Jane Vows Vengeance (14 page)

Jane, fascinated by the story, forgot all about her own seasickness. “You made that up,” she said.

“God’s honest truth,” said Brodie. “There’s been a Brodie in the family ever since. Or an Olive if there’s no boy in a generation. My mother’s an Olive. That’s why I’m a Pittman and not a Banks.” He paused. “Pity, really. Banks is a much better pirate name.”

“Rawuuublahhh,” said Walter, bringing Jane’s attention back to the matter at hand.

“I see McGuinness has joined the party,” Brodie remarked.

Jane looked over to see Ryan running to the railing, where he positioned himself between Enid and Orsino. His red hair was a bright spot against the dirty gray sky as he leaned over and gagged.

“Serves the cheating bugger right,” said Brodie, chuckling. He looked at Jane. “Pity we can’t just give him a little help over the side the next time she rolls,” he said. “Let old St. George have him with his morning tea.”

Jane, only half listening to him, made a vague noise.

“I leave you to it, then,” said Brodie. “Think I’ll see if there’s any more grilled tomatoes to be had.”

Jane and Walter spent another forty-five minutes at the railing as one by one the other seasick guests departed. Finally Walter felt well enough to walk, and Jane led him through the door and into the warmth of the lounge. There they found Lucy, Ben, and Miriam (with Lilith on her lap). They all looked a bit green in the face, and when a particularly large swell lifted the prow of the ship a collective groan rolled across the room.

“Are we almost there?” Lucy asked.

“Another two and a half hours,” Ben informed her.

“I hate Ireland,” Lucy announced. “I hate Wales. And I really, truly hate St. George and his blasted channel.”

They settled into an uneasy silence as the ferry continued toward Ireland. Eventually the seas grew calmer, and although the sailing wasn’t precisely smooth, it was much better than it had been. When she felt fairly certain he could keep something in his stomach, Jane fetched Walter a ginger ale and some biscuits. He ate the biscuits slowly, taking tiny sips of ginger ale between bites, and when he was finished he looked a great deal more alive than he had all morning.

The skies cleared and the sun came out, and when the
Isle of Inishmore
finally docked at the port in Rosslare the party was in good spirits. Their luggage was loaded onto a waiting tour bus, and then they were on their way to their destination.

As the day’s site had been chosen by Enid, it was she who briefed them on it. She stood at the front of the bus, her sturdy legs planted firmly and a hand gripping the back of the seat on either side of the aisle. Her hair, thanks to the blustery weather at sea and the fact that she had yet to comb it back into submission, stuck out around her head.

“She looks like something out of
Macbeth
,” Jane murmured to Lucy.

“Although yesterday’s tour was perhaps mildly interesting to those of you who haven’t seen any of the thousands of homes in Britain exactly like the vicarage at Cripple Minton,” Enid began, looking pointedly at Chumsley, who was painstakingly removing the cellophane from a butterscotch candy, “today you will see something utterly unique.”

Crinkle—crinkle-crinkle
went the wrapper on the butterscotch.

“Swichninny Castle is a medieval castle,” said Enid. “In that respect it looks very much like most medieval castles.”

Chumsley popped the butterscotch into his mouth and bit down with a loud crunch. “Pardon,” he said loudly. “Didn’t mean to be rude.”

Enid narrowed her eyes. “What distinguishes Swichninny from other castles of its kind is its unusually fine barbican, complete with murder holes and arrow slits, as well as the tallest keep of any castle in Ireland.”

“How tall is it?” Chumsley asked, sucking loudly on the butterscotch.

She glared at him. “I don’t know precisely,” she said through clenched teeth.

“I’m only wondering,” said Chumsley, “because I’ve always been of the impression that at fifty-two meters the donjon of Château de Vincennes is the tallest keep.”

“I believe you are correct about the height of the donjon of
Château de Vincennes,” Enid said. “However, as Château de Vincennes is in France, it can hardly have the tallest keep in all of Ireland.”

Chumsley crunched the butterscotch. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I must have misunderstood you.”

“You usually do,” said Enid. “Now as I was saying …”

The rest of her speech was a blur to Jane: moat this and curtain wall that, machicolations and lower baileys and main baileys and hoardings and battered plinths, on and on and on until the words meant absolutely nothing. Jane was far more interested in the back of Suzu’s head. The woman was seated three rows ahead of Walter and Jane, next to Sam Wax. She and Jane had said nothing more than good morning to each other all day, and Jane was going mad wondering if she should attempt to discuss the matter with the woman. Of course there really was nothing
to
discuss, at least nothing that would in any way portray Jane as anything other than a wanton. She could hardly deny kissing the young man, as she had made such a show of it, and telling the truth was out of the question. She supposed she could claim to have been drunk (which was no better, really) or out of her mind on cold medication (she practiced sniffling, but knew it was hopeless). Ultimately, however, she had to accept that Suzu now had something on her—even if what she thought she knew was much less disturbing than the actual truth—and behave accordingly.

In short, she would have to take pains not to commit any further offense to Suzu’s sensibilities. She had no reason to think the woman would mention what she’d seen to Walter, but she
had
been deferential to him on that first night and there was no telling what designs she might have on him. Thinking about it, Jane decided that
she
should be offended at Suzu’s behavior.
Flirting with him right in front of me!
she thought, attempting to work up a bit of self-righteous indignation. But it was no good. She was just going to have to hope that Suzu kept quiet.

When the bus arrived at Swichninny, Miriam took Lilith for a walk along the moat that encircled the castle while the others clustered around Enid to begin the guided tour. Ben, Lucy, and Jane joined them, as by this point everyone was treating them as if they were part of the group anyway. Jane took Walter’s hand, feeling only slightly guilty that the affection was in part designed to show Suzu that there was nothing fragile about their relationship.

Enid proved to be quite a good guide, explaining in great detail the workings of the portcullis and drawbridge yet managing to nimbly skirt the line between interesting and tedious. She plumbed the depths of her knowledge of medieval stonecutting while describing the construction of the walls, and even entertained them with a bit of scatological trivia when explaining that in the days of the castle’s occupation its inhabitants would have hung some of their garments in the primitive toilets—or garderobes—because the stench kept moths away from the finery.

Because Enid was such a veritable encyclopedia of knowledge on the castle and its charms, Jane was almost, but not quite, saddened when the official tour ended and they were allowed to go exploring on their own. She found it most interesting that the majority of participants headed immediately for the castle’s dungeon, where Enid assured them all manner of cruelties had been committed against prisoners of war. Jane herself, loath to encounter any vengeful or peevish spirits that might still be lingering there, chose instead to climb with Walter the 299 stone steps that led to the top of the castle’s notoriously tall keep.

The view from atop the tower really was spectacular, although Jane wished they were visiting a little later in the year, when the surrounding countryside would no doubt be swathed in emerald splendor instead of looking as if someone had tossed a brown wool blanket over it. Still, the beauty all around them was undeniable. The sky was blue and cloudless, there was no wind, and Jane
could easily imagine herself standing there searching the hills for her returning love, who of course would be riding a white stallion, its mighty hooves churning up the grass as it brought her man home to her.

“Look,” Walter said, pointing. “There’s my mother. She looks like a bug from up here.”

“And there goes
that
fantasy,” Jane said under her breath as her stallion turned into a three-legged Chihuahua and her knight raced off to see what his mother wanted.

They were not alone on top of the keep. Several other people, including Sam, Orsino, and Ryan, were there. Suzu too was up there, taking pictures with what looked to be an original Kodak Brownie camera. Fortunately, the space was quite large, and because the central part was taken up by the rounded covering of the stairwell, it was possible to be on any side of the keep and be invisible to all the other sides. Occasionally Jane and Walter would encounter someone while taking a walk around all four sides of the tower, but never did they feel crowded.

On their second time around they ran into Sam. “Hey,” she said. “This place is something, isn’t it? All it needs is some flying monkeys and a wicked witch.”

Walter laughed. “I’ll get you, my pretty,” he said in a very bad imitation of Margaret Hamilton’s famous character. “And your little dog too.”

This time it was Sam who laughed. Jane, feeling left out, heard herself say, “Maybe the Wizard can give me a soul.”

Walter and Sam looked at her as she realized what she’d said. “I mean a brain,” she said. “Ha ha!”

“Anyway,” Sam said, “I was thinking about going down to take a look at the armory. “Any interest?”

“Sure,” said Walter. “Jane, do you want to come?”

Jane thought for a moment. Although she no longer feared that there were any romantic feelings between Walter and Sam,
she envied their ease with each other. There was a past there that she wasn’t a part of, and although Sam had been nothing but friendly to her, she still found herself a little bit jealous.

As if you have any room to talk
, she argued with herself.
You have entire lifetimes Walter doesn’t know about and wasn’t part of
.

“You two go on,” she said. “I’ll be down in a bit.”

She welcomed the time to herself to enjoy the solitude the keep provided and think about all that had happened over the past few days. The appearance of Joshua, the revelation of Crispin’s Needle, the church at Cripple Minton, and the martyrdom of St. Apollonia—it was all terribly thrilling. Even the thought of the Tedious Three filled her with excitement. They were all pieces of a puzzle, one she was fitting together bit by bit. What it would look like when, or if, it was ever completed she didn’t know. But it was undeniably intriguing. If Crispin’s Needle
did
exist, and if she
did
find it, she would have an enormous decision to make.

It’s probably all just legend anyway
, she told herself.
One of those vampire stories meant to make us seem far more interesting than we are
.

Suddenly a scream filled the air, startling her. Turning to her right she was just in time to see Ryan McGuinness leap from the wall of the tower. He hung in the air for a moment, more or less horizontal, his arms and legs moving as if he were trying to fly, or perhaps swim. Then he fell. Jane leaned over the edge of the keep and watched as he plummeted, still screaming and flailing, the two hundred and something (at that moment she couldn’t recall the exact number) feet to the ground. Being as how the fall was a great one, and being as how the ground was more like a courtyard made of cobblestones, Ryan’s arrival at the bottom did little to allay his anxiety. Rather, it resulted in a satisfying
thwack
and the creation of a bit of a mess in the form of a pool of blood that formed beneath his head.

Jane had only a moment in which to reflect on the peculiar and
disturbing beauty of a dead body sprawled across the stones of a three-hundred-year-old castle before the sound of numerous voices raised in alarm reached her ears. This caused her to regain her senses and, now properly distressed, she raced down the 299 steps and out the tower door. There she found herself standing on one side of Ryan McGuinness’s lifeless body while the other members of the tour group stared at her.

The first to speak was Brodie. “What happened?” he asked.

“I … I don’t know,” Jane said.

“But you were up there with him,” Genevieve said.

“No,” said Jane. “I mean yes, I was up there, but we weren’t there together, if you see what I mean. And there were others there as well.”

Genevieve looked around, her mouth moving silently as she used one long finger to count heads. When she was done she returned her gaze to Jane. “Actually,” she said, “it was only the two of you up there. The rest of us were down here.”

“Then he must have jumped,” Jane said, her voice sounding more defensive than she intended. “You all saw him fall.”

“He didn’t jump.” Enid, who until now had been staring at the crumpled body of her lover, looked up at Jane. “He was afraid of heights. It took everything in him just to go up there, and I assure you he stayed as far way from the edge as possible.”

“Apparently not,” Jane said, returning Enid’s steely gaze.

Someone cleared his throat. Then Bergen spoke in his monotone voice. “I’m afraid I must agree with Ms. Woode’s evaluation of the situation,” he said. “The angle of fall is inconsistent, suggesting greater force than could be achieved by merely jumping.”

“See!” Enid cried. “He was pushed!”

Bergen nudged his glasses up his nose. “That is not quite correct either,” he said. Jane thought perhaps she detected just the merest hint of a smile on his face as he looked at her. “He was thrown.”

Thursday: Ireland