Chapter 3
Chapter Three
“We could be stuck here for days,” Atticus said, holding out his hands to the hearth in the earl’s sitting room. “That earl fella musta gone through some pens and paper.”
“His lordship was a prolific correspondent, and yes, we might bide here the better part of a week. I’ll need that long to go through his effects. Are they feeding you belowstairs?”
Atticus swiped a mop of dark hair out of his eyes. “Aye. Cook’s a friendly sort. She’d make three of Mrs. Gwinnett. Says she knows Mrs. G quite well and sent to the Hall for our toddy recipe. Sir Clive raved about it.”
I knew the toddy recipe by heart. Mrs. Gwinnett had sent it to Spain with me, along with a cache of the spices that gave the drink its singular appeal. Harry had promptly claimed half the lot by right of marauding older brother.
“What do you hear of Lord Dantry?” I asked, leaving my reading chair to pace along the windows.
Atticus turned so his backside faced the warmth of the fire.
“Not much. When Dantry’s name comes up, the footmen trade told-ya-so looks, the undercook starts choppin’ spuds nineteen to the dozen, and the boot-boy scurries off to the butler’s pantry.
” He rubbed his hands over his haunches.
“That lot knows something, or think they do.”
I’d grown more cautious about hauling Atticus into the heart of my investigations.
On our last sortie, he’d nearly come to grief courtesy of a pond not as solidly frozen as it had appeared.
His start in life had been dodgy, patrimony unknown.
He’d been thrust on the charity of the parish at an early age, then lost a brother if not to death, then to an uncertain fate.
Of his maternal antecedents, I knew nothing.
I had certainly not meant to imperil Atticus’s existence. A boy in service nonetheless had access to places and people who would never speak freely to me. His job was thus to listen carefully without drawing suspicion upon himself.
And he excelled at it.
I’d found him among the overworked staff of a Kentish household, noted his quick mind and basically sound honor, and offered him employment at the Hall.
Continued wages were conditioned on his learning to read and write, endeavors that proceeded slowly if at all, unless Hyperia was on hand to provide tutelage and inspiration.
“Who tries not to react when Dantry’s name comes up?” I asked.
“Dunno.” Another half turn. “They like Sir Clive. He’s the old dear, himself, the Knight of the Knot, the old boy. Sir Clive went out through the kitchen door, and Cook barely scolded him for trespassin’ belowstairs.”
Atticus’s diction was in good repair, suggesting he was comfortable at the Knot. When the boy was anxious or angry, he lapsed into a blend of Cockney and rustic speech that could defy translation into the King’s English.
“Keep listening,” I said. “What of the butler?”
“On holiday. Sister in…” Atticus stared hard at the fire. “Silly name. Unthank somethin’.”
“Cleverton Unthank,” I said, naming a village a good twenty miles distant. More of a hamlet, really. “We won’t see the butler for some days yet, then. Has anybody mentioned where you are to bide?”
“I can sleep with the grooms.”
We had this argument regularly. “You are to sleep in my dressing closet, young man.” I wanted him safe, warm, and close by.
Grooms could be notably corrupting influences—the boy was already quite handy with dice and cards—and footmen a regular scourge, whether of the leering variety, or the kind who thought getting a small boy drunk was fine entertainment.
“Ain’t proper,” Atticus said, once again turning his back to the fire. “You’re a gent, and I’m not your valet, and it ain’t proper.”
I had a valet, a quiet useful sort who looked after my wardrobe and left me in peace. He’d take on an apprentice if I asked him to, but Atticus was drawn to the stable, a hard and occasionally dangerous place to work. We argued about that too.
“And if my memory should desert me,” I said, “do you suppose mine host will think, ‘Oh, we should summon the boy—what’s his name? Adam? Atlee?—and he will know exactly how to deal with a duke’s heir who cannot recall his own name?”
Atticus scowled ferociously. “You got a spell comin’ on, guv?”
I had all sorts of spells coming on. A spell of melancholy was trailing about two steps behind me. A spell of missing Hyperia lurked at my figurative right elbow. At my left, a spell of frustration that the weather prevented me from pressing on to question Sheldon Arbuthnot.
“I have no warning when I’m about to misplace my memory, Atticus.
One moment, I am well informed as to my person, location, and situation.
The next, it’s as if I’m searching for a word and it’s right on the tip of my tongue, except that I’m searching for anything I knew a moment ago—my name, what country I inhabit, what town, the day of the week, my purpose for being in that location.
” I was even unable to recognize Hyperia and Her Grace when a fit of forgetting came upon me.
“You always come right.”
“I come right eventually, but on notable occasions, your assistance has considerably aided the situation.”
He made the same face boys made when ordered into their weekly bath. “I can sleep in the dressing closet, though a body don’t sleep much with your carryin’ on like half Wellington’s troops are fightin’ the Frenchies at the foot of the bed.”
“Every soldier has the occasional nightmare.”
Such a look of pity before he rotated to again face the fire. “Miss Dulcie told staff you was to be shown every respect. She runs the place.”
“One surmised as much. Do they like her?”
He tossed another square of peat onto the already roaring blaze. “Dunno. They respect her, but talk about her like she’s not to be trifled with. Prickly, doesn’t suffer fools. She has a nice horse. Big bay gelding with four white socks. Name is Rabbit ’cause he can run and jump like mad.”
Atticus set great store by a person’s mount and how that mount was treated—as did I.
“Miss Dulcie is an equestrian?”
“Aye. Her sidesaddle is peculiar. Has the horn sticking up both ways and some extra straps and such. She uses a gibbet to get into the saddle. Hauls herself up on ropes. You going to let the rest of that cheese toast go to waste, guv?”
“I’m finished, which is ostensibly why you are permitted abovestairs—to collect the tray, lest you forget, and to report on the welfare of our horses.”
“Right.” He winked at me over his shoulder. “‘That wee Atticus is such a helpful lad.’ Cryin’ shame to let good food go to waste.”
The tray would arrive to the kitchen without a crumb left upon it.
“Atticus, you are forbidden on pain of copying romantic verses to gamble, dice, wager, or otherwise put your coin at risk. I need your eyes and ears open, not focused on enriching a lot of cheating scoundrels.”
“Scoundrels bent on cheating a mere helpless lad tend to not watch their talk, guv. It’s worth tuppence to encourage their foolishness.”
He had a point. He’d survived by being shrewd regarding human nature and making a lot of his own luck.
I fished a few coins from my pocket. “Watch the drinking. I mean that. You’re no use to anybody if you become a sot, and you will certainly never find steady work in a stable if you are in thrall to Bacchus.”
“Never heard of him.” Atticus ceased his rotations and hefted the tray. “Supper is at six, if Sir Clive returns.”
“He’ll return. He would not worry Miss Weatherby by missing supper needlessly.”
“More for the rest of us if he don’t. I’ll have Cook send you a tea tray in an hour or so.
You isn’t to be borne when you get peckish, and you didn’t eat enough off this tray to keep a hen layin’.
Footmen are already sweeping the snow off the flagstone paths, and that means the kitchen will be kept busy for the duration. Toddies by the half barrel.”
“Atticus, be careful.”
“I always am, guv. ’Cept sometimes.” He balanced the tray on a hip, saluted, and let himself out the door.
He was right, the little imp. The cheese toast hadn’t half satisfied me, but neither had it appealed. An investigation often played havoc with my appetite, though melancholia could do that too.
I returned to my reading chair, but was unable to concentrate. Where was Sir Clive? The weather was worsening, and darkness would fall prematurely.
I created an order of precedence among the various stacks of correspondence, pamphlets, copy books, and whatnot and felt a minor sense of satisfaction for having imposed even that much organization on Lord Dantry’s chaos. Before I tackled the next stack, I needed to move.
I went in search of Miss Weatherby, found her in the parlor where she’d received me earlier, and gained her permission to locate Sir Clive and get him back to headquarters.
“Good of you,” she said, gathering a blue shawl more closely around her.
“Shepherds are tasked with watching their flocks. Knights of the realm ought to leave them to it. I hadn’t wanted to ask a footman or gardener to find Uncle when I know they’ll be putting out the ropes and shoveling the paths. ”
“Sir Clive will obey orders,” I said, “or we will court-martial him for conduct unbecoming. He has no business worrying you like this.” And, to be honest, worrying me.
If a peer of the realm could disappear from the Knot by dark of night, Sir Clive might easily go missing in the midst of a blinding storm.
I could not have that on my conscience. Just as significantly, I needed activity, any activity at all, desperately.
“You will be careful?” Miss Weatherby asked.
“I am accustomed to making my way across hostile terrain in all sorts of weather. I will be exceedingly cautious.”
“The hounds won’t forgive me if I lose the old boy to a snowstorm. Sir Clive said the weather would hold off. If he tried to make his way home from the village in this mess…”