Twelfth Night (A Wendover House Mystery Book 2) (9 page)

Hannah looked to the west and the blood red sun.

It was almost done.

*
 
*
 
*

It took a while for the present to reassert itself, pushing back
the horrible other reality of Hannah’s death. I had to blot away the sweat and
tears from my cheeks.

For one moment I had actually wished that Sands was burning
in Hell.
But only for a moment.
Now that I assumed there
could be some kind of spirit survival and that Hell seemed like a real
possibility for those who believed in it, I found that I couldn’t actually wish
anyone there.

No one spoke. In fact they averted their eyes while I
restored minimal order to my makeup. Thank goodness for waterproof mascara.

After I was calm enough, I recounted my research, not that
anyone was asking for proof.

“Why the handprint?”
Jack asked
when I was done speaking. No one expressed disbelief at what I had said.
Perhaps the sharing of all the ghost stories had softened them up to the idea
that maybe there was something beyond the veil.

Neither brother answered, but I don’t think it was because
of ignorance. Bryson looked a little bit ashamed and sad. Everett was shut down
but there was still an angry and perhaps fearful shimmer at the back of his
eyes. If it had just been me asking out of curiosity he wouldn’t have answered,
but it wasn’t just me. And like others in the islands, he believed in ghosts.
And he knew his family’s sin.

A distressed Harris finally answered for them.

“It was part of the questioning,” he said softly. “They
broke the bones of her hand to force a confession—which Sands stopped when he
knew it was happening. He wasn’t the one who brought the charge of witchcraft
either.”

“But he didn’t repudiate it either.” The suspicion lingered
that he might even have suggested to some minion that they bring the charge.
Kind of like Henry II and his “Can no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”

“I’m so sorry, my dear. I didn’t know that you had been
troubled by her.”

I felt ill. So Harris at least had known about her.

“Go on. Finish it. Was I right about what happened?”

“Well, it was that hand that she raised to God to swear her
innocence when she faced the gallows. I think some in the crowd believed her
then, but others felt that she had endangered them by leaving the island and
deserved to be punished, and still others thought all Wendovers were devil
spawn and had earned whatever happened. They also wanted to hurry the execution
because the woods were growing dark and they feared the wolves. They were
plentiful at that time.” Harris looked as grim as a one-man wake as he related
the details I hadn’t known—that she hadn’t known—about the judicial murder.

…
and
he ordered that she be
putt
to death, the
executione
to be no later than
fyve
of the clock. There being no road in this extremity of
the wood, it was a deed witnessed only by those who came on
foott
…

“What happened to her body?” I asked, wanting to hear no
more of what had been done to her. Thunder shook the house. “Did they cast her
into the sea? Leave her to the wild animals?”

“No, but … a witch cannot be buried in consecrated ground….”

“But she wasn’t a witch—just a scorned lover.
And a Wendover.
So what did they do? Bury her face down at
the crossroads?”

Harris made a placating gesture.

“The colonel was an outsider and a mainlander. He didn’t
understand about the Wendovers and the island. After she was dead the island
folk in the crowd began to fear that her family might leave the island forever
because of the insult to their daughter, even though they had themselves cast
her off. When the others had gone they took the body under cover of darkness
and brought her home to the family. They had to row the whole way because the
sea was flat and there was no wind for the sails. They were all terrified—and
this was the last time anyone from the islands harmed a Wendover.”

Anyone
from the islands
.

Anyone human.

Harris swallowed. I had never seen him look so ill at ease
and I was willing to bet that his ancestors had been among those who crossed
the still ocean to bring the body home.

“They buried her in the garden somewhere, or so the story
goes,” Bryson said at last, relieving Harris of the task of filling in the
blanks. “They hadn’t much choice, the island being made of stone. It was the
only earth soft enough for a grave. No one knows exactly where though. There
wasn’t any tombstone.”

I thought of the fallen statue that my great-grandfather had
never cleared away and Kelvin’s frequent vigils there. It was where my ghost
stood, weeping. There had been a stone to mark her grave, just not one with
writing.

“I think I know where she is.” I looked from Harris to
Bryson and back again.
But what next?
How the hell did
we undo an ancient wrong? Can reparation be made to the dead?

“What do you want us to do, Tess?”

“She is going to have a funeral, a proper one. We won’t dig
her up.” Unless we had to, but I really didn’t want the scandal of moving the
remains of a body to the churchyard—assuming there were any—and there might well
be all kinds of red tape and publicity of a morbid kind. “But I want words read
over her grave and a memento I’ve found in the house added to her grave. It is
the least we can do.”

I was looking at Bryson when I said this, and with this
pronouncement, the storm died on my last word. I wasn’t the only one who
noticed and my guests all showed varying degrees of alarm and awe—and relieved
approval—at this declaration. We all felt that we were getting off light.

“I’ll make the arrangements,” Harris said, looking more
comforted by the calm than anyone else. “Father Driscoll is an old friend. He …
understands.”

“Thank you,” I said and meant it. “It’s time Hannah found
some rest.”

The party broke up soon thereafter. I dreaded the moment I
was alone with Brandy and Jack, fearing they might want to rehash events or ask
more questions, but they seemed exhausted and wanted to go to bed.

We used the electric lights to find our way upstairs where I
lit old-fashioned fires I’d laid earlier in the small bedroom grates.
We hugged and air-kissed goodnight.
Well, Brandy and I did.
Jack’s hug had more substance to it.

Neither of my guests was in my grandmother’s room—Hannah’s
room. They weren’t even on the same side of the house so they saw nothing
alarming, assuming anything was there to see. I didn’t go looking for shadows
either.

Kelvin was waiting in the middle of my bed. His eyes were
large but peaceful, his fur unperturbed. I lighted my own fire and he purred
with approval. Kelvin loves warm things. Though exhausted, I took the time to
wipe off my eye makeup. My lipstick, in spite of being “long-wear” had been
chewed off hours ago.

Bed had never felt so good and it was the first time in
weeks that I hadn’t heard crying with either my ears or my mind when I went to
sleep. I didn’t even stop to look at my bed curtains to see if the handprint
was gone. Later I would look. I would probably also pay a visit to Sands’ grave
in the spring and see if Hannah’s handprint remained there.

*
 
*
 
*

Breakfast was almost festive. Ben, perhaps seeing lights
come
on in the kitchen just after dawn, arrived a few
minutes later with blueberry muffins. After we had had some coffee and devoured
a bit of sweet, Jack set about making his one company breakfast dish—omelets.
This time stuffed with venison instead of ham.

Brandy came wafting in, fresh and perfumed from her bath,
and sat down next to Ben. She looked a decade younger. Perhaps I would too
after some time in the tub.

We were working on the second round of coffee when Ben finally
asked how he could help me prepare for the funeral. I knew that part of him was
thinking about the book he would write, but I forgave him.

I explained about needing to build a small bonfire out back
to soften the ground for a bit of digging. Ben is pretty unflappable but this
startled him.

“Tess, you’re not….”

“No, but I want to add a couple of mementos that she kept
hidden in her room. In case she wants them.”
And because I
wanted them out of the house.
“Do you have a copy of the
Book of Common Prayer
for the Church of
England?”

“Yes.” He didn’t ask why I wanted it. Possibly it was
obvious and Ben, being irreligious, didn’t feel the need to comment.

“You don’t think that perhaps Father Driscoll will have
preferred texts to read?” Jack asked. He is just as quick on the uptake but less
delicate. “I mean, the different denominations are pretty strict about sticking
to the doctrine, aren’t they?”

“Maybe, though Father Driscoll is apparently willing to plan
a funeral for a ghost with an unmarked grave, so he can’t be that rigid in his
thinking. And I want some of the readings we had at my grandmother’s funeral.”
My voice sounded a little flat. So I added a smile. “I’m winging it here, guys.
I have a feeling we are only going to get one chance to do this right. Let’s go
old school.”

“Well, I am going to wash dishes. The stacks are getting
dangerously high,” Jack said. “Don’t worry about the cleanup, Tess. Brandy and
I can handle it.”

Brandy blinked but didn’t contradict him.

“Thanks. I don’t think I’ll be very long. I just need to
talk to Harris and then Father Driscoll. And look through my closet. I don’t
know if I packed my black dress. It was getting awfully tired looking and I
think it went to the thrift shop when I moved. Maybe my grandmother left
something in her closet.”

“Oh,” Brandy said, and I knew that before a single dish got
washed she would be upstairs examining her own wardrobe for funeral attire. If
she was deficient I didn’t know what she would do. There are limited clothes
shopping options on the islands, especially of the couture variety.

“And I’ll gather up some limbs and twigs for your fire,” Ben
said. “Just tell me where you want them.”

“You know that broken statue—the one without a head? Right there
would be fine. And I think we may have to use some of those pinecone
fire-starters from the library. Everything out there is going to be terribly
wet.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve lived here for a year now. I’ll make it
go.”

I nodded. It was a day for delegating. Probably I would have
to redo the bonfire and wash all the crystal again later to remove the smudges
Jack missed, but it was irrelevant. My friends wanted to help, and one lesson I
have learned in life is that it is important to let them.

“Tess, you’re looking thoughtful. Are you okay?” Ben asked.

“Of course.
I was just wondering if
Kelvin would accept a dog friend.” The words popped out of my mouth without any
planning, but they sounded alright. It would be nice to have a dog.

“Any particular breed?”
Ben asked.

“Friendly,” I said decidedly.

“I have a friend whose bitch just whelped. The puppies are
mixed though. And I could always dog-sit for you, if you needed me to.”

“Thanks. And mixed is okay. But first I need to run this by
Kelvin. It’s his house too.”

They all nodded, believing I meant that I needed to think it
over. Little did they know that I was serious about checking with
Kelvin.
The cat couldn’t talk in the human manner, but he
had ways of making his wishes known.

I took it as a good sign that on the day of the funeral we
had sun and only light wind. Clouds were gathered to the east, but they stayed
a respectful distance from the shore. I think every fisherman in the islands
was out that day, even those who fished only for recreation. The white boats on
the gray water looked very festive. Such propitious days were rare in January
and I wondered how much credit I was getting for the sun. Not that I deserved
any. If the weather was fine, I think it was Hannah’s doing.

There had been no time to order a tombstone even if I had
wanted one, which I did not. Placing such an order with the stonemason would
cause all kinds of furor that I wanted to avoid, and it didn’t seem right to
order one of those resin pet memorials from a catalogue. Short of building a
snowman with the slush Ben had scraped away from her grave, there was nothing
to do until spring. Even with building a small bonfire for three successive
days, the ground remained frozen twelve inches down, so my plans to plant a Siberian
lilac would have to wait for spring. Fortunately, twelve inches was sufficient
to inter my grandmother’s jewelry box and the relics it contained. I did that
very early in the morning before Jack and Brandy were up. It was something I
needed to do alone, or with just Hannah, Kelvin, and me.

I did not worry about finding bones when I dug. There had
been time to think it over and it was unlikely that anything physical had
survived with her being buried directly in the ground with nothing between her
flesh and the earth but a cloth shroud. The battle with the worms and microbes
was over long ago and the mortal markers were most likely all gone. This
gesture was symbolic.

We were a small party of mourners, just us eight and the
cat, but everyone had managed to scare up properly funereal clothing that we
hid beneath our winter coats. The weather was not so warm that we could forego
outerwear.

Father Driscoll spoke his piece and then Harris stepped
forward. Instead of saying the expected prayer he quoted from Shakespeare: