The Prince of Midnight (14 page)

"Everyone knows—" He broke off, nonplussed. "Of all the ... you mean to say
I'm no more private than that?"

" 'Twas only gossip. In France they know nothing of the Seigneur du Minuit,
but they know you if they've seen you. You really are most unusual in your
appearance, monsieur—I think perhaps you underestimate it. I kept asking among
the
hotels
and
auberges,
and it led me to Lyon, and men La
Paire."

S.T. shook his head. "Good God, you shouldn't have been straying alone in
such places. Haven't you any family left?"

"Some cousins. I've written to them."

"And they approve of this expedition of yours?"

"I told them I must have a change of scenery. That I've gone traveling on the
continent with a friend of my mother's."

"Hmmph," he muttered sourly, and swatted the donkey again. "So what is his
name?" he asked. "This man we're going to kill?"

She glanced back, and then lengthened her stride to match the animal's new
speed. "Chilton. The Right Reverend James Chilton."

He stared at her. "You're joking."

She merely walked ahead.

"A reverend," he said, and rolled his eyes. "You want to murder a reverend."

The mistral blew cold silence back at him. It wasn't amusing. He was a
tactless oaf.

" 'Tis not murder." Her voice was a hissing whisper that matched the wind.
"It is justice."

"Tell me why you can't go to the magistrate for justice."

"My father was the magistrate. Mr. Chilton holds his place now."

S.T. looked up sharply. "And what of the other commissioners of the peace?
They let a murderer be entered as one of their number?"

"The others are frightened."

"Such cowards as that?"

"No." She shook her head, watching the ground ahead of her. "Not cowards.
Frightened."

He considered that. It was a telling point, a subtle, crucial difference.
Miss Leigh Strachan was no fool.

"Of what are they frightened?"

"Of what happened to my sisters," she said. "They have daughters, too."

S.T. put his hand on the donkey's croup. He watched her back. She walked
without faltering in her stride. The wind blew her hair in tangled strands that
escaped her queue and whipped against her head.

"Are you afraid to ask?" she said, still not looking back at him. "Do you
think I can't bear to speak of it?"

"Sunshine—" he said softly.

"Don't call me that." She turned on him, bringing the donkey to a tripping
halt. "I despise you when you call me that. Ask me what happened to my sisters."

He reached for her, but she stepped back, jerking at the donkey's head to
avoid the touch.

"Ask me!" she shouted.

The wind blew the words away. She stood glaring at him, gripping the animal's
halter with white fingers.

"What happened?" He kept his voice brief and toneless.

"They found Anna at the tarn on Watch Hill, where the lovers go. She was
strangled. Her dress was all open and pulled up to her waist, like a harlot."
She stared at him, unblinking. "Emily was gone all night. When she came back,
she wouldn't speak. Not for weeks. Then she began to be sick, and the doctor
came and said she was going to have a child. The next morning she was dead. In
the barn. She hanged herself."

He avoided her eyes, looked down at the ground.

"I found her," she said. "I'm
glad
I found her, do you understand?"
.

He stroked the little donkey's rough flank, watching the wind ruffle the gray
coat between his fingers. Then he nodded.

She made a sound; a wordless syllable of derision—

against himself or her memories or what, he didn't know. Perhaps she didn't
think he could possibly understand.

There was nothing he could say in answer. So he only swatted the little
donkey and made it go on, with a pointless comment on the way they still had to
travel.

Without bothering to ask if she wanted it, he brought her water when they
stopped at the base of a limestone cliff. The mistral roared in the bushes above
their heads, tearing at the clumps of wildflowers that grew high up in the
vertical crevices. When he took off his tricorne, his hair stung his cheek. He
knelt in front of her as she sat on a chunk of pale rock, offering the cup. "The
wind's burning your face."

She looked at him, faintly cynical. "It doesn't matter."

"Would you wear a kerchief?"

She shrugged and drank. He still wanted to touch her, to brush his fingers
over the flushed skin and cool it.

"Are you tired?" he asked instead. "I can lead the donkey if it's wearing at
you."

"That's not necessary." The cool tone informed him that she knew this game
and it wasn't getting him anywhere.

He held on to his patience. His own motives for what he was doing were
somewhat confused. He wanted to shield her, to comfort her, but it wasn't an
altogether saintly impulse. Mostly he wanted to hold her body against his own.

They ate in silence.

"I should tell you everything," she said suddenly. "I can see you would be
reluctant to ask more questions."

He carefully rewrapped the bread in a napkin and tied it. "There's plenty of
time for that. If it distresses you."

"It doesn't." Her voice was flat. "Since you insist on involving yourself,
I'd prefer to tell you the whole at once. Perhaps you will reconsider your
decision."

He looked up at her and shook his head.

She held his eyes a moment, and then her gaze slid away. Her hands lay still
in her lap, clasped tightly. She stared at a little gray and black bunting that
hopped from branch to waving branch in a bush beside the road.

S.T. fiddled with a stem of coarse grass, pulled it loose, and chewed the
end. He could see her rocking, a faint motion back and forth like the bushes in
the wind, her elbows pressed close to her body as if she wanted to make herself
as small as possible.

"Tell me why," he said gently, when it seemed she couldn't bring herself to
speak. "Why do you think he hurt your sisters?"

"Oh, it wasn't
him."
The words came out in a rush. "I don't say he
did it himself."

"He has accomplices."

She tilted her head back and looked at the sky. "Oh, God. Accomplices." She
drew a deep breath, let it out harshly. "The whole town are his accomplices. All
he had to do was stand up in his pulpit and say, 'She's fallen, her flesh is
weak, she tried to seduce me and I'm a man of God,' and poor Emily was damned.
They all believe him. Or they're afraid to speak out if they don't. My mother
spoke out, and look what happened." She lowered her face and stared at her
hands. "He made an example of us. And then he cried." Her mouth curled into a
sneer. "The evil beast. He cried at my sister's grave."

S.T. picked another stem of grass and knotted it. "What of the one who
actually killed her? You don't want justice there?"

She bit her lip. Her face was strained. "I don't know who killed her. I don't
care. Whoever it was, they weren't themselves when they did it." She hesitated,
and looked up at him. "That must seem queer to you."

He frowned, slowly knotting the next stem onto his chain of grass. "I had a
friend once, in Paris ... my closest friend out of a pack of schoolboys." With
careful precision, he slitted a stem and strung another piece through it. "The
whole parcel of us came across a wounded bird in the street once. Just a pigeon.
Broken wing, flapping around on the pavement looking awful and silly and sad. I
was going to pick it up, but the biggest fellow started to kick it about. They
all laughed. And then the rest of them started to kick it and step on its wings
to make it flutter." His fingers stilled. "Even my best friend." He stretched
out the chain between his hands.

She looked up. "Did you hate him for it?"

"I hated myself."

"Because you didn't say anything."

He nodded. "They would have laughed. They might have turned on me. I went
home and cried on my mother's lap." He smiled slightly. "She wasn't much of a
religious scholar. I think it took her four days to find a Bible and another
three to get the right page. But she found it." He dangled the circlet of green
grass from his fingers. " 'Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they
do.' "

"Platitudes," she said viciously. "They don't change anything. My father was
always—" She stopped and shuddered. "But that's of no moment." With a sudden
move she came to her feet. "Chilton came four years ago. He started a religious
society. My father held the regular parish living ... he was ordained right out
of university, you see—he'd never expected to inherit the earldom, and he just
kept on with the parish work after he did. He wasn't a forceful man. He was shy,
really. His sermons put everyone to sleep, but he liked to write them. And then
this Chilton came into the neighborhood and began to hold evangelical meetings.
He started a school and a home for poor girls."

She put her fist to her mouth and began to pace. The slender, strong legs
passed out of S.T. 's line of vision and came back again. This was the first
he'd heard of her being an earl's daughter. He deliberately didn't look up, but
turned his head to hear better, pretending to gaze beyond her at a silvery-gray
mound of wild lavender.

"What church does Chilton represent?" he asked.

"He calls it a Free Church. I don't know if it's even real. I doubt it. I
never attended his services, but I think he made everything up. He'd try to say
it's the same as a Methodist society, but we had John Wesley to preach, years
ago, and my mother said Chilton is nothing like. It's true that everyone is
required to confess openly, in front of the others, and then they all decide on
the penance together." She stopped and turned and looked directly at him. "But
if someone doesn't confess, they decide on a punishment anyway. He takes in
these destitute females, and gives them bed and work, and bids them not walk out
with any man, nor marry nor think of it. He says women have no souls, and can
only hope to be born again as men by submitting to higher authority in this
life, like the plow horse submits to its master. In my neighborhood, there
hasn't been a wedding in nigh two years." She paused, her color high.
"Sometimes, when Chilton permits it, there are—arrangements made—to please the
men, and instruct the women in obedience."

"God," he said. "I follow your drift."

"My mother stood against him. She was always an advocate for the education of
women, and she said his views were barbaric. She laughed at him, at first. He
called on my father in public to bring her in hand and put a stop to the 'study
of wickedness' mat she imposed on my sisters and me." Leigh clasped her hands
and held them to her mouth. "She tutored us in mathematics and Latin and
physicking—that's what Chilton calls 'wickedness,' Mon-seigneur—and wrote
pamphlets refuting his sermons." She sat down again. There was a rhythmic
shudder in her shoulders as she hugged herself. "He began to stand at our gates
with a crowd of his followers and demand that my mother give her daughters over
him before it was- too late. We couldn't go out freely; he made us prisoners in
our own home. My father—" Her body grew tense, her dark brows drawing downward.
"He did nothing, just prayed and gave us little gifts and said 'twould pass
over. That's what he always did. 'Twas my mother, you see— all my life, she took
the real care of us. She was so good and clever. Everyone admired her. She
always knew what to do when my father got muddled."

S.T. watched her teeth work savagely at her lower lip. He clamped one hand
inside the other against the urge to reach out to cradle her. It tore at him,
the way her voice stayed cold and steady while her body shook as if the wind had
hold of it. He wanted to make it easier for her, and he didn't know how. "What
did your mother do about Chilton?" he asked in a flat tone.

"She had him arrested. We didn't know then—we never suspected ... he
frightened my sisters, but Mama and I only thought him an evil nuisance. Papa
was the justice of the peace, you see—our family always held that place-but Mama
did all that sort of thing for him, kept the county tax rolls and listened at
the quarter sessions and wrote Papa notes on how to adjudicate and what the Poor
Rate ought to be. Everyone knew she did it, and no one objected. She sent the
constable to have Chilton arrested, and the people at our gates disappeared."

Suddenly she lowered her face, bending forward into her knees with her hands
locked across her head, rocking and rocking. "My papa," she said in a muffled
cry. "My papa said, 'There, you see, it's all right now,' and he went out, and
when he was too far away to get back . . . they stoned him in the street." She
began breathing in frantic gusts, still bent into her knees. "From the houses
and behind doors and carts; they were all silent—you could hear him calling out
for them to stop. Please stop." She made an inarticulate sound. "My mother went
out; she told us not to go, but I went too—he was already insensible—maybe he
was already dead . . . they didn't throw stones at us; they threw refuse and
horrid stuff ..." She lifted her face and looked blindly into space. "Oh, Papa
... oh, Papa . . ."

She wasn't crying. She was shaking in every limb. S.T. made a slight move,
shifting his hand, and she jerked to her feet.

"Don't touch me," she cried. "Oh, God, don't touch me!" She spun away and
went to the donkey, working feverishly at the pack straps, unbuckling them and
buckling them without reason.

S.T. stayed where he was. Nemo walked up behind him and sat down, the wolf's
furry weight resting heavily against his spine. Nemo sniffed at S.T. 's ear and
licked it.

"No one would act after that," Leigh said, staring down at the packsaddle.
"Chilton preached in the street about the wages of sin. My mother couldn't even
form a grand jury for my father's murder—the gentlemen refused to hand down an
indictment. They said 'twas a mob had done it; no one could be singled out for
blame and she was overstepping her bounds to demand more, as if she was a
justice herself. They said—" Her jaw worked sharply. "They said perhaps Mr.
Chilton was
right,
and women in our county should study their proper
place." Leigh made a sound of anger and despair. She tugged at the pack strap
over and over. "Mama wrote to the lord lieutenant, but never had an answer. I
doubt the letter ever got past Hex-ham. That was when Emily was—punished. But of
course there was no proof, no way to show Chilton had made it happen. Oh, he
knows how to frighten them. He knew how to keep them from speaking out. Mama
thought if she could just make them see—she went to all the magistrates and
tried to convince them to act against Chilton. Then Anna was found, and people
looked at us as if we carried the plague. The servants left. The jury met, and
called it another suicide. The next we heard, 'twas Chilton 's name on the list,
to be appointed a clerical magistrate in my father's place."