The Wrong Rite (2 page)

Sir Caradoc was late in arriving; he’d been extending welcome to the three blind mice: small, scurrying figures clad in fuzzy grays and browns. All had sharp pink noses and splayed-out pink hands; all wore the sort of eyeglasses that turn dark in the light and light in the dark. One was, or appeared to be, female; Janet deduced that the other were her husband and her son. Janet was wrong; the fat mouse with the silly little fanned-out chin whiskers was her brother, and the twitchy young one her nephew.

They were, of course, Rhyses, in some remote degree that would no doubt be discussed at length over the table. It was no longer the custom for Welshmen to gather on hillsides of a Sunday afternoon and recite their genealogies all the way back to Adam and Eve or in some cases, it was suspected, to the serpent. Nevertheless, families still liked to keep their relationships sorted out.

The she-mouse was Mary, not Mary the Anything, just Mary. The brother was Bob and the nephew was Dai. Bob the Blob and Dai the Eye. Janet didn’t care much for the way that young pipsqueak was staring at her, though it might just be the lamplight reflecting on those oversized glasses.

Sir Caradoc was turning the lot of them over to Silvestrine, who could always be counted on to do the done thing, so that he himself could get on with the more important matter of making gentle clucking noises at Dorothy and beaming in ecstasy when she accepted his outheld finger and showed him her tooth.

“Ah, you are a beauty! Will you let me hold you while Mam drinks her tea? It is a long time since I danced a pretty young girl on my knee. Will she cry if I take her, Jenny?”

“Oh no, she’ll love it. Here, sit down and I’ll hand her to you.”

Sir Caradoc was tall as the Rhyses went, fairish and quiet-spoken like the men of the North. He carried his four-score years and ten minus two days without much stooping, and moved easily enough though Betty had never managed to pad his big bones with enough fat to grease a griddle. Few now alive could recall what color Caradoc Rhys’s hair had been before it turned to bright silver; he still had a magnificent headful. As he bent to kiss the wee one in her red sacque, she managed to grab a fistful and give it a tug. For that moment, it would have been hard to say which was the younger. Janet, now snugged into the curve of Madoc’s arm, felt his clasp tighten and her eyes begin to smart. How right they’d been to bring the baby; she didn’t begrudge that stupendous air fare one penny.

Dorothy had slept on the train, and Janet had fed her in the car, but she was, after all, only eight months and a bit. Nobody was surprised when she showed signs of working up to a fuss.

“Come on, baby, I think it’s time for your nap.” Janet was beginning to feel she could use a short lie-down herself. “We haven’t even been up to our room yet. Thanks for the tea, Betty. We’ll see you in a while. Coming, Madoc?”

As she and Madoc climbed the stairs—the front ones, of course, in view of their guest-of-honor status—somebody else was just arriving.

Too bad Dafydd had gone off with the blonde, Janet thought as she peeked down over the banisters. The woman directly underneath had a head of hair like a heap of new copper pennies; if the rest of her was up to the hair, she must be a knockout.

The redhead had a man in tow, naturally. At least her companion was wearing a Burberry and one of those floppy tweed caps Welshmen seemed to favor, though a person might think he’d have taken it off once he was inside somebody else’s house. Ah well, one shouldn’t pass judgment. Maybe the man had both hands full of his lady’s suitcases. Janet only hoped her and Madoc’s own luggage was where it ought to be. They had been in their traveling clothes too darned long for comfort, or even for respectability.

Danny the Boots had done them proud. The red room was, if not yet toasty, at least adequately warmed against the chilly drizzle that so often betokened sweet springtime in Wales. The cradle, already made up with the whitest and tiniest of linen sheets and pillow slips and the fleeciest of lambswool baby blankets, was near but not too near the welcoming fireplace. Dorothy, divested of her outer layers, made not a whimper as she nestled down into this wonderful cocoon and shut the eyes that were so like her dad’s.

Now to unpack. No, that wouldn’t be necessary. Some of their garments were already shaken out and hung inside the oaken wardrobe that had never yet felt the woodworm’s tooth, thanks, to a protective spell laid on it a few centuries ago by a visiting Archdruid. Others were folded neatly into the drawers of a pleasant mahogany chiffonnier bought at an estate sale in 1930 by Great-uncle Caradoc’s late mother, who’d always known a good thing when she saw it. Janet could have cried for joy.

“God bless Danny the Boots.”

“Not Danny,” said Madoc. “He’s strict Chapel—he’d think it a black sin to be handling another man’s wife’s underwear.” Madoc himself was kicking off his shoes and slinging his trousers over the foot of the bed. “Either Uncle Caradoc’s hired a new housemaid or else the fairies have been around. We must remember to leave a saucer of milk on the hearth tonight. Come here, darling.”

Two hearts may beat as one when love is true, but jet lag conquers even the most devoted. It was Dorothy who woke them; she wanted her supper, and she wanted it now. That was no problem; Janet didn’t even have on a blouse to unbutton.

“Enjoy it while you can, precious. One more tooth and this milk bar’s going to shut down.”

Dorothy burped and went on nursing.

“What are we going to do with her at dinnertime, Madoc? You’ll want to be with the family. Maybe I’d better just have my supper here on a tray, if there’s anybody to bring it.”

“Not to worry, love. Betty will have set something up. I’m going to have a quick bath and get dressed, then I’ll go see.”

“Don’t take all the hot water. I want one too.”

“There’ll be plenty.”

The Romans had introduced the concept of indoor plumbing to Wales sometime after A.D. 50. There might be places here as in Canada where it still hadn’t quite caught on, but in Sir Caradoc’s house, at least in the less ancient parts, the amenities were not lacking. Madoc was shaving and Janet, wearing a tricot robe bought for the trip because it would pack well and wishing she’d brought her old blue fleece instead, was getting her child into fresh sleepers when Lady Rhys knocked at their door. Cowering behind her was a rosy-cheeked lass of about sixteen.

“This is Megan. She’s going to sit with Dorothy while you go down to dinner.”

“Oh good, we were wondering how to manage. Are you used to babies, Megan?”

“Yes’m.”

“She’s Betty’s great-niece and the eldest of six, she’s been to nanny college, and she doesn’t have anything contagious,” Lady Rhys amplified. “Isn’t that so, Megan?”

“Yes’m.”

After all, they’d be right downstairs. Janet needn’t fuss. “Then why don’t you come back in about twenty minutes, Megan, after I’ve had a chance to get dressed? Was it you who unpacked for us so nicely, by the way?”

“Yes’m.”

“That’s two things we have to thank you for, then. What time does Uncle Caradoc want us downstairs, Mother?”

Not having a mother of her own, Janet had fallen easily into the familial form of address. “Lady Rhys” would have been too formal toward someone she had every reason to love, “Silvestrine” was too much of a mouthful, and she could never have brought herself to say “Sillie,” even if Sir Emlyn did.

“Dinner’s at eight, but come as soon as you’re ready. There’ll be drinks in the hall, and people will be wanting to chat.”

People would already be chatting, Janet was sure. Awkward silences were never a problem at Sir Caradoc’s. Janet had got by last time mostly on nods and smiles and had therefore been a smash hit from the first; she had no qualms about meeting a fresh batch of relatives, even that one with the hair. Madoc was out of the bathroom now; she gave him a smile and a nod for practice and went to take her bath.

T
HE REDHEAD TURNED OUT
to be Iseult Rhys, Madoc’s father’s second cousin once or twice removed. The chap who’d come with her was not a Rhys, and gave the impression that he wouldn’t have wanted to be. So far he’d shown no degree of cordiality except toward the waiter who’d brought him a drink; at the moment he was over by the sideboard consuming cheese straws in gloomy silence. Iseult, on the other hand, was standing directly under the crystal chandelier. Its light was catching her hair; the hair was catching Dafydd’s eye. Iseult was an actress, Janet had learned; Dafydd was clearly warming up to play Tristan. Women did tend to go in and out of Dafydd’s life with startling rapidity.

They made a handsome pair, Dafydd tall as Uncle Caradoc, elegant in the tailcoat and white tie he wore for his concert performances; Iseult in a long gown of emerald green with her white bosom swelling out—quite a long way out—of the skimpy bodice. “She looks like an upside-down leek,” Madoc murmured, and Janet felt warmed and comforted.

She herself was feeling pretty darned classy tonight, for a girl from Pitcherville, New Brunswick; she’d welcomed the prospect of dressing up for the dinners at which Uncle Caradoc liked to retain the formal customs of earlier days.

Being a nursing mother and being Janet, she hadn’t frittered away any great fortune on clothes she wouldn’t get much use out of back home. Instead, she’d gone shopping for some interesting materials and, with her sister-in-law’s help, run up a couple of simple, rather medieval-looking gowns that fell to her feet in soft, uninterrupted folds from modestly scooped-out yokes. Tonight’s was a midnight-blue silk in a rough weave that caught the candlelight with a genteel hint of a shimmer. Her arms were bare, but Annabelle had stitched a leftover strip of the material into a long stole that could fall loosely or be wrapped snugly around her shoulders, depending. Her jewels were the heirloom diamond ring that Lady Rhys had taken off her own finger to seal her son’s impromptu engagement, the pearls Madoc had given her the next day, and the diamond-stud earrings—not vulgarly big ones, of course—that Sir Emlyn himself, all on his own, had gone out and bought her to celebrate the birth of his first grandchild.

Compared to the designer model and the freight of gold and emeralds Iseult was wearing, Janet’s modest toilette wasn’t much; but it was enough. Even the inscrutable type who’d come with Iseult was resting his eyes on Janet with a certain air of relief. His name, it transpired, was Reuel Williams, and he was a writer. He must, Janet decided, be the kind of writer whose name you’re supposed to recognize, and if you don’t, you try not to let on. Nobody was letting on; nobody knew either what his relationship to Iseult was, though it stood to reason that there was a certain amount of wonderment going around.

Anyway, Reuel didn’t appear to be much bothered by the attention Dafydd was paying his lady, if in fact she was his lady. Maybe Iseult was one of Tom’s actresses and Reuel a scriptwriter or something. He wasn’t a bad-looking man, though rather pale and haughty-nosed like somebody who spent most of his time indoors feeling superior. To other writers, Janet wondered, or to the world in general?

Maybe Reuel Williams wasn’t a writer but a critic. Now that he’d had his fill of ogling Janet, he was casting a connoisseur’s eye over the other women in the room. Gwen in scarlet silk with ropes of pearls down to her knees and a red satin headache band confining her curly black hair got a long, thoughtful stare. Tall, handsome Lady Rhys in black lace and lots of diamonds was well worth looking at; Mary the Mouse in dowdy gray was easy to ignore. Lisa’s pretty daughter, Tib, ruffled like a yellow double daffodil, drew a reluctant smile. But it was Lisa herself, standing a little apart from the rest, wearing a stiff, somewhat arty-looking long brown dress with a high cowled neckline, whom Reuel chose as the object of his attention.

Janet felt a twinge of annoyance at his doing so; she herself had been hoping for the chance to chat with Lisa before dinner. She’d liked what little she’d seen of the youngish widow while they were being introduced; she thought Dafydd was lucky to have so attractive a hostess and wondered why he wasn’t paying Lisa more attention.

Lisa was a few inches taller than Janet, perhaps five foot five or six. She had lots of fine brown hair worn in an old-fashioned psyche knot, hazel eyes with delicate black rims around the irises, one of those divine British complexions compounded of cream and roses, and a voice that made a person think of still waters running deep. She gave Reuel a polite smile when he addressed her, and made some inconsequential remark.

Whatever Reuel said in reply had a most peculiar effect. Lisa went chalk white/then seemed to disappear. Even though she hadn’t moved a muscle, Janet got the distinct impression that she’d drawn her head down inside that upstanding brown cowl and didn’t intend to come out.

Was Lisa having some kind of turn? Janet was wondering whether she ought to do something when Tib fluttered up quick as a butterfly, slid an arm around her mother’s waist, and began chattering at Reuel nineteen to the dozen. A second or two later, Dafydd had remembered his duty as a guest, excused himself to Iseult, and made the trio a foursome. So that was all taken care of. Janet decided she might as well go be nice to Mary the Mouse.

Mary was not difficult to strike up a chat with, nor was she all that mousy once she got going. She was, Janet learned, agog over Great-uncle Caradoc’s upcoming birthday gala, not because of him but because it fell on Beltane, the old May Day, when bonfires must be lighted and folk who understood the importance of these ancient rites must jump over them to protect the land from sorcery and assure good crops for the harvest. Mary herself had been among the leapers on numerous occasions; she had even, she admitted with a decent pretense of modesty, received accolades for her agility in the cause of fertility.

Mary warmed to her subject, describing in detail various Beltane fires she had hurdled. She did not hold with the degenerate custom of just lighting two bonfires side by side and running between them; although this sounded to Janet like a much more sensible thing to do, if one happened to be seriously concerned about baneful warlocks in the neighborhood. Janet couldn’t recall that her brother Bert ever was.