The Lady Julia Grey Bundle (99 page)

T
hat afternoon I collected Portia after dinner and told her we were going into the village proper.

“Ought we to ask Valerius?” she inquired. “He has been spending every waking moment with Hilda, and her peevishness is beginning to wear off on him. He’s becoming sulky. He has struck himself twice upon the thumb with a hammer in building that henhouse, and has raised four blisters. It has not improved his temper.”

“Not this time. I want to get right away, and I do not think I could endure him if he’s in a mood. May we go alone?”

“Gladly,” Portia said, pinning her hat firmly onto her head. “Anything to get out of this place. You know, when Brisbane is angry, it creates quite an
atmosphere.
”

“Yes, I had noticed,” I returned, shoving her out of the door. She complained about Brisbane for the better part of the walk into the village, rather a relief to me as all that was required of me was the occasional nod or murmur of agreement.

As we reached the village, footsore and thirsty, she stopped and turned to me. “I just realised what it felt like when he was shouting at me,” she said, trying unsuccessfully to hide a smile. “He felt like one of the family.”

“Very funny,” I told her, turning toward the little stone church in the village. There was a statue in front of St. Agnes with her lamb.

“I mean it,” she replied, hurrying to catch up to me. “He sounded exactly like Benedick in one of his rages,” she said, referring to my favourite of all our brothers. “Do you suppose he might be related? Distantly, of course. Perhaps through the connection to the Duke of Aberdour. Weren’t Mama’s people related somehow to the Comyns? And the Comyns are connected to the Aberdour line, I’m certain of it.”

“All the aristocrats on this island have intermarried so much I am quite sure we are related to everyone above the rank of baronet,” I said absently.

“It isn’t healthy,” Portia commented. “Father always says inbreeding will be the downfall of the monarchy, and the aristocracy as well. Bad blood always tells, whether it’s horses or dogs or men,” she added, echoing one of Father’s favourite sentiments.

“Or sheep,” I finished, thinking of Godwin’s travails with the flock at Grimsgrave.

We pushed through the little gate and I began to scrutinise the markers. It was a far more daunting task than in
specting the tiny chapel graveyard. The graves here went back at least three hundred years, although I reminded myself only markers carved within the last year or two were of interest to me. I looked for anything that might have a bearing on the identity of the little mummies: stillbirths, twins, women dead in childbed.

Portia peered over my shoulder. “What are we looking for?” she asked suddenly. “I thought we were simply making our escape from Brisbane’s bad temper.”

“Not exactly,” I told her, moving slowly from one stone to the next, squinting at the grimy, obscured carving. “I am looking for babies, twins actually, stillborn or died shortly after birth. A year, or perhaps two or even three years past. See if you can find any.”

Portia shrugged and did as she was told. We walked the rows slowly for the better part of an hour, rubbing moss away from old gravestones and occasionally stopping to read an interesting epitaph.

“Nothing,” she said finally, straightening as we reached the end of the last row. “Not even a child under the age of four in this lot. Why do we care, incidentally?”

I told her quickly what conclusions Brisbane and I had drawn from the discovery of the mummy babies, and that I thought to expand the investigation by an examination of the churchyard. Her eyes were enormous by the time I had finished explaining that we no longer believed them to be ancient specimens, but rather the sinister remains of a recent crime.

She punched me lightly on the arm. “Julia Constance Desdemona Grey,” she began.

I rubbed at my arm. “That was unnecessary. I am sure you have left a mark.”

She folded her arms over her chest and put out her underlip, her expression mulish. “It isn’t fair, you know. Aunt Hermia has her prostitutes to reform, Father has his Shakespearean society, Valerius has his medical studies. And now you seem to trip over mysteries wherever you go. I want a hobby.”

“Perhaps you could take up painting kittens?” I suggested. “Hooking rugs? Needlepointing?”

She sat down on a gravestone marked
Cecily Potts, Beloved wife of Thomas.
“I mean it, Julia. I intend to take up something
useful.
”

“I don’t know that what I do is particularly useful,” I said slowly. “I’ve nearly got myself killed more than once, and Father has had to step in both times to make quite certain the scandals did not become fodder for the public. I imagine he would rather I gave up sleuthing altogether and sit quietly in the corner improving my French.”

“French is
passé,
” she commented without a trace of irony. “Italian is much more of the moment. Or perhaps I ought to take up something more active, like stalking pheasant.”

“Darling, one doesn’t stalk pheasant. One shoots pheasant and one stalks deer,” I corrected, putting out my hand to her. She pulled a face. Country pursuits had never been of the slightest interest to her even when she lived in the country. “But right now I would quite like to know where those babies came from. And I imagine Mrs. Potts would be greatly relieved if you got off of her.”

Portia took my hand and we made our way to the gate,
chatting idly. It was not until we had nearly reached the gate that we looked up and realised we were not alone.

“Lady Bettiscombe! Lady Julia!” It was Deborah from the inn, waving over the gate, smiling. “I saw you pass from the window. I told my mam it was the ladies from Grimsgrave come to the village, and we hoped you would stop in for a cup of tea. She would so like to make your acquaintance.”

I thought of how deliciously full of local gossip old women were likely to be and smiled.

“We should like nothing better,” I told her. Portia nodded graciously to her and Deborah hurried off, calling over her shoulder that she would lay the tea things and we must take our time.

“Are you quite serious?” Portia hissed when Deborah was scarcely out of earshot. “Do you really want to spend teatime with an old woman we do not know?”

“Do you know of anyone likelier to know who might have borne twins within the past two years than an elderly woman?” I returned. Comprehension dawned on Portia’s lovely face and she gave me an approving look.

“You have a gift for deviousness,” she told me. I was not entirely sure it was a compliment.

We were received at the inn with the warmest of hospitality. Deborah fluttered around, apron flapping as she guided us to the snug, warm parlour where we had taken tea upon our arrival in the village.

“Here the ladies are, Mam,” she called out. She gave us an apologetic look. “Mam is a little hard of hearing. Lady Bettiscombe, Lady Julia, my mam, Mrs. Earnshaw. Mam, here are the ladies to have tea with us,” she said, raising her voice.

The elderly woman seated by the fire looked us up and down, nodding. “Handsome girls and they know it,” she said to herself.

Portia smothered a laugh as Deborah threw an apologetic look over her shoulder. “Do forgive her,” she whispered. “She doesn’t realise what she says half the time.”

We were given chairs by the fire, ours drawn into a cosy semicircle with Mrs. Earnshaw’s. The old lady was dressed in the fashion I had noticed in the village, the full skirts and plain caps of the mid-century still popular with the local ladies. Her dress was of plain, serviceable brown stuff, but she had pinned a pretty brooch of carnelian to the neck of it to secure her lace collar. They were the only touches of frivolity in an otherwise plain and sober costume. Her hands were a bit swollen with arthritis and her eyes were faded and rheumy, but still sharp and I fancied there was little she missed.

“I am so pleased to make your acquaintance,” I told her, smoothing my skirts over my knees. “Earnshaw is quite a famous name, thanks to Miss Brontë. I did not realise there were Earnshaws in this country.”

Mrs. Earnshaw gave a sharp nod. “Aye. And Heathcliffs and Eyres, as well. Proper little thieves, those Brontë girls.”

“Did you know them?” Portia asked. Deborah, who had been hovering in the background, apparently judged us on safe footing, for she left us to fetch the tea things.

“They’m from Haworth way,” Mrs. Earnshaw said, as if the distance of some six miles was all the Earth to her.

“You have never been to Haworth?” I asked.

“And why would I?” she demanded. “There’m naught to see in Haworth thee could not find here,” she told me firmly.

“Quite right,” Portia seconded. “Lesser Howlett is a very fine village. My sister and I have just been walking the churchyard, admiring the gravestones.”

Mrs. Earnshaw blinked. “Tha’s a curious habit, tha’ is. Londoners,” she snorted.

“We are actually country-bred,” I corrected with a smile. “We were reared in Sussex.”

“Sussex is near enough to London,” Mrs. Earnshaw advised me. “’Tis all the devil’s pleasure ground, is it not?”

Portia coughed, disguising a laugh. Mrs. Earnshaw gave her a sharp look, but I hurried to reply.

“That it is,” I agreed. “Society seems more wholesome here in the north.”

She nodded, mollified. “Aye. There is soberness here, and a respect for righteous ways.”

“Indeed,” Portia murmured.

“Of course,” Mrs. Earnshaw went on, “even here there has been wickedness, and the devil will work his craft wherever he finds the tools.”

Just then the door opened and Deborah returned, bearing a tray that must have weighed an hundredweight, loaded with bread and butter and small cakes and sandwiches and pots of tea and little dishes of jam. It looked hearty and comforting, like a nursery tea, and I would have been thoroughly pleased had Deborah not interrupted her mother just when she had seen fit to drop such an interesting titbit into conversation.

The next quarter of an hour was taken up with pouring out and the dainty selecting of cakes and sandwiches, although there was no polite dithering for Mrs. Earnshaw.
She heaped her plate as high as any youth might have done, taking a goodly portion of everything on offer.

“You were talking of wickedness,” I reminded her with little subtlety when she had finished her first plate and replenished it.

She nodded, finishing a delectable little ham pie that I wondered if Mrs. Butters could replicate. “Aye. Wickedness. Not among the God-fearing folk of this village. Nay, we are sober, respectable folk who know one way, and that is to work hard and to obey God. But there are others who think themselves above such things.”

Portia and I exchanged quick glances, but not quick enough. Mrs. Earnshaw noticed and waved a hand.

“Not you, my ladies. You’ve got goodness in you, I can see tha’. Tell me, d’ye give to those tha’ have need of it in your village in Sussex?”

“Of course,” Portia said roundly. “There are always baskets at Christmas, and whatever the farm folk need is always attended to.”

Mrs. Earnshaw nodded in satisfaction. “Thee has been brought up properly to know thy duty. But there’s those that were born here have not.”

“The Allenbys?” I asked. Mrs. Earnshaw gave me a slow, meaningful wink.

“Aye. Born to the manor and they keep to the manor. No thought to help the villagers, save when it suits them.”

“Well, perhaps their circumstances are strained,” I put in. It was not my place to salvage the Allenby reputation, but Ailith and Hilda did still have to make their home amongst the villagers, however removed they might like to think themselves.

Mrs. Earnshaw gave a sharp cackle. “Strained? Oh, my girl, there was a time when the Allenbys were rich as any lord between here and the border. And what did they do with it? Not a bit of good. The poor of this village went without shoes or coal or meat, while they prospered on the backs of the miners. ’Twere a black day for folk here when the mine collapsed, but there were those who wondered if we might not be better working for anyone besides the old devil, Sir Alfred.”

“He was not a popular figure then?” Portia put in. She reached out and helped herself to a third slice of parkin.

“Nay. A Roman he was, and yet every Sunday he came to sit in state at St. Agnes, not to worship God, but to see us and be seen in turn. He wanted us to know he was watching, always watching, just like God.”

“He sounds like a religious zealot,” I commented. Mrs. Earnshaw laughed, sounding like a rusty squeezebox.

“Bless you, lady. There were no religion in him. There were pomp and popish ways, but no Christian virtues. He played the man of God, but there was no godliness in him. He was a vengeful, brutish, lustful man, and this village was not sorry when the devil took his own.”

“Lustful?” The word struck a chord. I had heard of Sir Alfred’s harshness, but this was the first I had heard of something darker. “Do you mean he took his
droit du seigneur
with the local girls?”

“I don’t know about tha’,” Mrs. Earnshaw said, her mouth twisting bitterly, “but I know he forced himself upon whatever girl he fancied, maiden or wife, and when there were
bastards to be had, he gave them nothing for it. The day they carried him to be buried at Allenby chapel, there were naught but dry eyes in this village, I can tell you.”

A hundred questions trembled on my lips, but none of them were appropriate.

Just then the door opened again and Deborah entered, followed by another person who stood behind her in the narrow doorway.

“I do hope your ladyships will not mind. My sister has just come, and she so wanted to make your acquaintance. She’s a governess down Manchester way,” she added with an unmistakable note of pride.

“Not at all. Do bring her in,” Portia instructed.

“Lady Bettiscombe, Lady Julia, my sister, Jerusha Earnshaw.” Deborah stepped aside and there stood a girl so like her, I blinked. Jerusha dropped a curtsey as Deborah laughed at my expression.