When Maidens Mourn (27 page)

She spent the next ten minutes refining her sketch, adding details and nuances. Then she ordered her coachman to drive to Covent Garden.

The man’s jaw sagged. “I beg your pardon, m’lady, but did you say ‘Covent Garden’?”

“I did.”

He bowed. “Yes, m’lady.”

S
ebastian was alone at his breakfast table reading the latest reports on the Americans’ invasion of Canada when a knock sounded at the entrance. He heard his majordomo, Morey, cross to open the front door; then a dog’s enthusiastic barking echoed in the hall.

Sebastian raised his head.

“Chien! No!”
someone shouted. “Come back!”

Morey hissed. “Sir! I really must insist that you control your— Oh, merciful heavens.”

A scrambling clatter of nails sounded on the marble floor in the hall, and a familiar black and brown mongrel burst into the room, tail wagging and tongue lolling in confident expectation of an enthusiastic reception.

“So you’re proud of yourself, are you?” said Sebastian, setting aside his paper.

“Chien!” Lieutenant Philippe Arceneaux appeared in the doorway. “I do most profusely beg your pardon, my lord.
Chien
, heel!”

“It’s all right,” Sebastian told the anxious majordomo hovering behind the French officer. “The Lieutenant and his ill-mannered
hound are both known to me. And no, you are not to take that as an invitation to further liberties,” he warned as the dog pawed at his gleaming Hessians. “Mar the shine on my boots, and Calhoun will nail your hide to the stable door. And if you think that an idle threat, you have obviously not yet made the acquaintance of my valet.”

“He might be more inclined to believe you,” observed Arceneaux with a smile, “if you were not pulling his ears.”

“Perhaps. Do come in and sit down, Lieutenant. May I offer you some breakfast? And no, that question was not addressed to you, you hell-born hound, so you can cease eyeing my ham with such soulful intent.”

“Thank you, my lord, but I have already eaten—we have
both
eaten,” he added, frowning at the dog. “Shame on you, Chien; you have the manners of a tatterdemalion. Come away from there.”

The dog settled on his hindquarters beside Sebastian’s chair and whined.

“Obedient too, I see,” observed Sebastian, draining his tankard.

“He likes you.”

“He likes my ham.”

Arceneaux laughed. Then his smile faded. “I have brought him with me because I have a request to make of you.”

Sebastian looked up from scratching behind the dog’s ears. “Oh?”

“It seems to me that if I could take Chien up to Camlet Moat, there’s a good possibility he might pick up some trace of Alfred and George, something to tell us where they’ve gone or what has happened to them. Something the authorities have missed. He was very fond of the children.”

Sebastian was silent for a moment, considering the implications of the request. “Sounds like a reasonable idea. But why come to me?”

“Because I am not allowed to journey more than a mile beyond
the boundaries of the city. But if you were to square it with the authorities and go with us…”

Sebastian studied Arceneaux’s fine-boned, earnest face, with its boyish scattering of freckles and wide, sky blue eyes. “Why not? It’s worth a try.” He pushed to his feet. “See what you can do to keep your faithful hound out of the ham while I order my curricle brought round.”

A bored clerk at the Admiralty, the government department in charge of all prisoners of war, grudgingly granted permission for Arceneaux to leave London in Sebastian’s custody. As they left the crowded streets of the city behind, Sebastian let his hands drop; the chestnuts leapt forward, and Chien scrambled upright on the seat between the two men, his nose lifted and eyes half closed in blissful appreciation of the rushing wind.

Sebastian eyed the mongrel with a healthy dose of skepticism. “Personally, I wouldn’t have said he numbered any bloodhounds amongst his diverse and doubtless disreputable ancestry.”

Arceneaux looped an arm over the happy animal’s shoulders. “Perhaps not. But the boys used to play hide-and-seek with him, and he was always very good at finding them.”

Sebastian steadied his horses. “When you drove Miss Tennyson and the lads out to the moat last week, did you take Chien with you?”

“I never said I—”

“Just answer the bloody question.”

Arceneaux let out a huff of resignation. “We did, yes.” A faint smile of remembrance lightened his features. “Chien leapt into the moat after a duck and then rolled around in the loose dirt beside the trenches. Gabrielle told him he was not welcome up there ever again.”

The Frenchman fell silent, his grip on the dog tightening as he
stared off across the sun-drenched fields, his own thoughts doubtless lost in the past. It wasn’t until they had reached the overgrown woods of the chase that he said, “I’ve been thinking and thinking, trying to come up with some reason for her to have taken the boys there again this past Sunday.” He shook his head. “But I can’t.”

“Did you know that Bevin Childe had in his possession a lead cross that was said to have come from the graves of King Arthur and Guinevere?”

“
Mon dieu.
You can’t mean the Glastonbury Cross?”

“That’s it. Childe claims to have found it along with a box of old bones amongst the collections he’s been cataloging at Gough Hall. But Miss Tennyson was convinced it was a recent forgery.”

“Is that what she was talking about? But…if that’s all it was, why wouldn’t she have told me?”

“I was hoping perhaps you could help explain that. I gather the controversy surrounding the discovery of Arthur’s grave in the twelfth century is considerable?”

Arceneaux nodded. “The problem is, it all seems just a shade too tidy. At the time, the Anglo-Norman kings were facing considerable opposition to their attempts to conquer Wales, and much of that resistance used Arthur as a rallying cry. The country people still believed in the old legends—that Arthur had never really died and would one day return from the mystical Isle of Avalon to expel the forces of evil.”

“With the Normans and the Plantagenet kings being identified as the forces of evil?”

“Basically, yes. The thing of it was, you see, there was no grave anyone could point to and say, ‘Here lies King Arthur, dead and buried.’ That made it easy for people to believe that he hadn’t actually died—and could therefore someday return. So the grave’s discovery was a true boon to the Plantagenets. They could then say, ‘See, Arthur is dead. Here is his grave. He’s not coming back. We are his rightful heirs.’”

“Why Glastonbury Abbey?”

“Well, at one time the site of Glastonbury actually was a misty island surrounded by marshland, which helps give some credibility to the association with Avalon. But what makes the monks’ discovery particularly suspect is that at the time they claimed to have found Arthur’s grave, the abbey church had just burned down and their chief patron and benefactor—Henry the Second himself—had died. They needed money, and what better way to increase their pilgrim traffic than with the discovery of the burial site of King Arthur and his queen?”

“In other words, it was all a hoax.”

“It’s tempting to see it that way. The problem is, if it was simply a scheme to increase the abbey’s revenue, then the monks didn’t do a very good job of advertising their find. And the way the burial was described—sixteen feet down, in a hollowed-out log—sounds oddly appropriate to a sixth-century burial. One would have thought that if they were manufacturing a hoax, the monks in their ignorance would have come up with something a bit more…” He hesitated, searching for the right word.

“Regal?” suggested Sebastian, guiding his horses onto the narrow track that led to the moat.

“Yes.”

“I’m told the cross disappeared during the Commonwealth.”

“It did, although it was reportedly seen early in the last century.”

“In other words, Bevin Childe could conceivably have found the Glastonbury Cross amongst the collection he’s been cataloging—leaving aside the question of whether it was actually manufactured in the twelfth century or the sixth.”

“Theoretically, I suppose he could have.”

“So why was Miss Tennyson convinced it was a recent forgery?”

Arceneaux looked out over the shady glade surrounding the moat. “I don’t know. I gather Childe believes the cross to be genuine—at least to the twelfth century?”

“So he claims.”

“Where is it? Would it be possible for me to see it?”

Sebastian drew up near the land bridge to the island, the horses snorting and sidling nervously. Tom jumped down and ran to their heads.

“Unfortunately, no. Childe claims Miss Tennyson threw it into Gough Hall’s ornamental lake the Friday before she died.”

“She did what?”

Sebastian dropped to the ground, his boots sinking into the soft earth. “I gather she had something of a temper?”

“She did, yes.” Arceneaux climbed down more carefully, the dog bounding after him. “But it still seems a strange thing to have done.”

Sebastian started to say, “Maybe she—” Then he broke off, his gaze caught by a dark, motionless shape floating at the edge of the moat’s stagnant green waters. The dog stopped in his tracks, the fur on his back rising as his lips pulled away from his teeth and a deep, throaty growl rumbled in his chest.

Arceneaux rested a hand on Chien’s head, his own voice a whisper. “What is it?”

“Stay here,” said Sebastian, sliding down the embankment to the water’s edge.

The man’s body floated facedown in the algae-scummed water, arms flung stiffly to its sides. Splashing into the murky shallows, Sebastian fisted his hand around the collar of the brown corduroy coat and hauled the body up onto the bank, the bracken and ferns crushing beneath his boot heels and the dead man’s sodden, squelching weight.

“Is he dead?” Arceneaux asked, holding the dog at the top of the ancient earthen works. “Who is it?”

Sebastian hesitated a moment, his breath coming uncomfortably hard. The man’s clothes were rough, his boots worn, his golden red hair worn a bit too long. Hunkering down beside the body, Sebastian slowly rolled it over.

The man flopped onto his back with a sodden plop, arms flailing outward, to reveal a pale, dripping face and blankly staring eyes. A water-blurred stain discolored the torn, charred front of his leather jerkin and smock.

Sebastian sank back on his heels, one hand coming up to adjust his hat lower over his eyes as he blew out a long breath. “It’s Rory Forster.”

T
he local magistrate proved to be a foul-tempered, heavy-featured squire named John Richards.

Well into middle age and running comfortably to fat, Squire John was far more interested in his hounds and the joint his cook was preparing for his dinner than in all the sordid, tedious requirements of a murder investigation. When Tom—upon discovering that Sir Stanley and his lady had removed to London for a few days—carried Sebastian’s message to the Squire, the tiger had a hard time convincing the man to leave his cow pasture.

The Squire now stood on the shady bank of the moat, one beefy hand sliding over his ruddy, sagging jowls as he stared down at the waterlogged body at his feet. “Well, hell,” he muttered, his brows beetling into a fierce scowl. “Truth be told, I was more than half convinced your tiger was making up the whole tale when he came to me. I mean, two bodies found floating in Camlet Moat in one week? Impossible, I’d have said. But here’s another one, all right.”

“At least this one’s local,” observed Sebastian.

The Squire drew a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his bulbous nose. “But that’s the worst part of it, you see. Can’t imagine Bow Street interesting themselves in the murder of some blacksmith’s son from Cockfosters.” A hopeful gleam crept into his watery gray eyes. “Unless, of course, you think this might have something to do with that young gentlewoman we found here last Sunday?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised but what it does.”

The Squire brightened. “I’ll send one of the lads off to London right away.” A flicker of movement drew his attention across the moat, to where Philippe Arceneaux was methodically crisscrossing the island with Chien bounding enthusiastically at his side. The Squire wiped his nose again, his eyes narrowing with suspicion. “Who did you say that fellow was?”

“My dog handler.”

“That’s your dog?”

“It is.”

“Huh. Fellow’s got a Frenchy look about him, if you ask me. They’re saying it was a Frenchman who killed that gentlewoman, you know. What is this fellow doing with that dog, exactly?”

“I was hoping the dog might pick up some trace of the missing Tennyson children.”

When the Squire still looked doubtful, Sebastian added, “It’s a…a Strand hound. They’re famous for their ability to track missing persons. This one is particularly well trained and talented.”

“Well trained, you say?” asked the Squire, just as Chien flushed up a rabbit and tore off after it through the underbrush.