Bewitched (Bantam Series No. 16) (12 page)

Again he thought of his mother, but the fragrance haunted him.

He remembered now he had smelt it first in the hair of a Gypsy he had carried in his arms after he had run her down with his Phaeton.

He felt very weak. It was too much trouble to open his eyes. Then he felt whoever held him move, and he wanted to cry out because his cheek no longer rested against the softness of a breast.

Instead his head was on a pillow, and he felt as if he had been deprived of something very precious.

“How is he, Miss?”

The Marquis thought he would have known Hobley’s voice anywhere, even though he spoke in a whisper.

“He was not so restless in the night, but he has not yet regained consciousness.”

It was Saviya who spoke. Who else could speak in that soft, melodious tone with just the trace of a foreign accent?

With an effort, feeling as if his eyelids were weighted down with lead, the Marquis opened his eyes.

She must have been looking at him, for with a little cry Saviya knelt beside him. He felt her hand against his cheek.

“You are awake!”

The Marquis looked at her. Her face was very near to his, and he could see the worry and at the same time a glint of excitement in her eyes.

“What—happened?” he asked.

Even as he spoke he remembered the rope across the ride. He had fallen!

“I do not think you ought to talk.”

“I want to—know what—happened,” the Marquis repeated and now his voice was stronger.

As he spoke, he realised that he was lying on a bed that was almost on the floor and that he was enclosed by curved walls so that he thought for a moment he was in a cave.

It was so small there was hardly room for himself, for Saviya kneeling beside him, and for Hobley with his head bent just inside what appeared to be an open door.

“Where am—I?” the Marquis asked.

“You’re all right, M’Lord, and that’s thanks to Miss Saviya,” Hobley replied. “It’s worried we’ve been about you and that’s the truth.”

With an effort the Marquis turned his head a little, realised that his shoulder was bandaged. He remembered breaking his collarbone.

“I fell, but it was not my horse’s fault. Is he all right?”

“He went home,” Saviya said. “There was a rope stretched between two trees. The men raised it just as you reached them.”

“What men?” the Marquis asked, and knew even as he spoke it was an unnecessary question.

“Mr. Jethro’s men, M’Lord,” Hobley said bitterly, “and ’twas them that swore false witness in front of the Magistrates against Miss Saviya.”

The Marquis suddenly felt more awake. He tried to raise himself a little and then was conscious of a sharp pain in his back.

“Do not move,” Saviya said quickly, “they stabbed you!”

“They’d have killed you, M’Lord, if Miss Saviya hadn’t come along when she did,” Hobley said.

“I have to know what happened,” the Marquis said, with some of his old authority back in his voice. “Start at the beginning.”

Saviya looked at Hobley as if for guidance.

“It’ll worry His Lordship,” he said to her, “if we don’t tell him.”

“It will indeed,” the Marquis affirmed. “All I can remember is feeling myself fall, and knowing it was a rope against my horse’s knees that had been the cause.”

“ ’Tis an old trick, M’Lord, but a clever one,” Hobley said. “They must’ve known Your Lordship went that way every morning and were lying in wait for you.”

“I had a feeling that something was wrong,” Saviya said. “We were packing up ready to move on...”

“You were leaving?” the Marquis interrupted.

He looked at her and her eyes fell before his.

“I had to ... go,” she murmured, and he thought the colour rose in her cheeks.

“But you stayed!”

“I felt that you were in danger, and then to make sure it was just my imagination, I told one of the Gypsies to bring me a horse and to come with me on another.”

She gave a little sigh.

“I thought as it was so early that you would not yet have left the House, and I intended merely to watch you cross the Park, pass into the Ride and out the other side.”

“You have watched me before!” the Marquis said with a sudden perception.

Again the colour seemed to tinge her cheeks.

“Almost ... every morning,” she answered.

“It was fortunate, M’Lord,” Hobley interposed, “that Miss Saviya saw you just as you disappeared into the Ride. If she hadn’t done so, you wouldn’t be lying here at this moment!”

“What happened?” the Marquis asked.

As he spoke, he covered Saviya’s hand with his own and felt her fingers tremble beneath his.

“As I reached the Ride,” Saviya said, “I actually saw your horse tripped and you shoot over its head. Then when you were on the ground, two men emerged from behind the trees. One of them held a long knife like a dagger in his hand. Before I could move nearer or shout, he drove it into your back.”

The Marquis understood then the reason for the pain he had felt a few moments before when he had tried to raise himself.

“The man drew out the knife and would have stabbed you again,” Saviya said, “if I had not urged my horse forward, shouting at the top of my voice. And the Gypsy boy with me did the same. The noise we made frightened the two men and they ran away into the woods.”

She drew in her breath before she said:

“When I reached you I thought at first you were dead!”

“It’s lucky you aren’t, M’Lord,” Hobley said. “An inch or two lower and there’s no doubt those murdering devils would have achieved their object.”

“What did you do?” the Marquis asked, holding Saviya’s hand a little more tightly.

“Yerko—the Gypsy who came with me—and I carried your body away into the trees in case the men should return to try to finish murdering you.”

She smiled.

“You are very heavy, My Lord.”

“How did you manage it?” he asked.

“Yerko is strong and I wanted to save you,” she said simply.

“When a Gypsy came to the House to tell me I was urgently needed by Miss Saviya in the wood, I’d a suspicion that something like this had happened,” Hobley said. “I was sure, M’Lord, that Mr. Jethro was up to something when he was seen at The Green Man.”

“Is there any proof that it was Mr. Jethro who tried to kill me?” the Marquis asked.

Saviya looked at Hobley and neither of them spoke. The Marquis knew they were wondering whether they should tell him the truth.

“Dammit all!” he said, “I am not a child. Tell me what has happened.”

Saviya put her hand on his forehead.

“You have been running a very high fever for a long time,” she said, “and we do not wish to agitate you.”

“It will agitate me a great deal if I think you are keeping something from me,” the Marquis said.

“Very well, M’Lord, you’d best know the worst,” Hobley said. “There is a warrant out for Miss Saviya’s arrest for having killed you. The knife that them murderers used on you is in the hands of the Magistrate, and Mr. Jethro has moved into the House!”

“God dammit!” the Marquis ejaculated.

He attempted to move again but there was a sharp pain in his back which brought beads of sweat onto his forehead.

“This is too much for you,” Saviya said. “You should have waited. There is no hurry for you to learn these unpleasant things.”

“No hurry?” the Marquis enquired. “How long have I been here?”

“For over a week,” Saviya answered.

“For over a week?” the Marquis could hardly repeat the words.

“Time enough, M’Lord, for Mr. Jethro to assert that you’ve been murdered by Miss Saviya, that the Gypsies have buried your body, and that he’s entitled to assume both the title and the ownership of the Estates!”

The Marquis lay for a moment in silence trying to digest the enormity of what Hobley had told him.

Then he asked:

“Why has no-one searched for me?”

“Because if you had been taken back to the House in the state you were in,” Saviya said, “I am certain that your cousin would have found some way of disposing of you when you were too weak to resist him.”

“Besides,” Hobley said, “with a warrant out for her arrest, if Miss Saviya is seen she will be taken to prison.”

“Where am I hidden?” the Marquis asked.

“In my caravan in the very depths of the forest,” Saviya answered. “If it seems dark, it is because the Gypsies have draped it with shrubs and ivy so that it is almost impossible for anyone to see it, even if they are just outside.”

“That’s true enough, M’Lord,” Hobley agreed. “When I come here I often wonder whether Miss Saviya has whisked Your Lordship away in the night, even when the caravan is almost right in front of my face.”

“And your people, they are all right?” the Marquis asked.

“They have moved so that it is more difficult to find them,” Saviya replied. “But, as you can imagine, your cousin is not making too close a search for you ... or for me. The last thing he wants is for anyone to contend that his bribed confederates are not telling the truth.”

“I will not have him taking my place!” the Marquis said in what he meant to be an angry and determined tone.

But even to himself his voice sounded very weak and before he could say any more he fell asleep...

It was two days later before the Marquis could grasp all the details of the drama that Jethro had planned so cleverly, or appreciate that had Saviya not been watching him ride through the wood, he would in fact have been found dead in the Ride with a Gypsy’s knife between his shoulder-blades.

“The knife even had Gypsy characters on it,” Saviya said, “and I think that either it must have come from the Circus folk from whom your cousin obtained the cobra, or he bought it in a Curiosity Shop in London.”

“But is it a Gypsy knife?”

“A description of it was in the newspapers,” Saviya said, “and my father thinks it is a Spanish dagger such as the Gitanos carry and use in their quarrels.”

“Good circumstantial evidence,” the Marquis remarked.

It was Hobley who told him how arrogant and autocratic his cousin was being at Ruckley House.

“Sir Algernon went back to London, M’Lord, after Mr. Jethro had arrived, saying he’d heard a strange story in the village that two men had seen you brought down by an ambush and then being stabbed by a Gypsy woman.”

Hobley’s voice was contemptuous as he continued:

“They had the rope as evidence, and said they were walking through the Ride as they were looking for work at one of the adjacent farms. They had their story very pat, ’twas difficult to fault them.”

“Jethro would have seen to that!” the Marquis murmured.

“Mr. Jethro’s clever, M’Lord. Make no mistake about that!”

“I am not!” the Marquis answered. “Go on, Hobley.” “Mr. Jethro was obviously so pleased to relate such a gruesome tale that Sir Algernon, while expressing his deep concern that Your Lordship had disappeared, said he thought the whole thing a bundle of lies and, from what he’d seen of Miss Saviya, she’d murder nobody, least of all you.”

“Yet he did not wish to be involved,” the Marquis said with a smile.

“That was obvious, M’Lord. But Captain Collington argued fiercely with Mr. Jethro.”

“I can imagine him doing that!” the Marquis remarked.

“He stayed one more night, saying he was going to search for you. In fact he came looking in the woods, and then Mr. Jethro ordered him out of the House.”

“He actually did that?” the Marquis ejaculated.

“Yes, M’Lord. He said as the new Marquis of Ruckley he wasn’t standing for the Captain’s impudence, and he certainly didn’t intend to offer him any further hospitality!”

The Marquis would have expressed himself forcefully but Saviya interposed:

“You promised you would not get angry. It is bad for you. If you do not listen quietly, we will tell you no more.”

“Are you bullying me?” the Marquis enquired.

“I am trying to look after you for your own good,” she replied.

The frown on the Marquis’s forehead was replaced by a smile.

“Once again I have to thank you for saving my life,” he said.

“It was Miss Saviya, M’Lord,” Hobley went on, “who insisted I shouldn’t join you here as I wished to do, but come backwards and forwards from the House.”

“I thought that when you were better Hobley would be able to keep you informed as to what was happening,” Saviya explained. “But I could not have set your collar-bone as he did, and I have to admit that the healing herbs and balms he has used on your wound were more efficacious than those we Gypsies have used for centuries.”

“Mine are also based on country lore and, like the Gypsies, I’m aware that Nature knows best,” Hobley said.

“I am well enough now to go and confront my cousin and expose his lies,” the Marquis declared.