Chapter 10 #2
I had told this tale to nobody, and I didn’t want to be telling it to Hyperia.
“You eventually walked off too.”
“Not at first. I stared at the flood of light coming through the door—my blue spectacles had been an early casualty of captivity—and I waited. Surely, the whole business was a trap, an excuse to finish me off in a manner made to look as if I were trying to escape.” An officer had a duty to attempt to escape, of course. A duty I’d failed to uphold.
“Are you still waiting, Jules? And do you fear that Dantry, too, is enduring some sort of incarceration?”
“Of course I do, though the longer he’s missing, the more likely he’s enjoying the hospitality of some merchantman bound for Cathay.” In the alternative, his remains were decomposing in the cold depths of an obscure ditch.
“We won’t mention the worse fates Dantry might have suffered,” Hyperia said. “Atticus is trying to get your attention.” She kissed my cheek, lingering long enough that I caught a whiff of her rosy scent. “You’d best see to your tiger, my lord, and I will purchase pretty candles.”
I did not want to part from her, but Atticus was, indeed, shifting from foot to foot on his side of the green and glowering at me as if I were a truant apprentice.
“Do my experiences in France bother you, Hyperia? They have a way of intruding that certainly bothers me.”
“Your experiences in France enrage me,” she said, though her tone was mild.
“Nobody should have had to endure the hell you were put through, but I suspect that if you try to ignore your past, it will only hound you more tenaciously. I’m not saying your ghosts deserve friendship, but they are your ghosts, proof of what you’ve survived, and thus I accept them, as you accept mine. ”
Gracious of her. The idea of ghosts being a symbol of victory bore further thought. “I love you, Hyperia West.”
“I love you too, my lord.” She beamed at me, waved to Atticus, and disappeared into the shop.
I did not deserve her, but I needed her. I also needed to find Dantry and be done with this whole peeking into broom closets and interrogating footmen phase of my earthly span.
“I can’t say for sartin that it were Fletcher.” The stable hand, Wicksniff by name, adjusted a battered cap and glanced behind him at a barn enjoying a late-morning lull. “But the horse he rode were pale.”
A dire omen, if one was given to apocalyptic superstitions.
Wicksniff, by contrast, had some of Lavelle’s insouciance.
He was tallish for a groom, his sandy hair was neatly trimmed, and he wore a bright red handkerchief knotted at his throat.
His features were regular and even handsome—blue eyes, straight nose, square jaw—though his expression was guarded.
I’d put his age on the sensible side of thirty.
“You said Fletcher rides a golden horse,” Atticus interjected. “Was the pale horse gray, golden, or white?”
“Moon wasn’t full, so I ain’t sayin’ specifics.
” Wicksniff slapped his cap against his thigh and replaced it on his head.
“Fletcher’s horse is gold. Ever’body knows that.
Ever’body also knows Fletcher don’t sit up straight in the saddle.
He leans for’ard, like he’s galloping toward a jump, ’cept he ain’t. ”
“And the rider you saw by moonlight exhibited the same posture?” I asked.
“Maybe. He weren’t no cavalry officer, and he weren’t no Sir Clive. That ’un knows how to sit a horse.”
“Does Dantry know how to sit a horse?” I put the question idly, mostly just to keep Wicksniff talking. He was clearly uncomfortable consulting with me even in the relative privacy of the deserted stable yard.
“That, he do. A man with a good seat doesn’t call attention to hisself. He’s calm about it and upright but relaxed. The earl was country raised, and it shows.”
I wandered toward the open barn door, the door itself having been rolled back to admit fresh air and sunshine. “Where did you see the fellow on the pale horse, Wicksniff?”
“On the lane that passes by the bottom of the Knot’s drive. I was taking a piss along the hedge, and I heard him coming. He went by ten feet from where I stood among the yews, and he didn’t even know I was there.”
Ten feet, and no positive identification of the rider? “What else did you notice?”
“Horse wasn’t even. Bad business when a riding horse don’t have an even walk. Left hind was late.”
That explained the lack of focus on the rider.
Wicksniff, as a true horseman, was more interested in the equine and its apparent infirmity.
The horse might have simply slipped on a patch of mud and been temporarily favoring a sore limb, or it might have a permanent weakness that would lead to eventual unsoundness if not addressed.
Damn the luck. We weren’t learning much of interest, but I made one more try.
“You can’t identify Alphonse Fletcher in the saddle,” I said, “but you think it might have been he, based on the horse’s coat color and the rider’s posture. Was there anything else?”
“Not many as ride pale horses in these parts. They take too much work to keep clean, they get sunburn and swellin’s and the like. A pale horse narrows down the possibilities. Fletcher shows his beast off. Says it came from Spain and has fancy bloodlines.”
I would ask Sir Clive who else rode a fancy gray. A patch of snow on the roof of the church across the green went sliding down into the adjoining graveyard. A spate of faster, louder dripping followed in its wake.
“Why would Fletcher be frequenting Middleton?”
Wicksniff grinned. “Same reason half the footmen, tinkers, farmhands, and widowers do. Pretty scenery.”
Atticus gave a pebble a disgusted kick.
“Does any particular view appeal to Fletcher?”
“You’d have to ask Mrs. Pippindonk. She knows ever’thing about ever’body, and how she knows it is a mystery no sane fella tries to solve.”
“I nominate the cider,” I said. “Atticus, I’m for the vicarage, but I forgot the cinnamon biscuits Sir Clive sent along from the Knot. Take me to the dog cart, and I will remedy my error. Wicksniff, thanks for your help.”
“Mind you, I’m not sayin’ it were Fletcher I saw.”
“Nor can you confirm that it was Fletcher’s horse. I understand.”
Atticus had doubtless hoped that Wicksniff was a pivotal witness, and in that, my tiger had been disappointed. He trooped along the barn aisle, his very steps exuding truculence.
“Wicksniff said he’d seen a rider clear as day, and it weren’t Dantry. Now he won’t stick by his own words.”
“He’s sticking by what he knows to be true, and we must commend his integrity. If Dantry has been kidnapped or come to harm at the hands of another, we want to know the truth, not the biases, hunches, and lies that will lead us astray.”
“I want a cinnamon biscuit.”
“Be honest. You want at least six.” We approached the far end of the barn, which opened into a cobbled yard flanked by two long shedrows of stalls. Horses stuck their heads over half doors down both sides, their faces in the shade of the overhangs above the walkways.
Sir Clive’s dog cart sat at the open end of the yard, traces facing out.
More dripping, more bright sunshine, piles of melting snow turning the cobbles wet, and the damp intensifying the signature aroma of a stable.
“Watch where you step,” I said. “Miss West is not to be subjected to foul scents on the ride back to the Knot.”
“Maybe you should eat somethin’, guv. Your mood is gettin’ foul. Breakfast was hours ago, and you likely didn’t eat enough to keep a bird in business. A cinnamon biscuit or two would put you right for sure.”
We reached the dog cart, which was not on the cobbled apron, but backed up to its edge. The dripping was less annoying when hard stones weren’t underfoot to magnify the noise.
“Did you back the cart into this position?” I asked. A nice bit of driving, if he had.
“There’s room. I wasn’t in a hurry, and Sir Clive has good cattle. Easier to get the horse going if he’s just walking on.”
“Well done.” I retrieved the package of biscuits from under the seat. “Miss West had occasion to note that you are becoming very skilled at the ribbons.”
Atticus aimed a longing look at the parcel in my hands, but before he could renew his campaign to spoil his lunch, a particularly bright glint of sunshine caught my eye.
“What have we here?” I retrieved a pair of golden spurs from a nail on the last post supporting the overhang. They weren’t heavy enough to be solid gold, but they were quite flashy nonetheless.
“Fancy,” Atticus said. “Too fancy to steal.”
“Wicksniff!”
The groom appeared on the trot. “Milord?”
“What do you know about these?” I held out the spurs, which sported short, rounded knobs protruding from the backs.
“Them’s mostly for decoration.” Wicksniff frowned. “Short shank, no rowels. You can’t hardly touch the horse with ’em, not if yer ridin’ properly.”
“Do you recognize these?” I asked.
Wicksniff shook his head. “Sir Clive don’t wear spurs—his horses are trained to go when they’re asked—and those cost money. Few around here would waste coin on spurs for show.”
“They have some gold in them, Wicksniff. A fair amount of coin would be involved.” Golden shank, neck, and heel band, with more gold in the rosette buckles on the leather straps.
“You sayin’ they belonged to the earl?”
“I am, and they were hanging right on that last support post, albeit on the side facing away from the yard.”
Atticus hadn’t seen the spurs when he’d been backing the cart in not eight feet away, but then, they’d been hung on a nail above his eye level, a nail Dantry could easily have reached.
“You ain’t found the earl,” Wicksniff said, “but you found his spurs. That’s good, right?”
“I honestly don’t know. Who might have been working in the yard after dark?”
“Nobody. We put the horses to bed, close up, and go have a pint. I do a last check after me pint, and I ain’t seen nobody with the earl’s spurs.”
My frustration was becoming a pacing, growling beast in my mind. “We’ll take the spurs to Dantry’s brother. Keep a sharp eye out, please. Somebody might come around thinking to retrieve them, and I will want to know who that somebody is.”
I left Atticus peering about the stable yard, while Wicksniff disappeared back into the gloom of the barn aisle.
I was doubtless peckish, irritable, and in need of sustenance, as Atticus had said, but I was also growing impatient with clues that led nowhere, witnesses who saw nothing for certain, and a friendly little village that was of no real help whatsoever.
Subsequent events would try my patience yet further, to the point of jeopardizing my very sanity.