Ariadne's Diadem (27 page)

For a moment Anne was too bemused to move. This time her eyes
must
be deceiving her. She couldn’t possibly be looking at a faun and a decidedly unwooden water nymph! And yet, was it any more incredible than her discovery about Charles Danby? Shaking off her shock, she rose to her feet and hurried over to them.

Gervase was examining Penelope’s injuries as best he could in the darkness. He had taken one look at the nymph and known the faun was right to fear the nymph was dying, for her pulse was very faint indeed, and her face was drained of color. “What happened?” he asked Sylvanus, who was rocking to and fro and making soft crooning sounds.

Tears streamed down the faun’s cheeks as he related what had happened when Gervase had run after the drifting boat. “He just kept hitting her and hitting her, and I think she hurt herself even more on something when she escaped down to the bottom of the river,” he finished, pointing to a nasty gash in the nymph’s side.

After looking in dismay at the wound, for Penelope was losing a great deal of blood, Anne glanced urgently at Gervase. “Am I right in thinking this is the same Penelope who is a lamp holder in the castle?” Yet another incredible question to ask anyone, but then this entire situation was incredible.

Gervase nodded.

“Then somehow she’s turned from wood into flesh, and then back again?”

Gervase nodded again. “Sylvanus has the power.”

Anne met his gaze, realizing that this power was used upon him too, but then she turned back to the faun. “Sylvanus, you must turn her to wood again immediately, before she loses any more blood.”

For a moment Sylvanus didn’t seem to comprehend, but then realized what she was saying. “Why didn’t I think of that?” he bleated in dismay, wondering how much worse he’d made the situation by carrying Penelope to find Gervase.

Gervase gave him a reassuring look. “Just do it, mm?” he said gently but firmly.

The faun said the words, and Anne stared as before her eyes the nymph slowly became wood again, but this time there were marks upon her shining surface, scratches and splintered damage that had never been there before.

Sylvanus bleated distractedly. “Oh, look at her! She’s going to die, I know she is!”

Anne hesitated, but then ventured to put a kind hand upon his arm. “Wood can be repaired,” she pointed out quietly.

The faun stopped midbleat. “Repaired?”

“She was badly damaged once before, but the man who made her—Joseph, the gardener—mended her so well that I’ll warrant you never knew she’d been damaged at all.”

“No, I didn’t.” Sylvanus’s face brightened with hope. “Can Joseph mend her again now?”

Anne glanced at Gervase. “Yes, I’m sure he can, but that means taking her back to the castle, and letting Joseph
and
Mrs. Jenkins in on a little of what’s been happening.”

Gervase drew a long breath. “Well, I’ll warrant that after all that’s gone on of late, they already think they’re losing their wits, so an explanation for it all might help restore their faith in their own eyes.”

“Yes, but what an explanation,” Anne murmured, picturing the housekeeper’s reaction.

She was right, although as the strange party entered the kitchens half an hour later, Mrs. Jenkins didn’t at first notice the faun or what he was carrying. Joseph noticed, however. The gardener was seated at the table with his woodworking things laid out lovingly before him, and he stared directly at Sylvanus. “Well,
that
explains a few things,” he observed. Jack noticed too and slunk out without further ado, having no intention of risking another confrontation with the hooved man.

Mrs. Jenkins’s baleful gaze had been drawn instantly to Gervase. “I might have known
you’d
be here! Where is the duke? What has happened? Miss Anne?” But then she saw Sylvanus and his precious burden of carved wood and gave a squeal. “Oh, my good Lord above, it’s a two-legged billy goat with the nad!” she cried, and fell in a faint.

Chapter Thirty

Anne hastened to the swooning housekeeper, and Gervase wasted no time about informing Joseph what was needed, not that the gardener needed much telling, for he could see the catastrophe that had befallen his handicraft. Nor was Joseph inclined to ask other questions, for as far as he was concerned, Sylvanus was explanation enough for anyone. Repairing the damaged nymph was the sort of challenge in which he reveled, and as he set to with his tools, glues, oils, and waxes, he assured Sylvanus that when he’d finished, Penelope would be as good as new. Sylvanus hovered nearby in an agony of worry and grief, and there was nothing Gervase could say to ease the faun’s suffering.

As Anne tended to Mrs. Jenkins, she was surprised at her own calmness; after all, she had almost been murdered tonight! On top of that she was with a lawyer who was sometimes a marble statue, a wooden nymph who was sometimes alive and who was being repaired by the gardener, and the odd company was completed by a lovesick faun whose power it was that transformed the others in the first place. It was bizarre, credulity stretched so far beyond normal bounds that it had virtually come full circle, to the point that she almost felt it would be strange
not
to be in such company!

Mrs. Jenkins came around, and on seeing Sylvanus parted her lips to squeal again, but Anne addressed her very sharply. “Don’t you
dare
have the vapors, Mrs. Jenkins!”

The housekeeper was shocked into silence, but gazed warily at the faun’s horns and cloven hooves.

Anne straightened, feeling a little guilty for having been so harsh. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Jenkins, but the poor creature is upset enough already.”

“B-but what
is
it?” whispered the housekeeper.

Gervase glanced across. “Sylvanus is a faun, Mrs. Jenkins. He comes from Roman mythology.”

Mrs. Jenkins blinked. “Mithulgy?” she repeated blankly.

He smiled a little and nodded. “Yes.”

“A-and the nad is from mithulgy too?”

“The what? Oh, yes, she is.”

As Gervase returned his attention to Joseph’s ministerings and to Sylvanus, the housekeeper looked quizzically at Anne. “What is all this about. Miss Anne? Where is the duke?”

“I’m afraid the duke is dead, Mrs. Jenkins.”

The housekeeper went even paler than she already was. “He’s dead?” she repeated faintly.

Anne hastened to the pantry to pour her a glass of elderberry wine, which she pressed gently into the woman’s trembling hand before telling her, to the best of her knowledge, what had happened on the river.

“But why did he do it?” Mrs. Jenkins asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? Not even what Mr. Danby’s part in it all might be?”

“No. I accept what I see now, and what I feel.” Anne glanced at Gervase as she said this. “But I don’t know the whys or wherefores. When I do, I will tell you.”

The housekeeper looked at her. “Do you trust him, Miss Anne?”

“Mr. Danby? Oh, yes, implicitly.”

Mrs. Jenkins eyed him. “Then I must too, although as God is my witness, it will not be easy.”

“There is nothing easy about anything that’s gone on here of late,” Anne observed dryly.

“That’s true,” muttered the housekeeper with feeling. “What a birthday for you. Miss Anne.”

“One I’ll never forget, and there’s more I must tell you yet, I fear. You see, fauns not only still exist; they have the power to turn people and things into marble and back again. He’s the one who turned Penelope from wood into a living nymph.” Anne drew a long breath. “He also turned Mr. Danby into a statue,” she said at last.

Mrs. Jenkins’s jaw dropped, then her interested gaze swung to Gervase. “Well, I never,” she murmured, and downed the rest of her glass in one mouthful.

Anne also looked at Gervase. He had referred to Sylvanus as his friend, and certainly seemed to hold the faun in affection. How could that be if Sylvanus was responsible for making him into a statue? Oh, how she wished she knew the whole story, but until Charles felt it was the right moment, she would clearly have to wait.

* * * *

Things had been happening at the White Boar as well, for Kitty and Sir Thomas had quit the inn with the chest of gold and had made good their escape in Sir Thomas’s carriage—or rather his wife’s. Their departure had been hasty but quiet, and they’d crossed the landlord’s palm with silver to fob Lady Fanhope off with falsehoods for as long as he could. All he had to do, they advised, was say he knew nothing, except that Sir Thomas had felt unwell and had gone for a long walk in the cool night air. This was Sir Thomas’s idea, since he often resorted to this in order to get away from his wife for an hour or so. The landlord agreed, believing that Mr. Oadby’s doxy had merely transferred her affections, and that Sir Thomas could not be blamed, seeing what manner of wife he had. That they were stealing a hoard of gold remained unknown to him, for Sir Thomas told him the chest contained only books for his cousin in America. As they drove off into the night, the only thing the landlord knew was that their destination was Bristol, because he heard Sir Thomas instruct the coachman.

Lady Fanhope was unperturbed at first when she returned to the bedroom after dining alone. She encountered the landlord on the staircase, and he dutifully informed her of her husband’s nocturnal perambulation, so that it did not cross her mind to look under the bed to see whether or not the chest was still there. But as time ticked by and she prepared to retire, Sir Thomas’s failure to return began to concern her. It was then that she looked in the wardrobe and saw that his belongings were gone. With a horrified gasp she darted to the bed and found the precious chest gone as well.

Sir Thomas and Kitty were wrong to suppose the money was being illegally removed from all reach of her father’s duns, for there was nothing wrong with that gentleman’s financial affairs; indeed, contrary to rumor, his purse continued to bulge most agreeably. The money was to fund his purchase of an estate near New York and was being transported to America in the trunk simply because he was too mean to transfer it through a bank, which would charge heavily for its services. So instead of remaining silent about the theft of the gold, Lady Fanhope let out a shriek fit to awaken the occupants of Peterbury churchyard.

Then, still making more noise than a fox in a crowded henhouse, she ran to find the landlord, who was hugely dismayed to realize he’d been party to such a theft. Anxious to exonerate himself, he immediately confessed all he knew, that Sir Thomas had run off to Bristol with Miss Oadby, and within the hour the local magistrate had been alerted. A warrant was soon out for the arrest of Sir Thomas Fanhope and his lady companion.

After that, just Lady Fanhope was recovering with a fortifying glass of brandy, a local man who had been fishing at night on the banks of the Wye came rushing in to say he’d found Mr. Oadby’s body floating in the river. Fearing that her ungrateful husband had not only absconded with the gold and a scheming trollop, but had murderously disposed of said trollop’s inconvenient lover as well, Lady Fanhope saw scandal looming on a huge scale and collapsed in a fit of the vapors that might have caused graveyard stirring and henhouse panic as far away as Monmouth.

* * * *

Long after midnight Joseph was almost ready to declare himself satisfied he’d done all he could for Penelope. The nymph’s gleaming wood was outwardly flawless again, although not all her glue was entirely dry, but the gardener was sure that if she was turned back into a proper young woman again, she would simply sleep until she was strong enough to awaken. So he just polished her a little more, buffing the shine on her wood so that when she opened her eyes again, she would be as beautiful as possible.

Sylvanus was still not reassured. He hung about wretchedly, shuffling his hooves and wiping away the occasional tear as he watched Joseph at work. His anguish had at last proved too affecting for Mrs. Jenkins, who overcame her alarm to bring the faun a glass of the elderberry wine and some little fruit tarts she’d made for the picnic that never took place. Placing them on the floor by her best fireside chair, she ushered the distressed faun to sit down. “There, you need something to keep your strength up,” she declared.

Sylvanus was sufficiently taken aback to forget Penelope for a second or so. “Thank you,” he said, and picked up the glass of wine, which he guzzled in his inimitable faun way.

The housekeeper was shocked. “Have you no manners, sir? You should not make noises like a drain when you drink!”

Sylvanus was crestfallen. “All fauns do it.”

“Not in this house, they don’t.” A light passed through her eyes. “Well, I think I know now who it was that left that mess before, don’t I?”

Sylvanus lowered his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said meekly.

The housekeeper softened. “Oh, go on with you, I suppose you don’t know any better,” she declared, and then busied herself preparing food for everyone, whether or not they wanted it.

There was no sign at all of Mog, who’d made herself scarce earlier when Jack had slunk out, but now the lurcher returned. Unnoticed, the dog observed from the courtyard door, which still stood open to the night. Espying the plate of untouched tarts on the floor beside the faun, the hungry lurcher was sorely tempted. His mouth watered, and at last the temptation became overwhelming, and he slunk in, sidling around behind the chair and then stealing the tarts one by one. Amazed to have succeeded in this right under Sylvanus’s nose, and Mrs. Jenkins’s, the lurcher then ventured to sit down in his customary place by the chair, although he kept a careful eye on the faun, of whose powers he was only too aware. He soon sensed Sylvanus’s distress and knew it had something to do with the wooden nymph on the table. Much affected by sorrow of any kind, the dog moved a little closer, then a little closer again, and at last could not bear it anymore and had to offer a little canine sympathy by putting his head on the faun’s knee.

Sylvanus was startled, given the usual state of affairs between his kind and dogs, but there was something so very comforting about Jack’s warm presence that after a moment the faun put a tentative hand on the lurcher’s silky head. Jack whined a little and wagged his tail. Sylvanus managed a small smile. Maybe dogs were blessed with redeeming features after all.