The Nightingale Legacy (40 page)

Caroline, less groggy now and feeling a bit more human since choking down Polgrain’s vile-tasting potion, said, “I like your husband. He could be superior, Duchess, it’s possible since he’s North’s best friend. But North is perfect and that’s the truth of it.”

The Duchess smiled, her fingers gently pleating and unpleating the folds in her soft burgundy wool gown. “I heard North mention something to Marcus about his male ancestors believing that King Mark was buried here and not in Fowey, with untold riches, naturally. And what of Tristan and Isolde, the lovers who betrayed him? Is it true you have a journal of sorts?”

And so Caroline told her of the Nightingale men and their two legacies—one that cursed the heir with a faithless wife, and the other a tale of King Mark’s treasure, buried with him in the sixth century and mistakenly believed to be far from here on the south coast of Cornwall, but that wasn’t true, for he was buried here, on Nightingale land, probably in one of those hillocks or barrows, and there were so many of them. Who could ever find the right one?

It was then that the Duchess told her about the Wyndham treasure. “King Henry the Eighth,” Caroline said. “That’s amazing, more amazing I think than finding proof that poor old King Mark is here.”

“I don’t know about that,” the Duchess said. “Henry the Eighth is only three hundred years old, whereas King Mark is more than a thousand years old. That’s impressive, Caroline, very impressive.”

“I personally think it’s all fancy woven from the tortured minds of North’s male ancestors, misogynists, all of them, beginning with his great-grandfather.”

“Tell me more,” the Duchess said, and Caroline did.

“Hmmm,” the Duchess said after an hour of talk and questions. “Let’s put our heads together, Caroline. Two ladies, I believe, have a much better chance of figuring things out than two passionate gentlemen who would rather bust heads together than just think.”

“That,” the earl said from the doorway, “sounds very much like an insult to me.”

“I agree,” North said, coming into the bedchamber. “At least my wife still looks bright enough to give me a smile. That miserable potion is still working?”

Caroline was getting muzzy in her thinking, but North looked so very splendid, all windblown and tousled from riding in the chilly afternoon, as vibrant and as alive as a man could get, that she felt a leap of energy and smiled at him, she couldn’t help it. “I feel wonderful.”

“That look on your wife’s face is all female besottedness, North. If you believe it, then you’re more conceited than I had imagined.”

The Duchess said, “We’ve been discussing King Mark and his treasure being here on Nightingale land. What do you think, North?”

“Hmmm? Oh, I’m sorry, Duchess. What did you say?”

Marcus poked him in the belly with his fist. “He’s thinking about announcing to the world that he is a god above men, just ask his wife. So he pleases you, does he, Caroline?”

“Yes,” she said simply, still smiling at her husband.

The Duchess rose and shook out her wool skirts. “I think it’s time that Caroline had a nap. She looks like she’s on the verge of a minor wilt. Marcus, I would like to speak to you now. Alone.”

“Ah,” the earl said, giving his wife his arm. “I fear she will order up our carriage and force me to—”

She punched him in the belly.

“I have found,” Caroline said, “that North’s cravats are very useful in gaining control. At least they were that one time he let me use them.”

“How?” the Duchess said, an elegant black eyebrow arched upward.

Caroline turned crimson, her eyes nearly crossing with what had come unexpectedly out of her mouth. North laughed and said, “You see, there’s no such thing as a private jest, sweetheart. Won’t you tell the Duchess what you did with those cravats?”

“Yes, I will, when we’re alone,” Caroline said, then sneezed, a fake sneeze, North saw, but he let it alone. Her color was high. Damn and blast the miserable cold.

It was the Duchess who said to everyone the next afternoon at luncheon, “I read the entire journal last night.”

“She told me to be quiet and repose myself,” the earl said, and forked down a bit of Polgrain’s delicious roasted wild duck garnished with watercress and small oranges.

“What truly surprised me,” the Duchess said, “was that he did. He slept like a glutton who’d just eaten Christmas dinner. In any case, the journal was illuminating, Caroline.”

Caroline, who was feeling much more the thing than the day before, said, “What did you find? I’ve skipped about in the journal and haven’t read it all the way through. Have you, North?”

He shook his head. “What do you think, Duchess?”

“I think we should go to that spot where your great-grandfather said one of his men found that armlet. So strange that it just disappeared. Too, I’m afraid his directions aren’t too specific.”

“No, they’re not,” Caroline said. “I’ve been so frustrated trying to find something.”

The earl looked at his wife with mild disbelief. “Surely you don’t believe that pap? I’ll wager my best Hessians that there never was an armlet save in your great-grandfather’s head, North.”

“I agree, unfortunately,” North said. “I think he was already well over the edge when he began the journal. You read, certainly, Duchess, all the rantings and ravings of his about his miserable harlot of a wife. I think the selection of King Mark as his hero of choice is because King Mark was also betrayed by his wife, Isolde, with Tristan. I believe it pleased my great-grandfather to compare himself to the poor tortured king and transplant his remains and a boundless treasure closer, namely here on Nightingale land, thus aggrandizing himself in the process.”

“I went there, Duchess,” Caroline said. “There’s a thick copse of oak trees, a long stone fence, and so many of those rolling hillocks. I looked and looked, but alas, I didn’t find a thing, even a scrap of a pottery piece, nothing at all. I went there three or four times.”

The earl said, “I tend to think there never was a golden armlet, else where is it? If it was stolen, then why didn’t your grandfather or even your father write about it?”

There was no answer to that. North said, “Even the three male martinets don’t know a thing.”

“No matter,” the Duchess said. “I want to go there.” She said to her husband, “This reminds me of my searches at the abbey, Marcus. Remember, we neither of us believed
in the Wyndham legacy and we were wrong. Just perhaps I’ll find something. Actually I want to find something very badly.”

“Treasure-hunting is now in her blood,” the earl said. “You should see her wearing that rope of pearls we found and nothing else, just the pearls—”

His wife’s very white hand slammed over his mouth.

T
HE
D
UCHESS HAD
left Mount Hawke early to treasure-hunt, the gentlemen had ridden off to the tin mines, and thus Caroline rode into Goonbell. She wanted to see the chamber Coombe had stayed in before he’d disappeared.

Mrs. Freely was talking before she’d even taken Caroline’s cloak and gloves. She learned all about how Jeb Peckly, that miserable sodden drunk, had become nearly a decent husband, drinking very little now, and she hadn’t heard a thing about his beating his wife and daughters. Caroline smiled hugely at that. Mrs. Freely asked her questions about the Earl and Countess of Chase as she took her into her huge warm kitchen and gave her a mug of mulled wine, to ward off the piskey chill, she said, then patted Caroline’s hair, and said, “Lovely hair you have, my lady. Rich-looking, not just a boring single color, but a multitude of interesting shades, just like the trees that surround the inn. I’ve always been fond of those elms and oaks and maples, yes I have. At least until they lose all their leaves, which I hope you won’t ever do, in a manner of speaking.”

Eventually, Mrs. Freely led her upstairs, wishing aloud that she could meet the Earl and Countess of Chase. Caroline thought about the Duchess dealing with the gossiping Mrs. Freely and thought it couldn’t fail to be fascinating. She invited her to dinner.

“Now, my lady, no man has ever tried to tell me what
to do,” she said as they neared Coombe’s chamber door.

“Huh?” Caroline said, at sea.

“No man who’s around to tell about it in any case,” Mrs. Freely added, nodding to herself. “There was one man who dared call me Meg and pat my bottom whenever I walked past him. I clouted him but good. Ah, here we are, poor Mr. Coombe’s room.” She opened the door. “I assure you there’s nothing more to find. His lordship searched most thoroughly. Everyone hereabouts believes Coombe was a madman, and they’re both relieved he’s gone and worried that they don’t know where he is. No one speaks of anything else, as you can expect.”

“Yes, one would expect that,” Caroline said.

It was actually a very nice room on the east side of the inn, on the second floor. There were four windows, all wide, all covered with lovely white lace curtains. The furnishings were plain but not at all unpleasant. Caroline stood in the middle of the room, just looking around her. Mrs. Freely was quiet for the first time since Caroline had met her. Then she just nodded, turned, and said over her shoulder, “That one man, the one who called me Meg, he was a lovely lad, he was.” She nodded again and left Caroline alone.

“Did you kill my aunt, Coombe?” Caroline asked the still room. “Everyone is saying that you hate women, that the Nightingale legacy poisoned you. Everyone believes you killed the women because they rejected you or betrayed you. No one really knows. North doesn’t know what to believe, truth be told, nor do I. He’s wondered and wondered about that letter from Elizabeth Godolphin. He says he didn’t know you had a nickname and neither did Tregeagle or Polgrain, and such an odd nickname. Did she really call you her ‘King of Diamonds’? Did she never use your real name? Did other women call you that
as well? Why was there only one letter? And only from her? North is very disturbed, Coombe. He says you aren’t stupid. He just doesn’t understand why you would leave this bloody knife here in your room if you were guilty. Ah, I wish I knew what happened.”

The chamber was utterly silent, not that she expected anything else. Caroline sighed, then turned to the armoire.

“Where did you go? If you escaped, why then would you leave all this evidence behind to be found?” Again, there was no answer, no sound at all.

She opened the armoire. It was empty now, North had taken everything. There were drawers below that smelled of cedar. They were also empty. She rose and closed the armoire doors. There was a small desk with a quill and ink on top, nothing else, and three narrow drawers. She opened each of them. They were empty. North had found the letter in one of the drawers. Certainly he’d searched all of them carefully.

She straightened from the desk and looked around the chamber. It was chilly, for there was no fire in the small fireplace. Mrs. Freely had no one staying in this room at the moment. In fact, Mrs. Freely had told her that no one had stayed in this room since Mr. Coombe had disappeared. Too many flapping jaws, she’d said to Caroline, everyone telling strangers about the bloody knife, and how the room was now haunted. “Your ladyship knows how we Cornish love our ghosts. If there isn’t a ghost for every cottage, for every inn, for every twisted tree, then you simply aren’t in Cornwall. Aye, you’re in Devon or Dorset, no imagination in any of those folk. They sit around and boast about their silly Devon cream, which doesn’t hold a candle to Cornish cream, let me tell you. Still, I do hate to lose money with this room empty.”

Caroline felt no strange lurking feelings standing in the
middle of the room. Perhaps since she wasn’t Cornish she wasn’t able to scent the ghosts or feel them or perhaps even hear them. “Where did you go, Coombe?” she asked the silent room. “Didn’t you think Mrs. Freely would notice that you weren’t here? Didn’t you think she and North would search your room?”

She jumped. She heard a rustling, slapping sound, then drew a deep breath, realizing it was a tree branch lightly sliding against a window.

“Maybe I was a Cornish woman a long time ago,” she said. It helped to speak out loud. It made her feel less alone.

She felt depressed that she hadn’t discovered anything, but then again, she really hadn’t expected North to overlook anything. She was on the point of leaving when she noticed the beautifully carved wooden poles on the Hepplewhite bed that had once been much taller, supporting a canopy. Obviously someone had cut them off, for now the four poles ended in rather roughly carved pineapples. She walked slowly to the bed, her eyes on those carved pineapples. She lightly touched one of the poles at the foot of the bed. It didn’t move. She tugged at it. It still didn’t budge.

She went to the other one at the foot of the bed. It too didn’t move. It was the third one at the head of the bed that turned easily in her hand. Her heart speeded up. Slowly, she pulled the pineapple off the pole. There was a hole beneath, not solid wood. She reached her fingers into the cavity and touched paper. She managed to hook her fingers around the paper and pull it out. It was a single sheet and it had been folded into a square and then into a smaller square until now it was no larger than an inch square and very thick.

She stared at the folded paper in the palm of her hand.
It was yellow and crisp with age. Very gently, she eased the paper from its stiff folds.

She didn’t know what she expected the folded paper to be. Perhaps a long-ago love letter written by one lover to another upon leaving early in the morning fog. She shook herself. She was being quite silly.

She carefully spread the paper out atop the bed counterpane. It wasn’t a love letter. It wasn’t an old tradesman’s bill or a simple list of household linens.

It was a letter threatening murder. It had been written in May 1726 by Viscount Chilton, North’s great-grandfather, to a man named Griffin. The black ink was spidery and difficult to read in many places, but the letter itself was straightforward enough. “‘Griffin,”’ she read. “‘You will keep away from my wife or I will thrust my sword through your black heart.”’ And it was signed
D. Nightingale, Viscount Chilton.