Gypsy Heiress (16 page)

I was forced to hear much eulogistic commentary about the charm of their duet before the evening could continue. No sooner had Peregrine’s sister Miss Absalm sat down to play at the harp, but one of the strings snapped under her fingers, and all turned back to conversation while the repair was made.

Across the room, Julie Aldgate had succeeded in cornering Robert and was talking to him animatedly, her expressive hands fluttering through the air like fairy wings, and her curls flying. I saw him put up his hand to catch her chin, no doubt to hold steady her poor little wagging head, but Julie saw fit to interpret it as a caress. She gave Robert a meltingly adoring smile. The squire walked past my view, speaking in a jolly way with Vincent and with his neighbor, Sir Maxwell Whitely, and I tried to apply my mind to what Mrs. Littledean had to say about the acquisition of new altar hangings for the church.

“To be sure,” she was assuring Mrs. Aldgate and Lady Absalm, who were both sitting to my right, “the Norwich cloth is quite pretty, but ladies—tradition! Since seventeen hundred and three the altar scarves for this parish have been made by the ranking lady at Chad Hall, and if we can only prevail upon dear Isabella…” Her voice lifted tactfully and succeeded in catching the attention of Isabella, who had taken a chair in front of me.

Isabella swiveled around, her lips smiling like half a Christmas wreath. “My dear Mrs. Littledean, you know, of course, that I am not really of any importance at Chad anymore,” she said, her tone implying that she had been beggared by my advent in the parish, which Brockhaven and Mr. Cadal had both assured me was far from the truth. “Why don’t you ask my
new
cousin, Liza?”

Looking nonplussed, Mrs. Littledean said to me, “My word! I had never thought of that!
Do
you embroider, Liza?”

Feeling low and clutching my hands one in the other on my lap, I replied, “I’m afraid that I don’t, ma’am. I can mend, of course, and make window curtains, and horseblankets…”

“Horseblankets!” exclaimed Isabella. “Really, how handy! If one’s grooms and stable boys should all come ill at one time, we can send for Liza to keep things tiptop in the stables.”

Tall, dignified, and blue-veined, and with the posture of a broomstick, Mrs. Absalm inclined her head graciously in my direction. “A perfectly appropriate and practical skill for Liza to have, bred as she was. I have always held the maxim that a lady can do as she must, if only she conducts herself with nobility. It’s obvious to me that Liza has nothing to learn about the true womanly graces!”

Abandoned by Robert, Julie Aldgate came to slide into the seat beside Isabella and said gaily, “Well, I, for one, am in envy of you
completely,
Liza. I’d liefer sew at a horseblanket than take piano lessons any day of the week.”

Everyone laughed at that while Mrs. Aldgate said indulgently, “Oh, Julie, ‘
liefer
.’ What
will
you say next!”

I felt a warm and gentle hand rest for a moment on the curve of my bare shoulder and looked back to find Brockhaven watching me. He moved his hand to the chair rail, and his gaze fastened, suavely benign, on Julie.

“Very cogent, Miss Aldgate. Liza would tell you—if she weren’t so meticulously courteous—that it’s only the materialistic gorgios, imprisoned in their false notions of status and possessions who would commit themselves to owning cumbersome instruments like the piano or the harp.”

“Who are the gorgios, my lord?” asked Julie, wide-eyed, fascinated, obviously thrilled to have attracted Brockhaven’s notoriously elusive attention.

With a rather wicked smile in his blue eyes, Brockhaven said, “That’s the Romany word for any non-gypsy. Liza tactfully translates its meaning as ‘outsider,’ but it really means ‘peasant.’ ”

I was learning rapidly that Lord Brockhaven knew the most unexpected things! For a moment I was afraid that someone might be offended to learn this, but I need not have worried since everyone clearly thought the gypsies among the most wretched of God’s creatures. It didn’t occur to them to believe that the gypsies consider
themselves
to be superior, a philosophy strongly encouraged in me by my grandmother and just as forcefully opposed by my father, who said that good and evil are found in equal amounts in every race. But then, my father was not gypsy.

Brockhaven looked down at me. “Those questions aside,” he added with a lazy grin, “Liza plays the violin.”

I hadn’t touched it since my grandmother’s death, being in mourning, but he had seen it, probably when he had searched my wagon. Mrs. Aldgate thought that Brockhaven was still teasing.

“That we
know
is a whisker,” she said, waggling her finger flirtatiously. “The violin is much too difficult an instrument for a woman to play.”

“Oh, but no, ma’am,” said Ellen, who had just left off helping to bring the new harp string into tune. “The very first violin was p-played by a gypsy girl, so legend has it. Liza, you m-must tell the story, p-please.”

The room had grown quieter as more and more people had begun to focus their attention on me. It dismayed me greatly to have to talk with so many listening.

“I have no wish to bore…” I began, only to be interrupted by the squire, three rows away from me, who boomed, “Humdudgeon, lass. It ain’t every night that we get to hear gypsy folk tales, let me say! What about this violin?”

There was nothing for it. I must speak, or appear churlish. “Many years ago,” I began, trying to rid my voice of nervousness, “when lion and boar still roamed abroad in the Forests of Dean, there lived a gypsy maid whose heart was lost to a handsome Lord of the gorg—that is, the English. To him, she was dirty, dark and repellent; no matter what things she did, she was unable to win his love.” An image of Lord Brockhaven appeared in my mind, flustering me, and I could only hope that people assumed the tremor in my voice had come from shyness. I was glad that Brockhaven stood to my rear, so that I did not have to awkwardly avoid his eyes. I continued.

“Each day increased the maiden’s despair, and at last her need became past bearing, and she promised the souls of her own family to Satan, if he would help win the man she loved.

“Satan grabbed up her family in his fiery hand, and from her father, the devil made the body of a violin. The gypsy’s mother became the bow, and each of her four brothers formed a string.

“Cradling the violin sorrowfully in her arms, the maiden began to stroke the bow over the strings and the violin sent forth music so irresistibly compelling that the young lord fell under its spell and came to love the gypsy maiden.”

There was a short silence, into which Mrs. Absalm exclaimed, “I can’t believe such a tale could come to a happy end.”

“Alas, it does not,” I said. “Satan came to bear the gypsy maid and her lover away to Hades in a chariot of fire. The violin slipped from the maiden’s fingers, and was caught up by people of her tribe, who gave it to their children, and then their children’s children, and thus it went until this day, when we play it still, a perpetual reverence for the eight souls tragically lost in its making.”

“By Jove, that’s the most intriguing lore I’ve heard in a twelvemonth,” proclaimed the squire enthusiastically. “Stab me if I don’t record that in my journal as soon as I’m up tomorrow morning. Tell you what, young lady. I’ve got a fiddle that belonged to my Uncle Ned—not that he was much of a hand with the thing. Keep the old fiddle locked up in the morning room cupboard, don’t you, Mrs. Perscough? Well, then, Liza! Why don’t you and I trot next door and see if it’s in shape to play, eh? Make the night something above the common run if you’d throw us a tune or two.”

“I don’t know!” said the vicar’s wife with a deep frown, “I’m sure that I don’t! Gypsy music is said to be—that is to say, I cannot think that Lord Brockhaven would approve at all of his young ward playing such music as is reputed to—to inflame the
animal
passions.”

Although my acquaintance with Lord Brockhaven was not of any significant length, I knew him well enough to recognize that this was precisely the kind of remark he most detests, and sure enough, he smiled in that way he has of smiling when he’s out for blood, and said in a sensual drawl, “Liza, fetch your violin and play—for me.”

I was happy to be out of the room before I saw the reaction
that
statement brought from the vicar’s wife.

The morning after the soirée brought in the kind of day you expect to find in late April. A gray rain poured down on Edgehill, splattering the window glass with noisy abandon and filling the air with the sound of water rushing from the downspouts.

Betty was to wake me at half past seven to ride with Ellen and her friend Claire, but our plans were pending rain, so Betty didn’t come in until after nine o’clock. She helped me dress, gave me a tray of breakfast, and with it a note from Ellen that said:

Considerably intrigued, I entered that room a half hour later to find my friend bending over her portable sewing table and staring anxiously at the feather picture to which she had been giving sporadic and unenthusiastic attention for the last three weeks. Ellen had been gathering feathers for six months and she had collected a basketful—from wild birds in the woods, goosedown stolen from feather bedding, tail feathers from the peacocks at Chad Hall, owl feathers, pheasant feathers, chicken feathers. The object was to arrange the feathers in an appropriate design on a sheet of textured canvas. Ellen had chosen to create a forest scene, with a rabbit, and was intending it as a gift for her Great Aunt Anne’s birthday.

As I came in the door, Ellen cried, “Carefully, Liza, carefully—th-these aren’t glued yet, and the s-slightest b-breeze from the door will… Oh,
no
!” Then after a moment, a resigned, “Ah, well.”

“I’m very sorry, Ellen. Oh, dear, there must be a hundred feathers in your hair!”

“I don’t mind that so m-much, Liza,” said Ellen, pounding her chest with a fist and giving a delicate cough. “It’s the ones that went into m-my throat that I p-particularly object to. No, don’t come over and help me, the movement makes them fly around more. I’ll h-have it right in a moment or two.” She began picking the feathers from her hair. “So—you were the belle of the hour last n-night! I’ve never heard
anything
like the way you play the violin. And that one s-song, what is it called… colo…”

“Kaulochirilo. It means ‘blackbird,’ ” I said.

“It was the l-loveliest thing I ever heard. I swear you’d n-need a heart of stone to remain unmoved during it. And himself, the squire, admired it p-profusely. Mama told me at breakfast that he’s showing an alarming d-disposition toward changing his alliance from Shakespeare’s marriage to the study of gypsy customs and legends.”

I laughed a little and said, “He was most kind to me and I was honored by his interest. Would it disturb the feathers if I sat down?”

“N-Not if you do so with care. Sit in the blue chair by the revolving bookstand, if you please. Yes, that one.”

I sat down gingerly and watched as Ellen dipped a bit of feathery fluff into the little pot of glue and carefully set it in place. As she dipped, she said, “I p-particularly wanted to talk with you this morning, of course, more about the s-soirée last night. But I have something I wanted to show you first.” I waited patiently while she waved her fingers in the air and tried to remove sticky feathers from one hand with the sticky fingers of her other hand, transferring the small bright bits of fluff rather than ridding herself of them.

“Something to show me from here?” I said curiously, indicating the bookcase.

“Yes!” she said. “Generally I n-never use this room since it’s rather considered Robert’s domain. The corner desk there is where he writes his letters, keeps his accounts, etcetera. Before Brockhaven inherited his t-title, the room belonged to the sons, who you will remember, d-died with their father, the man who was earl before Brockhaven. As for the bookcase, I always th-thought ‘
boy’s
books’ and never considered them of interest—books about fishing, hunting, horses, and fighting. Well, l-last night at the dinner, I took too much champagne and had the m-most profound indigestion! I couldn’t get to sleep, and I couldn’t take a book from the library to help put me to sleep because Brockhaven and Robert were still in there talking, and I didn’t want to come bursting in upon them in my nightdress. So I c-came in here, and found—well, I want you to read it for yourself. You see the thin book on the lower shelf with the green binding?”

“Just a moment,” I said, searching. “Oh, yes, here it is.” I pulled out the volume.

“Open to page fifty-six and read from the top,” she said, not turning.

I opened to the page as directed and read aloud. “ ‘As I opened my languishing eyes and delivered up my lips, he continued unbuttoning that part of his garments, and with the same calmness, he displayed what is not fit for me to mention…’ ”

Ellen dropped the picture, clapped her gluey hands over her ears in astonishment and rushed over to join me in a large-eyed study of the amazing passage.

“That’s not the book I was reading last night!” she said finally.

“No, I don’t suppose it would be just the thing for a person with indigestion.”

“What d-does it say after that?” she said, her surprise turning to curiosity. She looked at the page and read, her lips moving, and when she was finished, said in a shocked voice, “I didn’t know they put things like that in books. Well!”

“Do you know what I think?” I ventured hesitantly. “I think that if someone came into the room and found us reading this book—your mother, perhaps, or Lord Brockhaven—they might not like it.”

Ellen clapped the book shut and slipped it back into the bookcase. “Not like it! Liza, if my mother c-caught us with this book, she’d have us in our bedrooms for a week on bread and water. Young ladies are not supposed to know about things that are not fit to mention. That’s why if you ever have occasion t-to talk about a man’s trousers, which is a th-thing you’re not supposed to have an occasion to d-do, but if you should ever have to, it’s the
thing
to call them inexpressibles.”

After pondering this, I replied, “I will if that’s the correct way. But it’s not very logical since we don’t refer to our skirts as inexpressible, but our skirts cover the parts of us which…”

Ellen interrupted me with a burst of laughter. “D-don’t ever expect logic and propriety to coincide. When they do, it’s the v-veriest accident. Now let me show you my
real
discovery.” She spun the bookcase slowly, studying the titles, and with a little cry of triumph pulled out a volume called
The Hows and Whys of Cotswold Monsters, or Tested Triumphs O’er Evil
. She opened it to page fifty-six and read from it after unsticking her fingers from the page.

“It says here ‘… that dreaded spectre the Werewolf. Is it man-beast or beast-man? Only the wandering gypsy knows the full sum of it, and he t-tells his tale to none.’ ”

“That wandering gypsy isn’t me, because I don’t know a thing about werewolves. Vampires perhaps, and goblins, and demons, of course…”

“Liza, you’re giving me c-crawling skin,” said Ellen with a shudder and a laugh.

“Crawling skin! That’s more frightening than anything I’ve said!” I protested.

She giggled. “D-don’t keep changing the subject. Of course the author wasn’t referring to you—it was j-just a figure of speech, romantic speculation. It’s what comes later that caught my attention. See? Read here.” She pointed at a paragraph; I took the book from her and read aloud:

“ ‘It is not mere superstition that I describe here, but scientific methods that have been used around the world, from the impenetrable forests of the Rhineland to the wild swamps of the Orinooko. To actually render the werewolf harmless, no, not frighten away, not kill, but to tame, for if in it be the spirit of a loved one, taming is ever the choice of humanity and benevolence. Prepare a fresh joint of raw beef stamped and steeped with opium. Herein the Scientific Method!’ ”

“What do you think?” said Ellen. “That’s logical, d-don’t you agree?”

“I don’t know,” I said mildly. “And since we’ll never have an opportunity to experiment with it…” Suddenly I began to dislike the look on Ellen’s face. “
Will
we?”

“That’s th-the b-best part! Listen to this. Now where w-was that? A pox on these pages for sticking to my fingers. Oh, h-here it is. ‘The m-most propitious of all evenings for thus disarming the C-Creature is on the ancient festival of May. Wear h-heavy dark robes, scent your hair with f-flowers, carry the prepared meat in a wine-soaked leather satchel and leave it thence in a clearing notorious for the creature’s presence.’ ” She looked at me with a beatific glow. “Liza! This Th-Thursday is May Day.”

“May Day is also the day that witches meet,” I said, controlling a shiver. “My grandmother used to make rowan talismans without using a knife, and tie them to the tails of our oxen on May Day to ward off the evil eye.”

“That’s the dark side of the holiday, Liza. B-but here we have the loveliest celebration, with more zest than Midsummer Night’s Eve! The parson doesn’t approve, of course. He says May Days are an excuse for debauchery, and that what we are really celebrating is a dreadful pagan fertility rite. But every year the celebration goes on, since the Saxons or Romans or D-Druids or whoever, began it. The custom the parson deprecates m-most is the tradition of everyone spending the n-night in the woods—well, n-not everyone, of course—the young people, mostly. Young ladies of our station are l-left out, of course. Can you imagine L-Lady Gwen or any of the m-mothers you met last night allowing such a th-thing? Our reputation would be in shreds forever if we were ever f-found in such a scrape. B-but that is neither here nor there. The p-point is, it will be the perfect c-cover for us. There will be so many people about we won’t seem in the least suspicious. What could be b-better?”

“Almost anything!” I said. “I thought you just said our reputations would be destroyed forever if we went into the woods on May Day.”

“We won’t have to worry about that b-because we aren’t going to tell anybody. I go about incognito all the t-time. Don’t you remember when I came to visit you in m-my old gray cloak? Not that I’ve ever d-done anything this ambitious, of course.”

I laughed out loud. Underneath her shy and retiring exterior, my friend Ellen had an adventurer’s soul, and I wondered what she would be like in a few years when she no longer had her mother to stand over her and tell her to make feather pictures. Looking at her animated face, I asked curiously, “Ellen, do you really think there’s a werewolf?”

Ellen was thoughtfully transferring a feather from one forefinger to the other until the glue was dry and tacky, and she lifted her finger to her lips to blow loose the feather into the air.

“Well, n-no, but I like to pretend there might be one. I know this. There is some kind of a large animal; you saw its tracks and Caesar fought it. M-meat soaked in sedative will work as well for a beast as for a half-beast. M-maybe there will b-be too many people out, and it would be frightened to show itself, but Liza, what if w-we should capture it?”

I shook my head, unable to share my friend’s excitement. “I’m not fond of the hunt, Ellen. I never seem to be able to shed a feeling of sympathy for the animal.”

“Oh, Liza, I understand, I really d-do,” Ellen said warmly. Then she stopped, and a troubled look came to her face; she turned and walked to the fireplace, stooping to pick up a feather which had drifted to the floor.

“Ellen, whatever is the matter?” I asked.

She rolled the feather between her hands and said in a low voice, after glancing around the room, “Liza, I know this may seem like quite an unusual observation, but has it occurred to you that th-this animal seems to have a propensity for attacking people who stand in th-the way of Isabella’s ownership of Chad Hall?” She clenched her hands in distress. “It’s a t-terrible thing to insinuate, I know, and I d-don’t mean that Isabella herself would ever…”

I fairly leapt from my chair and the heavy old book went banging to the floor from my lap. “Do you mean to say that my life was in danger in the woods?”

“I d-don’t know, Liza. But I think Brockhaven does! D’you remember the night at dinner when you told about the strange animal? Brockhaven had John Stewart and a group of armed men out the next morning beating the woods. And he’s m-made rules saying you c-can never go anywhere unaccompanied by a groom. He w-was n-never that way before; he n-never insisted that my mother keep such a close watch on
me,
for instance; rather he w-was quite lenient. I think he knows something about it th-that he isn’t saying.”

Perhaps she was right about Brockhaven. I could see what she meant. There had been a certain watchfulness, too, from certain of Lord Brockhaven’s servants here, as if it was important to make sure frequently of where I was. Did they think someone might try to do me harm? And if so, then who? Like Ellen, I could never imagine lovely, passionate Isabella at the center of some dark plot for my murder and no one else had a reason to wish me ill, surely. Useless, less than useless, to ask Brockhaven, who would have told me by now if he wished me to know. It was as though Ellen had pulled away a dark veil and revealed a mute enigma wrapped in a second shroud of mystery. Or perhaps it was all fancy, and the animal in the woods had been a badger, as Robert thought, and Brockhaven had sent men to the woods only as a precaution, and to comfort the maternal fears of Lady Gwendolyn. And, of course, the servants stared at me. I was new and different and therefore of interest.

I said thoughtfully, “Ellen, it seems so—so farfetched to me. If there was the faintest grain of truth to it, though, we couldn’t possibly go into the forest that night, for not only would my life be risked, but yours as well.”

“That’s just it,” cried Ellen triumphantly. “Liza, May Day is the s-safest night of the year for us to be abroad, because that’s the l-last night anyone would suspect we’d be out.”

I couldn’t help laughing. “You feel that anyone would assume we’d have the sense to stay snug in our beds…?”