The Wages of Sin [The Mysterious] (6 page)

“I have no doubt of it. His dinner had been poisoned. There is a dead fox in the ash pit to prove it."
Stopping still, looking down at him, his gaze emptied of that faint hint of amusement, Jasper said, "No. That can't be." In deference to the new tone, Charles took his hands out of his pockets and straightened up. "Why not?"

Jasper frowned, began to walk again. They paced together to the shadowed, temple-like room of yew bows at the end of the path. There a marble urn commemorating one of the many Mary Lathams of the family stood up on its Doric column like a barren tree. "If I try to explain," Jasper said, "do I have your word you will give me a fair hearing? If you are to turn on me as you did last night, let it be at the end, not scarcely a sentence in."

"You have my word."

The archway in the hedge to the left of the column opened on an herb garden, whose spindly overgrown plants ranged in small beds about a pond full of aimless fish. As they sat down on the raised edge of the pool, one of the under-gardeners—who had been cutting down a half-dead stand of wormwood in the corner—packed up his tools, knuckled his forehead and took himself out of the way. He was red-haired, freckled from too much sun, and Charles watched Jasper watch him with a new, imperious jealousy that he almost enjoyed.

"Well then." Jasper dangled his fingers in the water. The carp swum close to lip at them, and he smiled. "I've always been able to see things other people cannot see," he said, stroking the grey fins and silver gilt sides of the fish, making them dart away back into the deep water. "My mother's people say that a boy child born with a caul over his head is destined to become a witchfinder. He has strange powers."

He ducked his head as if to evade a blow. "If a sense one cannot be rid of qualifies as a power, then they may be right. Certainly, when I came here to live with my guardian it was the Latham ghosts I met first. The white lady. The burning boy. The voice in the walls. The charioteer. They are old, most of them. The charioteer, indeed, is pre-Roman, much faded. I don't think he will last much longer—another generation, another hundred years. I don't know. But I do know this, they are newly angry, and a house full of angry ghosts is not a healthy place for the living."

He looked up to gauge Charles' reaction, and seemed not too much dismayed by the numbed, disbelieving stare.

"I have no idea where to start." Charles sat on the edge of the pond and watched the glide of tarnished silver fish beneath water lily pads bearded with algae. "Can any of that be true?"

"I realize as a papist my word may not be worth a great deal."

Facing one another as they sat by the water side, it took only Charles edging forward an inch before their knees touched. At the little press of cuff and stocking Jasper raised his eyebrows. He had, it seemed, an almost inexhaustible fund of small, cynical smiles—this one had a softness to it that undercut its insult. "I'm not sure you know your own mind, Mr. Latham. There's no wonder you can't begin to fathom mine."

"I thought you were a vampire."

Jasper threw back his head and laughed in earnest, all his soft quietness dissolving for a heartbeat into such openhearted hilarity Charles found himself joining in. "And you balk at ghosts?"

"It isn't very logical, is it? My professor would rend his clothes in horror."
"You studied philosophy?"

"And politics. My father…" Still the sense of disbelief, the sideways jerk of his mind like a horse refusing the rein, at the thought that his father was dead. He reached up and combed his fingers through the little tuft of hair that stuck out, brushlike, from the bottom of his queue. The powder came off on his fingers. "My father wanted me to run for Parliament, but on discovering I was a follower of Locke and Swift he changed his mind. Withdrew his support. I have been trying to think of something else to do that might please him…"

Some shadow of wariness was removed by Jasper's laughter. He caught Charles' gaze with sympathetic eyes. "I'm sorry for your loss."

And it seemed natural, inevitable, to tell Jasper what he had not thought to whisper to another living soul. "I don't… I don't seem to care. I try to find grief and all that comes is curiosity."
Do you think there is something vital missing in me? Am I damned?

Jasper leaned forward, a pressure of warmth on Charles’ knee, solidly reassuring. For the first time in their acquaintance Charles found himself thinking the clergyman’s suit looked right on the man. It was easy to imagine him in a cassock, with the grill of the confessional slanting light across that high cheekboned, narrowjawed face. “It’s the same for the ghosts,” he said gently. “There are things that must be done first before a man can move on to grief—or peace. How can you grieve when you do not know the truth? You know not whether grief is merited, or the degree or quality appropriate. And Justice too must be appeased before you can be free. There you and they are agreed.”

“It isn’t right though, is it? It isn’t natural to stay behind beyond death because your passion for justice is more consuming than the end of life itself? It isn’t natural to feel
relieved
when you discover it was murder after all.”

“Maybe not,” Jasper’s smile had become kind, settled there into age-worn creases as if he had slipped on an old, familiar garment. “Perhaps it would be more correct to let go, to leave justice and vengeance to the Lord. But, in my experience, very few of us find it natural to always do what it is correct to do. The perversities of humankind are unbounded."

It was Charles' turn to be startled into amusement. "You say that as though it's a good thing."
"I suppose I am so bad a priest, such a bad man, as to find it reassuring that others have their foibles too."

Charles took in a deep breath of air scented with smoke and musky ambergris. The day had grown colder, light failing rather than broadening. The wind brought fine drizzle and floating yellow leaves.

"Not such a bad priest," he said, comforted. "Though perhaps a little underwhelming as a vampire."

"They cannot hold much of a conversation," Jasper leaned over, squeezed Charles' knee in a friendly sort of way. A rush of pleasure followed the vein up into his crotch, distracting him. "And those I've seen have been so swollen with blood it leaked out from their eyes. They lay in a pool of it, some of them. Fresh blood, though they had been interred for years."

Charles moved away, suddenly conscious of the cold stone beneath him, the bite in the air. "And then you do this," he said, disappointed.

He stood, his breath smoking away from his mouth. The driving leaves scratched and rustled as they flew, and then with a cold, creeping tingle the hair on his head stood up. Jasper's gaze was fixed on something beyond his right shoulder, tracking it. A pale reflection slithered over the tawny eyes.

"There's something behind me."

"Yes," the priestly voice again, quiet, sympathetic, certain. Then it faltered into normality. "I don't recognise this one. Turn around, Charles."

His back was frozen solid. Dislodging each vertebra took more willpower than he thought he possessed. Darkness lay behind him, as though the garden was but a draftsman's image and some larger hand had rubbed it half away. Light fell into it and was gone. All along the path streamers of soil lifted from the ground, curled into the darkness, and were swallowed.

He wasn't conscious that he'd put out his hand until he felt Jasper's fingers close about his own. "It's not a dream?"
"No."
The smell of lime plaster clogged his nostrils. The thing paused, seemed almost to be watching him, watching them. The marrow of his bones throbbed with cold as time narrowed and narrowed down to some lancet-sharp point of decision.
"Tell me how I can help you," Jasper's whisper could not conceal the shake in his voice. His hand in Charles' slid, cold with sweat. For a heartbeat Charles really thought the thing might answer. He swallowed his own fear like a mouthful of broken glass.
One by one, gently, the pink veined stones of the rockery floated silently into the air, hung from the sky as if on wires. Then he felt the release, shouted "Look out!" and he and Jasper ran in opposite directions, flinching and ducking as the stones rained into them. They came together again bruised, wiping off soil.
"It
was
real.” Charles had never been more grateful for a man who disdained to say “I told you so” as he was now. “It was real after all! Last time, the doctor said…”
“You’ve seen it before?”
“Yes.” Although the influence was gone, taking with it its exquisite terror, this thought had enough horror of its own to make his back prickle anew. “When my father died.”

They looked at one another, and then at the path towards the house. Did a darker shadow still linger there, sweeping towards the doors?

“Dear God!” Jasper caught his hand again, dashed away, dragging Charles, stumbling, overbalanced, and furious with fear, in the wake of his swifter, longer legged stride.

§ § § §

The shoved doors bounced against the wall, wood panelling splintering. George stood in the kitchen archway, toying with the ribbons on Mary Dwyer’s cap. The girl, leaning away coyly, was still giggling as George’s expression went from mischief to thunder. “What the hell do you two…?”

Charles skidded to a halt, sides heaving. Mary dropped her broom with a clatter, picked it up, the smile lingering around her lips, and ducked back into the kitchen corridor. Jasper stood in the centre of the hall, eyes closed, chin up, like a man trying to hear a faint call. “It’s upstairs.”

The purple of George’s indignation made his green eyes stand out like bruises. “None of your nonsense in this house, man. I won’t have it.” He set himself like a wall in their way, and Jasper balked. But Charles shouldered past his brother, took the steps two at a time and heard the lecture grow fainter behind him as he rose. “And I won’t have you roping in that young fool in your schemes. He is fanciful enough alone.”

Upstairs, Charles leaned on the landing table, gathering his breath under the eye of the onyx boy. His father’s rifle, lying across the polished surface, pointed accusingly towards the corridor, and he wondered if he should seize it. It was kept primed on his father’s orders, in case of burglars, but against the thing that had passed him in the garden, what use would it be? What use would any weapon be against the dead?

The doorknob was so cold it burnt his fingers, and for all the mad scurry to reach the room his courage failed him now. It took the sound of footfalls on the stairs behind him—George and Jasper coming to investigate—to force him to turn the handle.

The latch snicked out of its socket. Holding his breath he pushed the door slowly open. “Emma? Emma, can I come in?”

Her curtains had been opened and her maid had helped her into a bed-gown yellow as primroses. She lay propped against a drift of clean pillows, fragile as a bird’s wing. The book she had been reading lay smouldering beneath her hand.

Someone must have made and lit her fire earlier in the day, for the room was coated in ash, and spilled embers lay winking on every surface. Threads of smoke spiralled gently into the utter stillness of the air.

One had fallen in Emma’s hair, eaten its way through, leaving the auburn curls a mass of stinking frizz. It lay on her shoulder now and flared orange as he leaned forward. She had been almost a skeleton herself, and so it seemed fitting that across her tightened skin lay a white imprint of the spread sticks and knobs of five finger-bones.

The whisper of movement behind him, and then a hand settled on his shoulder, anchoring him. At the warm reassurance of it he could have turned, buried his face in Jasper’s shoulder and screamed protest—if he had still been four. Though he didn’t move, inwardly the feeling was the same.

“No.” George moved as though his every muscle hurt. “Emma?” He brushed the smouldering ember away, placed his burnt fingers reverently on her throat. “No, love.”

Collapsing forward, he sank to his knees beside the bed, gathered up her limp hand and pressed it to his mouth. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I kept meaning to come but… I just couldn’t stand…”

At the sob, Charles looked away, found Jasper watching George’s tears with a half-sympathetic, half resentful look. Jasper jumped, startled, when Charles touched his arm.

“Help me put out the sparks.”
“What? Oh… yes.”

Here was an emotion, boiling up out of him like scalding tar. “If you can possibly tear yourself away.”

Jasper’s wide, generous lips clamped closer together. He bent his head and turned, in a flurry of black skirts, to face the wall. Charles took a step forward, opened his mouth to address the turned back, and thought better of it. They put out the infant fires one by one, closed the door in silence behind them when it was done, leaving George alone with the corpse of his wife.

c
hAPteR six
“I want him out of this house.”

Returned from a morning in town with a cradle in the back of her carriage and a basket full of new linen for the baby, Elizabeth had spent most of the afternoon patiently, lovingly preparing Emma for burial. Her hands had been steady and tender as she brushed Emma’s hair, twisted it up into a style that hid the burned, brittle ends. She had chased George out upwards of a dozen times and washed the body with only the Dwyer girls to help. Dressed it in white and bound its limbs so they would stiffen in dignified repose.

Now though, Emma lay beside Ambrose in the chapel. Elizabeth took her place at the dinner table and picked at the lace around her cuff, her calm unravelling like a thread.

The day’s drizzle ended with a bloody sunset, and the dining room was filled from end to end with garnet light. Shepherdesses disported themselves on the dinnerware. Knives and wine glasses glittered. But not even the pink light could give a blush to George’s cheek. Shadows ate out the hollows of his face. He still moved like a puppet pulled by someone else’s strings.

Elizabeth lowered her swollen eyes to her belly and stroked the lump that visibly moved there. In the gap between the lacings of her corset a little fist or foot beneath the skin bulged out the black silk of her gown. Uncanny to watch, it must have been uncomfortable to suffer, for her constant look of endurance deepened and she pushed the lump down. “Did you hear me, George? I want that man gone. Send him home to his father.”