin Childe. She was a very confrontational and contentious young woman, your friend.”
Hero smoothed a hand down over her skirt. “So you spoke to Bevin Childe?”
“I did. He claims to have discovered something called the Glastonbury Cross amongst Richard Gough’s collections. I’m told it’s the cross that was said to have marked the graves of King Arthur and Guinevere at the abbey. Have you ever heard of it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it seems Miss Tennyson was convinced the cross was a modern forgery, and in the midst of a rather violent argument with Childe, she seized the cross and threw it in a lake.”
She was aware of him watching her intently. “What a…strange thing to do,” she said, keeping her voice level with effort.
He frowned and came to take the seat opposite her. “Are you all right, Hero?”
“Yes, of course; just tired.”
“Perhaps, under the circumstances, you’re doing too much.” He said it awkwardly; the coming babe, despite being the reason for their marriage, was something they never discussed.
She made an inelegant sound of derision. “If by ‘the circumstances’ you are referring to the fact that I am with child, let me remind you that gestation is a natural occurrence, not a dread debilitating disease.”
“True. Yet I do take special care of my mares when they are with foal.”
At that, she laughed out loud. “I don’t know if I should be flattered or insulted by the comparison.”
The corners of his eyes crinkled with amusement. “Oh, flattered, definitely.”
Their gazes met, and the moment stretched out and became something intimate and unexpected.
She felt her cheeks grow warm, and looked away. “How did you come to learn of Gabrielle’s confrontation with Childe over the cross?”
“Lieutenant Arceneaux told me.”
“Arceneaux? Now, that’s interesting.” She picked up the sheet of parchment she’d discovered and held it out to him. “I found this with Gabrielle’s papers.”
“‘Bid me to weep, and I will weep,’” he read, “‘while I have eyes to see.’” He looked up at her. “You know the poem?”
“No. But it does sound familiar, doesn’t it? I believe it may be from one of the Cavalier poets.” She closed the poetry book and set it aside. “But so far I haven’t been able to find it.”
“It’s the last three stanzas from Robert Herrick’s ‘To Anthea, Who May Command Him Anything.’”
Her eyes widened. “You know it?”
He smiled. “That surprises you, does it? Did you imagine I spent all my time riding to hounds and drinking brandy and trying to pop a hit over Gentleman Jackson’s guard?”
She felt an answering smile tug at her lips. “Something like that.”
“Huh.” He pushed up and went to compare the bold hand of the poem to the flowing copperplate that filled Gabrielle Tennyson’s notebooks. “This doesn’t look like her writing,” he said after a moment.
“It’s not.”
He glanced over at her. “You know whose it is?”
She came to extract one of the notebooks from the pile. “Here. Look at the translation of The Lady of Shalott Gabrielle was working on; you’ll see the handwriting of the poem matches that of the alterations and notations someone else made in the margins of her work. I think the poem was given to her by Philippe Arceneaux.”
Devlin studied the notations, his lips pressing into a tight line.
Hero said, “Do you think the Lieutenant was more in love with her than he led you to believe?”
“‘Thou art my life, my heart, my love,’” he quoted, setting the translation aside. “It rather sounds that way, does it not? Not only that, but I’d say Miss Tennyson was in love with him too.”
Hero shook her head. “How can you be so certain?”
He looked down at the creased sheet he still held in his hand. “Because she kept this.”
Lieutenant Philippe Arceneaux and his scruffy little dog were watching a cricket match at Marylebone Park Fields on the northern outskirts of the city when Sebastian came to stand beside him.
A warm sun washed the grass of the nearby hills with a golden green. They could hear the lowing of cows, see a hawk circling lazily above the stand of oaks edging the field. The batsman scored a run and a murmur of approval rippled through the crowd of spectators.
Sebastian said, “You’ve acquired a fondness for cricket, have you? You must be one of the few Frenchmen ever to do so.”
Arceneaux huffed a low laugh. “Most of my fellow officers consider it incomprehensible, but yes, I have.”
“I gather you’ve also acquired a fondness for our Cavalier poets.”
“Pardon?”
“‘A heart as soft, a heart as kind, / A heart as sound and free / As in the whole world thou canst find / That heart I’ll give to thee,’” quoted Sebastian softly as the bowler delivered the ball toward the batsman.
“A lovely piece of poetry,” said Arceneaux, his attention seemingly all for the bowler. “Should I recognize it?”
“It’s from a poem by Robert Herrick.”
“No ball,” called the umpire.
The relentless August sun beat down on the open field, filling the air with the scent of dust and hot grass. Arceneaux held himself very still, his features wooden, his gaze on the fielders.
Sebastian said, “The same poem you copied out and gave to Miss Tennyson.”
The Frenchman’s throat worked as he swallowed. A sheen of perspiration covered his newly sun-reddened face. “You found it, did you?”
“Lady Devlin did.”
“How did you guess it was from me?”
“The handwriting matches the notations you made on Miss Tennyson’s translation of The Lady of Shalott.”
“Ah. Of course.”
They turned to walk away from the crowd and take the lane that curled toward the rolling countryside stretching away to the north. The dog trotted on ahead, tongue lolling happily, tail wagging. Sebastian said, “I hope you don’t intend to insult my intelligence by attempting to continue denying the truth.”
Arceneaux shook his head, his gaze on the herd of cows grazing placidly in the grassy, sunbaked pasture beside them. At the top of the slope, a stand of chestnuts drooped in the airless heat, their motionless leaves a vivid green swath against an achingly clear, forget-me-not blue sky. “You want the truth, my lord? The truth is, I fell in love with Gabrielle the first time I saw her. I was in the Reading Room at the museum going over some old manuscripts, and I just happened to look up and…there she was. She was standing beneath the high windows of the Reading Room, waiting for an attendant to hand her the book she wanted, and…I was lost.”
“She returned your affections?”
He gave an odd smile. “She didn’t fall in love with me at first sight, if that’s what you’re asking. But we quickly became good friends. We’d go for walks around the gardens of the museum and argue passionately about the competing visions of love in the two sections of the Roman de la rose or the reliability of the various medieval chroniclers. She was several years older than I, you know. She used to tease me about it, call me a little boy. I suspect that if I’d been her own age or older, she would never have allowed our friendship to progress the way it did. But as it was, she felt…safe with me. She told me later she’d fallen in love wit
h me before she’d even realized what was happening.”
“Did you ask her to marry you?”
“How could I? Situated as I am, a prisoner of war?” He pointed to the mile marker in the grass beside the road. “See that boundary? Under the terms of my parole, I am allowed to go no farther.”
“Yet you did venture beyond it, the day you and Gabrielle went up to Camlet Moat.”
Sebastian expected the man to deny it again. Instead, he gave a halfhearted shrug and said, “Sometimes…sometimes men succumb to mad impulses, I suppose, of frustration and despair and a foolish kind of bravado. But…how could I ask her to be my wife? How could I ask any woman to share such a circumscribed life, perhaps forever?”
“Yet some paroled French officers do marry here.”
“They do. But they don’t marry women like Gabrielle Tennyson. I loved her too much to ask her to live in a garret with me.”
“She had no independence of her own?”
The Frenchman swung to face him. “Good God. Even if she had, what do you take me for?”
“You would hardly be the first man to live on his wife’s income.”
“I am not a fortune hunter!”
“I never said you were.” Sebastian studied the other man’s boyish, tightly held face and asked again, “Did you ask her to marry you?”
“I did not.”
Arceneaux turned away, his gaze following the dog, who now had his nose to the ground, tail flying high as he tracked some fascinating scent to the prickly edge of the hedgerow, then sat down and let out a woof of disappointment and frustration.
Sebastian said, “I think you’re still lying to me, Lieutenant.”
Arceneaux gave a ragged laugh. “Oh? And would you blame me if I were?” He flung his arm in an expansive arc that took in the vast urban sprawl stretching away to the south. “You know the mood of hysteria that has swept over the city. Tell all those people Gabrielle Tennyson had a French lover and see what sort of conclusions they leap to. They’d hang me before nightfall.”
“Were you lovers? And I mean that in every sense of the word.”