The Prince in the Tower (13 page)

The priest
lifted the re-wigged Miss Radish, the love of his life, the maker of his plans, the wine in his communion cup, into his lap.  He gazed imploringly into her face, stroking her scalp, kissing her cheek.  Miss Radish was still dead to the world and was unable to return his caresses.

“You killed her!” he screamed to Kate.  He st
ruggled to his feet, his beloved’s head falling with a clunk which made everyone in the cavern wince.  He flew toward Kate, both fists raised.  With a roar, Edmund threw off the restraining hand of Constable Mackey.  He flung himself in front of the rushing priest.  The dragoons raised their rifles, but Major Goodwillie allowed Edmund several well-aimed blows to the body and a cross-buttock toss before nodding to the constable.  Mackey waded into the thick of things to grab Edmund by the arms and lead him away.  On the ground, Father Flannery lay dazed.

Kate for once, did nothing.  She was in a state of profound shock, tempered liberally with revulsion.  “I don’t understand,” she stated firmly.  She shook her head, but knew the worst.  Her
heart was leaden in her breast; her faith, her complete, utter trust in her priest and confessor, lay shattered alongside him on the ground.  She could only stare while Edmund, after a muttered colloquy with the major, drew a knife to cut her bonds.  His hands, she noted, where shaking and she vaguely wondered why.

Meanwhile,
Father Flannery drew himself up painfully to his elbow.  Panting, he pointed to Kate.  “She!  She is the Grey Cavalier!”

The cry rang out in diminis
hing echoes in the enormous cavern.  Even the river seemed to catch the words.  “Grey Cavalier...Grey Cavalier...she is the Grey Cavalier...” it whispered.  To Kate’s horror, the sounds finally died down to perfect silence.  Then pandemonium ensued.

Lady
Alice drew in a shocked breath.  “Why, she is no more the Grey Cavalier than am I!”  She looked at her niece only to recognize guilt written all over it.  Without a moment’s hesitation, she squared her shoulders.  Facing the major, she steeled herself to announce, “In fact, I am the Grey Cavalier.”

“With all due respect, madam
,” Major Goodwillie stroked his chin with thoughtful fingers.  To his credit, he managed not to laugh.  “You haven’t the look of a horseman, which they say the Cavalier is.  And if the Cavalier is a woman, which I take leave to doubt,” he paused and gave a condescending chortle, “I’d be more inclined to think it was this little lady here.”  He indicated Lucy, standing tall and straight. 

Lucy stepped forward.  “I confess.  I am the Grey Cavalier.”  She held out her hands.  “You may arrest me now.”

“Lucy!”  Tom rushed forward.  “Arrest me.  I am the Grey Cavalier, of course.  No mere woman could do all of that.”

Unwilling to be left out of the excitement, Caro rushed to the major, tugging at his sleeve.

“He’s a fake!  Everyone knows I’m the Cavalier!”

Edmund, who was now holding down
Father Flannery with a boot placed lightly but warningly on the back of his neck, lapsed into dandyism.  With infinite patience belied only by the warning looks he was shooting to Kate, who was ignoring him willfully, he shook out the torn, bloody ruffles at his wrists. 

“I do beg everyone to remember,” he drawled,
“That it was I who was identified as the gentleman in question, and was, in fact, incarcerated as such.”

Kate shook of
f the inertia which held her silent.  Making her way through the crowd surrounding the major, she stood in front, looked him in the eye.  “They’re simply trying to protect me,” she said quietly.  “I am the Cavalier.”

Cries of,
“No, no!  It was me!  I am the Grey Cavalier!” reverberated around and around and around till Kate thought her ears would bleed.  But thankfully for everyone’s eardrums, Major Goodwillie had had enough.

“Silence
!” he thundered, looking rather surprised that they all shut up.  He examined the rackety bunch in front of him.  At no point in his entire career, or anyone else’s, as far as he knew, had a situation such as this ever presented itself and he was utterly at a loss as to how to deal with it.  So in the absence of cut-and-dried regulations, he decided to arrest everyone and sort it all out later.

“You may all, with the exception of Constable Mackey, consider yourselves under arrest.  My men will march you down to the village where you will be incarcerated until such time as I can figure out who is the Grey Cavalier, and may I say he,” t
he major looked hard at Caro, “Or she, will feel the rough side of my wrath.  You two,” he glowered at Father Flannery, “are under arrest for the murder of Adam Weilmunster, the making and passing of false coin, and anything else I may find out or decide in the future.”

At
these words Flannigan threw off Edmund’s restraining foot and dashed madly for the river.  Two young dragoons each grabbed an arm and hauled him back to the circle.

Miss Radish, now conscious and re-
wigged, exclaimed, “Boris, my darling, how could you leave me?”

“I--ah--was just going to see if the water was cold,” he stammered.

So they all marched under armed guard through the passage, down the hill, over the fields, into the village.  Miss Radish cried into her wig the entire time.

Finally the group reached the green in front of the constable’s tiny office. 
As they waited, the village, not yet truly asleep, began to waken in earnest.  Villagers, not unnaturally intrigued by the sight which met their eyes, once more pulled on jackets over their nightshirts and gathered at a safe distance to observe.  They were joined by a carriage full of tourists just back from a midnight ghost tour of Harrison’s Haunts.  The Countess of Malford, Mrs. Kendall, and much of the Ladies Aid, come from a cutthroat game Pope Joan, gathered to watch.  Jasper Jackson hurried out with his sketch book to capture the scene for posterity.  [N.B. The completed drawing, along with others of the time period and many of Jackson’s later works, now hang, perfectly preserved, in the Oaksley Museum of Art.]

As
the night began to age, and the weather to turn colder, it became glaringly obvious that the roundhouse, like the Black Hole of Calcutta, was much too small to hold such a crowd of purported felons, especially since it already held one boy, now peering out of the barred window to see more than most of his immediate family under arrest. 

The major tried
to commandeer the Lady and the Scamp, but was thwarted by Mr. Rigby and his guests.  He then attempted to put the priest and his inamorata in the stone building together, not unreasonable after the revelations of the night, one might have thought.  But one would have thought wrong.  Miss Radish, when urged to join her evil lover in the roundhouse, held onto the bars of the window and cried pitiably, interspersing her tears with hiccupped references so graphic that Kate clapped her hands over Caro’s ears, even as Edmund clapped his hands over hers.

The whole village stood about, most arguing vociferously, but
no less authoritatively, for having no idea what on earth was going on.  Kate stood in mortal dread that no amount of self-justification would help.  She had failed, not only failed but ruined her family, her town, herself.  The girls would dwindle into poor relation spinsters, all except Caro, who would undoubtedly end up like Barbara Radish.  Although not, Kate trusted, bald. She wrapped her arms about herself, cold to the core, and rashly, but sincerely, promised God all sorts of good behavior if He could somehow save her siblings from this mess she had led them into.

Only one thing, and one thing only, gave her some comfort.  Bertie was cleared.  Great rolling tears of hot relief, of shame, guilt, and fear ran rivers
through grime on her cheeks.  But he was free.  She watched as he scrambled around Flannery, dodging Miss Radish, still awash in tears and lamenting.  He paused, saw her, and ran to her, a boy still, a boy who would never know the gallows, who would grow up to experience all the wonder and joy of a life well-lived.

Bertie flung himself into her arms.  Kate bend down, holding him as if she’d never let go.  When he said, “Katie!  You caught the murderer!  I’m n
ot going to hang!” she heaved a great wrenching sob.   He pulled back to look at her tear ravaged face.

“What’s wrong?” h
e demanded uneasily.  He stared up at Edmund, unwilling to believe his hero could have made his sister cry.  “What’s wrong with my sister, sir?”

Edmund opened his mouth to reply, but something made him look up. 

Kate answered instead, scrubbing her tears with the back of her hand.  “Your sister might be in a spot of trouble,” she said in a masterpiece of understatement.

Then she
heard it too.  Tom, his arm about Lucy, which would have worried Kate had she not had enough on her plate at the moment, turned, then all the crowd turned as one.

F
ar down the road which led past the hanging tree came the rhythmic sound of a galloping horse.  Closer and louder it came.  At last the shimmering dawn revealed horse and rider.

The man was dressed all in grey, from the dancing plumes on his hat to the boots on his feet.  His cloak swirled about him in a way that was both ghostly and sinister.  Before the crowd had time to assimilate this, he broke from the road to gallop
ventre a terre
toward the group on the green.  As they squealed and scattered with shrieks of excitement, the rascal swept off his hat, and standing tall in the saddle, made a magnificent leg.  His cheeky grin every lady secretly hugged to her bosom, knowing without a doubt it was meant solely for her and her alone.

He sped across the green
, his horse sending clumps of grass and dirt high in the air..  As they reached the post road, then disappeared into the gloom beyond the assembly hall, a shout floated back on the breeze.

“For King and for country!”

It was the Countess who first recovered.

“Magnificent horsemanship,” she pronounced, for indeed it was no more than the truth.

“Was it--was it truly he?”

“Certainly,” she snapped,
“There can be no possible doubt.”

Mrs. Kendall, her hand pressed to her cheek, nodded in agreement.  “I would know him agai
n anywhere.”  She still gazed down the empty road. 

Lady Jeanne and Miss Letitia,
overcome by the romance of the moment, dissolved in giggles.

Kate could no more than stare, disoriented and dizzy from the second shock of the evening.  She won
dered if she were in fact concussed.  All at once overwhelmed, she sagged.  Instantly, Edmund threw his arm about her waist, holding her close.  His arm pressed against her waist, hard and warm and comforting. His breath blew across her cheek as he whispered in her ear, “Who the bloody hell was that?”

She shook her head, gaze still fixed, like everyone else
’s, upon the black horizon.  Realization swept over her and she gasped.  She goggled.  She choked back a giggle.

“Uncle Richard!
” she whispered, turning her head to meet his.    Edmund pressed a gentle kiss to her swollen eye.  Her gaze rested lovingly on his fat lip.

“No
one can take a punch like you, Lady Cavalier,” he murmured.  The back of Kate's neck tingled.  “A quality one looks for in marchionesses.”

Kate turned to him in joyous amazement. 
“Are you asking me to marry you?”  She would die if he said no, she realized.

Edmund risked a kiss to her ear.  Kate trembled.

“I’ve decided ‘tis much better to have you on my side than against.”

“Oh,” she said
coolly, not willing to settle for crumbs.  “I see.”

So he took her in his arms, bending her backwards (much at the risk of his battered ribs), kissing her with as much slow, hot thoroughness as his swollen lip would allow.  It curled Kate’s toes, thrilled Lady
Alice (for nothing could prevent a marriage after this sort of public compromise), and caused Miss Radish to wail anew.

Thus it was that the Lady
Katherine Thoreau agreed meekly to becoming the next Marchioness of Granville.

***

EPILOGUE

Father Flannery, or Boris Rachmaninov, as he was more commonly known in the streets of St. Petersburg, not to mention the jails of St. Petersburg, could have been excommunicated for any number of reasons, including his greatest sin, that of breaking the seal of the confessional, had he actually been a priest.  When it was discovered he was not much of anything save a slimy sneak thief, womanizer, and general piece of scum, the lay courts dealt with him swiftly, summarily, and with a heavy hand.

Miss Radish pled her belly, spending her time in Newgate until such time as her non-existent child was not born, and dully transported to
Australia, where she never donned a wig again and did nice things for poor people.

In the aftermath of the scandal the likes of which had never before and
would never again rock Oaksley with such magnitude, a great many couples at whose weddings, baptisms, and other sacraments Boris Rachmaninov had officiated, quietly remarried, rebaptized, and reconsecrated their beloved dead.  The new priest, triple-checked for appropriate credentials by no less than three cardinals and two bishops of the Church, found himself landed with such a backlog of confessions he had to enlist the help of another priest from a neighboring parish.