Twelfth Night (2 page)

Chapter Three

Young
in
limbs
,
in
judgment
old
.

—
The Merchant of Venice
, II, vii, 71

It took a long while to smooth Nanny’s ruffled feathers, but the promise of a girl from the village, as soon as a suitable one could be found, went a long way to calming her—as did Portia’s promise of an extra ten pounds.

“That’s extortionate,” I whispered to Portia as Nanny bore off the infant to inspect it.

“You don’t know nannies,” she returned fiercely.

Nanny pronounced the child fit and healthy—and a boy. “Born this last week, I would say. His little knot of cord has not yet fallen.”

She wanted to show us, but I pleaded the Revels and scurried away, pausing only to inform Morag that she was wanted in the nursery.

“What bloody for?” she demanded.

I shrugged, and before she could argue further, made my escape. Brisbane was waiting in the stable court while Father yelled at his grandchildren—all costumed as small trees. I handed Brisbane his helm of St. George.

“One helm, good as new, and minus the baby,” I informed him. “What have you discovered?”

“That your father missed his calling,” he said solemnly. “He has organised eleven grandchildren into an orderly shrubbery. They’ll make a lovely backdrop for my death and resurrection.”

I nudged him. “I meant about the child. A boy, by the way. Born within the week, according to Nanny.”

Brisbane shrugged. “Nothing. No one saw a thing, no one heard a thing. No strangers about, no reports of recent births in the village. No footprints to follow, no note within the child’s blanket. I am to make enquiries after my scene is finished.” He rolled his eyes skyward, but I smiled.

“Even God Almighty could not distract Father from his Revels. Surely you don’t expect a foundling to manage it?”

Brisbane returned the smile, but I knew he was itching to be away. After we had finished an afternoon’s rehearsals, the entire family repaired to the great hall for an early buffet supper. Brisbane elected to go into the village to make enquiries while I decided to question my family. They had all been present during the discovery, and while they were undoubtedly distracted by the Revels, someone might very well have seen something that could prove significant.

I made my way to the great hall. In the early days, when Bellmont Abbey had been a proper Cistercian establishment, the brothers had used this enormous chamber as the Chapel of the Nine Altars. After the Dissolution, when Henry VIII had given the property to our family, little was done to change it. The original stone was still in evidence, the walls pierced here and there with the nine bays that once held the altars. Now they were furnished as conversation areas, with wide Turkey carpets and hideously uncomfortable sofas and armchairs. It was a cold room at the best of times, although summer sun pouring through the vast tracery windows rendered it beautiful.

But now, after dark and in the depths of winter, it was frigid and forbidding, and I took a cup of tea, grateful for its warmth. I took no food at first, preferring instead to mingle and do a bit of useful eavesdropping. The family had, not unusually, arranged itself into smaller groups. Three siblings, Viscount Bellmont and our sisters Olivia and Nerissa, sat with their spouses a short and disapproving distance from Father, who was comfortably sat directly next to the fire. Their disapproval was not directed at Father but at his companion, Hortense de Bellefleur. She was a Frenchwoman of scandalous repute and charming temper. I counted her a friend of great value, and she had invited me to call her Fleur. Besides her liaison with my father, she had very early in his career tutored my own husband in the arts of love. By my reckoning, it made us practically family. Her affair with Brisbane had cooled twenty years before to a much more filial relationship—no doubt aided by the fact that she was two decades his senior.

“Julia,” she told me once, “a wise courtesan knows when to stop romancing young men and restrict herself to gentlemen so much her senior, she can feel youthful again.”

She had taken her own advice, and compared to Father, she was an absolute rosebud. But in spite of the happiness she brought him, a few of my siblings did not appreciate her inclusion into a family party, and had banished their children to the schoolroom for supper with the maids rather than bring them within Fleur’s orbit. It was a silly bit of snobbery. The girls would have learnt far more about life from a close association with Fleur, and no doubt the boys would have, as well.

I passed Bellmont just as he was holding forth on the subject,
sotto voce
. “Naturally, I am glad my children have remained in London with their mother. Adelaide is busy with wedding preparations for our eldest, and I cannot think it would benefit any of them to associate with so notorious a creature.”

I snorted as I passed, a clear reference to Bellmont of his own peccadilloes. He flushed an angry red and motioned to a passing footman to fill his glass of wine again. I flashed him a brilliant smile and walked on. From quick conversation with my brother Benedick, I learnt that nothing had been amiss at the Home Farm. It was attached to the estate, and his responsibility as second son of the family. But he gave a nod to a little niche where one of the nine altars had once stood. Seated there, eating placidly from plates on their knees, were Benedick’s children, Tarquin and Perdita, and a third child I didn’t know.

“You want to know what goes on around here, ask that pair,” he instructed. “They’re like mongooses. Not a thing happens in Blessingstoke, on the farm or in the Abbey they don’t know it.”

He winked and turned away. I made my way to the little alcove, where I discovered the children eating an entire platter of fruit tarts they had liberated from the buffet table.

“Hello, Aunt Julia,” Tarquin said through a mouthful of crumbs. “You won’t tell about the tarts, will you? Only we’ve taken the last plate.”

“Clever you,” I said, helping myself to one. “They’re Cook’s best.”

“And we mayn’t get any more for a while,” Tarquin said darkly. “She’s gone down with an ague, and the undercook will be preparing meals until she’s well again.”

“That’s a pity,” I said. I turned to the third child, a portly little boy with a serious expression and a thatch of dark hair.

“I don’t know you.”

He brushed the crumbs from his hand and took mine with a courtly little bow. “Quentin Harkness, your ladyship.”

“What brings you to the Abbey, Master Harkness?”

He swallowed his tart and answered promptly. “Mr. Brisbane.”

I lifted my brows. “My husband? Really? Why is that?”

His dark eyes shone with admiration. “I want to be just like him. I’ve read about him in the newspaper, you see. And I think being a private enquiry agent would be
brilliant.
”

I smiled. “It has its moments. But it isn’t all glamour, you know. You’ll notice everyone else is enjoying their supper whilst he’s out trying to find out who left a baby in the stable.”

“I know,” Perdita said suddenly.

I stared at her. “What do you mean, child?”

She smoothed her skirts over her knees. “I mean I think I know. That’s almost the same thing.”

Quentin laughed, dropping crumbs to his lap, and Tarquin fixed his sister with a pitying glance through his spectacles. “Really, Perdie, it isn’t the same thing at all. You oughtn’t to speak unless you
know
. That’s how people get sued for libel.”

“No, it isn’t,” Quentin corrected. “It’s how one is sued for slander. Libel is what you write about someone in the newspaper. My father’s a barrister,” he told me by way of explanation.

There was something entirely unreal about having such a serious conversation with the solemn little trio, but I ought to have expected it. Benedick’s children were highly intelligent and highly original.

“You have a good imagination, Perdita,” I observed. I meant it as a compliment, but she did not return my smile.

“It isn’t imagination if it isn’t made up,” she told me.

“Who do you think left the baby?” I asked her. But she merely shook her head. I shot a look at the boys. I could have throttled them. They had dampened her enthusiasm for the story, and she would say no more. I made a note to get her alone later for a private tête-à-tête. I doubted she knew anything of significance, but it would not hurt to ask.

“Personally,” Tarquin said slowly, “I believe it was one of Aunt Hermia’s reformed prostitutes.”

I choked on my tea, and it was some minutes before I could speak.

I tipped my head. “I’m not entirely certain you children are supposed to know about that.” My father’s sister had established a home for reformed prostitutes in Whitechapel, a place to help them put away their gin and bad language and learn to be seamstresses and maids. She frequently bullied her family and friends into taking them on when they had completed their training, and my own Morag was a product of the place. It was never discussed in front of the children, but I was not surprised to find they knew of it, and Tarquin gave me a pitying look.

“Of course we know. We know
masses
of things.”

“I’ll wager you do,” I assured him.

Quentin spoke up then. “But they ought not to be wasting Mr. Brisbane’s time with babies,” he said, curling his lip. “Not when there’s a proper ghost in the village.”

“It isn’t a ghost,” Tarquin contradicted. “It’s a witch.”

“
’Tisn’t
,” Quentin argued, shooting me an abashed look. It was bad manners to argue with his host, but I could see that his passion for accuracy warred with his upbringing.

“What’s this about a witch?” I asked them.

They both perked up, and Perdita withdrew a little, as if accustomed to giving way to her brother. But of course, she would have to, I realised with a pang. Tarquin was her elder and a boy. Everything in civilised society had taught her that her opinions were not as important as his, her skills not as valued. I felt a rush of affection for her, but just then I saw her small, clever hand reach out and deftly slip the last jam tartlet off his plate and into her mouth. Perdita would be just fine.

I turned my attention to the boys, who were vying politely for the right to tell the story.

“There’s a cottage by the river, beyond the vicarage. It’s called Stone Cottage. Do you know it?” Tarquin asked.

“I do. Clever name,” I added as I pulled a face.

“Actually, it is,” he said with a pained expression. “It wasn’t called that because it’s made of stone. The family that built it were called Stone.”

“Ah, I see. Proceed.”

“Well,” he said, warming to his tale, “the family died off, all except the old Mrs. Stone. She was rumoured to be two hundred years old, and she kept a pack of cats as big as dogs.”

“Two hundred? Really?”

He gave me a repressive look. “She wasn’t really two hundred, Aunt Julia. You mustn’t be gullible. But she looked it. Her chin and nose had grown quite close together, like this,” he said, pulling his chin and nose as near to one another as he could. “And she had a crooked back,” he added, hunching himself like an amateur actor in a production of
Richard III.

“And cats as big as dogs,” I reminded him.

“Yes, exactly. The villagers called her Old Mother Stone.”

Something stirred in the back of my memory. “Wait, I remember her! She was still alive when I was a child. But she didn’t look anything like that. She was a sweet little old woman with silver hair and a face like a plump apple. She was nearly as wide around as she was tall! And there was one cat, a slim little white thing called Snowdrop.”

Tarquin’s expression was reproving. “That’s not nearly as good a story.”

“Well, I am sorry, but it happens to be the truth. Aunt Hermia used to worry over her because she hadn’t any children to look after her. She would send us down from time to time with a basket of things, and Old Mother Stone always gave us fresh honeycomb on bread to eat.”

“Definitely not a witch,” said Quentin with some satisfaction.

“As I was saying,” Tarquin said repressively, “the old lady gained a reputation as a witch.”

“She wasn’t a witch,” I protested. “She was just a countrywoman, good at healing nettle rash and beestings.”

“So you thought,” Tarquin corrected. “After she died, the cottage fell into disrepair and folk began to talk about the things she had done for them, secret things.”

I felt a stab of unease. If Old Mother Stone had dabbled in anything more demanding than nettle rash, it would have likely been women’s troubles. And I wasn’t certain how much Benedick would approve of my encouraging his children to ponder such things.

“There were potions and charms,” he went on in a sepulchral voice.

“Yes, yes,” I hurried him on. “Then what?”

He hesitated, his enthusiasm dimming slightly. “Well, then nothing, I suppose. Except that she has returned.”

I blinked again. “Returned? What are you talking about?”

“We’ve seen her,” he told me.

“We saw a ghost,” Quentin corrected. “If she died, what’s in the cottage now is a ghost.”

“But we don’t know that she died,” Tarquin argued. “Witches know things. She might have just flown off for a bit and decided to come back.”

“Unlikely, old man. Where has she been for the last twenty years? And who did they bury?”

Tarquin considered this. “Excellent question, Quentin.”

Quentin puffed a little, his expression solemn. “There’s much investigating to be done.”

I felt a flicker of interest stirring. “Not without me.”

Tarquin and Quentin exchanged glances and looked at me with identical grins. “Do you mean it?” Tarquin asked.

“Of course. If you’re going to go hunting witches and ghosts, you’ll want an experienced hand,” I told him.

“Mr. Brisbane’s own right hand,” Quentin breathed.

“Partner,” I corrected gently.

“Of course,” he said, his excitement scarcely dampened. His eyes shone. “Do you think if Mr. Brisbane returns, he’d like to help us?”