Old Saxon Blood Page 7

  “That woman is taking her good time seeing to our chamber,”

  Matthew said after a while when the former housekeeper had not returned.

  “She is truly,” answered Joan. “Perhaps she’s forgotten about us. Let’s look around.”

  “She told us to remain here,” said Matthew.

  “We shall be very naughty then,” remarked Joan dryly, “and disobey her ladyship’s orders. What, are we not now steward and housekeeper of Thorneombe? That woman is insufferable, and we shall presently have to remind her of her place and our authority.” Joan led the way from the kitchen down the corridor to another door which, when opened, revealed a chamber of such vast size that Joan surmised at once it was the great hall of the old castle. The hall was very dusty and unfurnished, like the inside of an empty barn. The floors and walls were stone; the high ceiling a crisscross of sturdy beams, rough-hewn and blackened from equally ancient fires. At one end were a huge hearth and dais. High on each flanking wall were banks of clerestory windows, and at the end opposite the dais was an arched passage leading to a chapel.

  The chapel apparently was no longer used for religious purposes. The crucifix that had hung upon the wall and whose traces yet could be seen had been removed; and a faintly discernible mural of some pious theme had been desecrated—as the rotten rags of popery—by the charcoal of torches.

  Matthew and Joan were examining the chapel when they heard Moll come up behind them.

  “I thought I told you to stay in the kitchen,” Moll said crankily. Joan faced the woman and said, “So you told us. We chose not to be kept waiting longer. Our new duties give us rights of passage in this house. And so we left the kitchen and proceeded to this place and find it in very poor condition indeed.”

  Moll glared at Joan. “It’s the banqueting hall, a scurvy place, I admit, but the master gave no instructions that it should be otherwise. Sir John lived in the new house. He never ventured here. He didn’t like the old castle.”

  “I heard him say as much, hate the old castle,’ said he, many times.”

  This was the voice of Moll’s husband, who had come up behind her and was now peering with unveiled hostility at the

  Stocks over his wife’s shoulder.

  “Its still a disgrace,” Joan replied undauntedly. “And it must be cleaned and repaired.”

  “Surely you would not have these Papist images restored?” the old woman asked, aghast.

  “Of course not,” Joan said. “The place is no long a sanctuary. Its a gentlewoman s home, and part of it should not resemble a barn in its filth. Why, look you, is that not a nest of bats there in the rafters?”

  Joan pointed upward to the high ceiling where indeed there was a little community of bats occupying one corner.

  “I never noticed them before,” Moll said defensively.

  Joan persisted in her attack. “And this chapel! Look at those walls! The images thereon shall not be restored, but must the walls look as though they bore witness still to some drunken riot of Puritan fanatics—drunken with zeal?”

  “Drunken with zeal—?”

  “Yes, drunken,” Joan went on, sensing now that she had the old woman in full retreat. “Order the Irish girls in with soap and pails and clean this disgraceful mess. It smells like a stable in here too!”

  For a moment Moll seemed too thunderstruck to speak, then, assuming a new dignity, she went on, “I have no authority to order anyone. You have been given the keys to the house. And you may do with them as pleases you—and with the servants as well. As for my husband and I, our duties are now few but plain. We are in retirement. Honorable retirement. The letter we received from the new mistress grants us room and board in the groundskeeper s lodge. In token of our long and satisfactory service, I might add, for not once in forty-seven years did the masters of Thorncombe complain of my supervision. And I assure you that neither Sir John nor his father nor his father before him ever ordered me to keep the banqueting hall in such fine condition as you order. For all of me, this hideous old relic could burn to the ground tomorrow and I should gladly warm my feet by the fire. Now my husband and I will go our way. Since you found your ways hither without a guide, 1 suppose you may have equal success finding your chamber.”

  With these good wishes, Moll turned, indicated with a nod to her husband that he should follow her, and the two of them marched off toward the kitehen.

  “Detestable, unruly woman,” Joan remarked in a heat when they were alone again.

  “A disgrace to her sex!” exclaimed Matthew.

  And then both of them laughed despite themselves, for the Fludds had looked very droll in their attitudes of high dudgeon.

  “But how shall we find this chamber to which our chests have been hauled?” Joan asked when their laughter had subsided.

  “Its not that large of a house, surely,” Matthew replied, looking about him with confidence.

  They left the chapel and hall the way they had come and found Una in the kitchen. Joan asked her where her and Matthews chamber could be found, and it was only the womans puzzled expression as response that recalled for Joan Molls comment about the inability of the female servants to speak English, at least very well. She next tried communicating by gestures and had some success. Una smiled pleasantly, said something in Irish, and then beckoned Joan and Matthew to follow. She led the way back through the banqueting hall and then up one of two winding staircases. They climbed what seemed a great distance until they arrived at a landing off which were several doors. Here the Irishwoman paused, pointed to the door, and nodded her head several times vigorously as one completely incapable of speech might have done, and then, making the sign of the cross over her aproned bosom, she hurried downstairs.

  Matthew opened the door.

  It was with some relief that Joan saw first her chest and then Matthews placed next to a large bed. But the chamber itself, once Joan had entered and taken it in, had a distinctly unwelcoming appearance. The room was clean but no fire had been laid in the hearth, and the broken panes in one of the several windows let in a stream of cold air. The inhospitable effect was aggravated by Joan s weariness and a throbbing headache.

  Matthew walked over and sat down on the bed. He bounced on it a few times and pronounced it adequate. Joan inspected the bed linen. It was clean. But she could tell by her husbands expression that their chamber was as unappealing to him as it was to her.

  “Well,” he said with a sigh of resignation. “We won't lack for space.”

  “Indeed,” Joan said. ‘ Large it is, but I would have been glad for something less austere. Why, look, I'll wager Molls quarters in the groundskeeper’s lodge are more comfortable. Wouldn’t you have thought that terrible woman would have directed a fire to have been laid and some rushes upon the floor? How I hate to tread of a cold morning on stone.”

  “You unpack,” Matthew suggested. “I’ll go below to find someone to fetch wood for a fire. And there’s also the matter of supper.”

  “Supper!” Joan exclaimed, not hungry at all. “After the day’s travel I’m ready for bed, and you talk about eating again!”

  Matthew laughed and said he would return soon.

  She urged him to be true to his word. She didn’t want to go looking for him, much less to stay there by herself.

  Soon she could no longer hear the echoing of his boots. Solitary for now, a lethargy settled upon her and her headache became more clamorous. She looked at her traveling chest and considered unpacking. But she could not bring herself to begin. She sat on the bed. Homesickness for Chelmsford, her own chamber, her daughter and her little grandson conspired with her growing melancholy. Why had she consented to come7 Could the Queen not have found others to see to this matter?

  She tried to shake off her melancholy by humming a merry tune, but unlike Matthew, she had no pleasing voice and her effort only made things worse. The impression the vast chamber made on her mind was too strong. A chamber designed to repel invaders, or to keep a traitor dose prisone
r. A fine night’s sleep she would have in such quarters. And what dreams should be inspired by the cold stone she dreaded to think.

  Surely their assignment to the tower had been deliberate on Moll’s part, perniciously conceived. The old woman’s remark about the burning castle, about roasting her feet by its flames, had made her motives clear. It was a palpable effort to intimidate them— worse than cold welcome or no welcome at all.

  Which, despite the physical discomfort of the moment, brought Joan’s mind around to another point. Just why had Moll done it? Was the old woman merely jealous of her replacement? Or was her hostility rooted in suspicion that the Stocks had come to Thorncombe to uncover something that Moll and her husband were at pains to keep concealed? Murder, for example.

  She sought relief from her aching head by lying on the bed for a while. She had no idea when Matthew would return, and she thought a nap might put all in order again.

  She must have slept an hour at least, for when she awoke the chamber was growing dark and as yet Matthew had not returned. Alarmed, she got up and walked toward the windows, feeling a flush of unhealth along her throat and an insidious ache in her joints too pervasive to be only the consequence of the long, torturous cart ride. Through the tall, narrow apertures, she could see in the distance the purple shapes of hills like a reclining figure, raw against the fading light. It struck upon her brain that what she saw there across the lake was a woman disrobed and turned upon her side with her head resting on her arm. She saw the roll of hip, the sloping flanks, the smooth contours of knee and calf, and the image fixed in her imagination and gave her some momentary relief from her anxiety. Then she dropped her eyes and saw in the middle distance the expanse of water, still and dark. She felt a sudden chill and wondered if it was another symptom. Or was it a premonition?

  Matthew. In Gods name, where was he?

  She was about to go in search of him when her attention was drawn to a large wardrobe standing in one corner of the chamber. Curious, she walked over and opened it.

  It was empty except for a long, tattered garment hanging in one corner like a dead man on a gibbet. There was also an unpleasant odor.

  She looked far back into the shadowy recess, and her heart leapt into her throat. Something, someone lurked there, motionless and silent.

  Without thinking of the danger to herself, she yanked open the door to admit more light and saw the thing was a slight female form sitting against the wall with her thin white-stockinged legs pulled up protectively to her chest. Clutched to the bosom like a suckling child was a dead cat.

  And where the girl’s head should have been—oh dreadful to see—was a mass of bloody pulp.

  Joan pressed both hands over her mouth to stifle the scream welling up within her. As though empowered by a will not her own, she staggered back toward the open window, turned, and took great gulps of the cold air while endeavoring to contain her nausea.

  Through eyes misty with shock she looked at the purple hills that moments earlier had resembled a reclining woman. Now the hills were a dark mass, draped in funeral dusk like a corpse upon a catafalque.

  How long had it been since Matthew went to find wood?

  It seemed a hundred years. But never had his familiar footfalls or call—heard now over the pounding of her heart, the clamor of her headache—been so welcome. She had not moved from the window since her awful discovery. She wanted Matthew both to console her and to deny what she had seen in the wardrobe. Had it been a palpable horror, or the figment of a disordered mind?

  Matthew entered, followed by the young hostler, his arms loaded with faggots. Matthew began to explain his delay in returning when he noticed Joans face. He asked her what was wrong.

  She could not bring herself to speak but pointed toward the wardrobe, the door of which had remained ajar.

  “God in heaven,” Matthew gasped when he had seen for himself, and in his anguished countenance resolved Joans doubts that what she had seen was real.

  Peering over Matthew’s shoulder, Edward let his burden drop, and in a dry, wheezing voice declared that the body was that of one of the maids.

  The one not present at muster, Joan thought. The one Moll had called Aileen and threatened to beat for her insolence.

  Matthew ordered Edward to go fetch the Fludds and to say nothing to them or any other person about the gruesome discovery. He pushed the wardrobe door shut and went over to where Joan stood. Putting his arm around her shoulders and drawing her to him, he said, ‘‘Sir John’s drowning may have been murder or misadventure, but this poor creature’s death could only have been murder. What possessed devil would so mutilate a mere child as this girl obviously was, or prop her up with a dead cat as though she were giving it suck?”

  Joan had no answer for her husband’s question. With the wardrobe shut and Matthew holding her, the ghastly vision now seemed less real, as though it had been a dream. The question lingering in her mind was unspeakable: Where was the rest of the hapless girl—the poor severed head? Was it concealed somewhere in the chamber, or beneath the bed, waiting for her, Joan, to discover it at some awful moment to come?

  Then she heard voices outside the chamber and presently Edward reappeared with a brace of candles in hand and the Fludds at his heels. Moll was complaining about the sudden, unexplained summons, the steep steps that were a torment to her bones, Edward’s sweating pallor and perverse refusal to say just what was wanted and why such urgency. Was it not nigh time decent folks were abed?

  Matthew asked Moll and her husband to look into the wardrobe.

  “Wherefore?” snapped Moll. “Is the chamber not satisfactory?”

  “It is not,” answered Matthew coldly. Again he ordered them to look in the wardrobe.

  Moll snorted with discontent and, her husband following, marched toward the wardrobe and looked in, Edward holding the candles high so that the interior was fully illuminated.

  For a moment there was no response from either Moll or Cuth;

  then Moll let out a great bellow of grief and rage: “O God in heaven preserve us all,” she cried. “Its Nebuchadnezzar. Its my dear, sweet cat that I loved before all the world."

  “And, more important, a human soul, treacherously used." Matthew said.

  “Its Aileen Mogaill," Cuth said in a shaking voice. “Why, we thought she had run away, like the others before her."

  The old man tried to comfort his wife, but she would have no comfort. She kept lamenting the cat's death.

  Matthew said something about going for the local constable, and Moll suddenly stopped her blubbering and turned her face toward him. “Oh, I wouldn't do that," she said. “It will do little good for the girl and surely great harm to them that's living."

  “Why great harm?" Joan asked before Matthew could.

  “John Andrewes—him that's constable for the year—is a right blockhead, that's the harm. He'll come when called, gawk, say tut-tut and wellaway, and make nothing of this horror but to scratch the fleas in his beard and summon the coroner, who's his match as a numbskull."

  “Numbskull or not, he must be summoned," Matthew said. “So goes the law."

  “So may the law go for me," Moll answered sharply. “But it’s more than law you’ll have when this gets out."

  “Why, what do you mean?" Joan asked.

  “Marry, I mean nothing less than there'll be not a servant left in the castle, that’s what. All will fly, believe me. The Irish wenches, the lot, and you'll have none come from the village or Buxton to take their places. A fine wedding the young mistress will have then, she and her bridegroom, alone in the castle."

  “But this girl within the wardrobe has been murdered," Matthew protested.

  “She came here of herself, she did," Moll said, as though the victim had somehow been responsible for her own tragedy. “She should have known better than to haunt the Keep without companions."

  Joan exchanged a puzzled glance with Matthew. There was obviously more to Moll’s concern than met the eye.
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br />   “It's the curse, the Challoner curse," Cuth pronounced, casting a knowing look toward his wife.

  “Shut up, you old fool," Moll said.

  Ignoring this kindly admonition, Cuth commenced to stumble through an account of a decapitated baronet of Thorncombe, with sufficient competence to send a shiver down Joan’s spine as he told his tale. Joan looked around the chamber when he was done. A fit chamber of horrors, this, with a notable history of monstrous acts, yet she did not believe for a moment Ailecn Mogaill had been beheaded by a ghost. This was mortal mischief, she was sure; nestling the dead cat in the girl’s arms was the bizarre humor of a sick mind, not the work of a tormented spirit.

  “Man, ghost, or devil, the constable must be summoned,’' Matthew insisted.

  “Well, summon whom you please,” Moll said. “But if you do, you might well not unpack your gear, for it will be even as I have said. When this act is proclaimed, no servant will darken these doors. You will have the place to yourselves, and right welcome to it, and the mistress can marry elsewhere.”

  Moll stood, her arms akimbo, staring at Matthew as though to allow the full implication of her warning to settle, then she turned to Cuth and said, “Come, husband. We’ve had our say. Let them agree who will.”

  The old couple marched out, and Matthew sent Edward to find something to cover the girl’s body. When Matthew and Joan were alone, Joan said, “Moll’s right, you know. Nothing can be more injurious to our efforts here than the news of this fresh and most blatant homicide. It will surely have just such an effect as this wicked old woman prophesied.”

  “Surely you don’t believe this was the work of a ghost?” Matthew said.

  “No, I don’t,” Joan said. “It may well be the work of the same hand that killed Sir John—although why he should have chosen to slaughter an innocent child is beyond reason.”