Chapter 17
Chapter
The next morning, Stoker seemed hardly the worse for wear after his brush with Asphodel and her noxious brews.
If anything, he seemed a little livelier, with a brightness to his eyes and a freshness to his complexion that had me almost considering selling mugwort as a health tonic.
I had, naturally, consulted several herbaria to make certain he would suffer no lasting effects from the dose and taken pains to reassure him on the point.
“It is said to help with sleep and strengthening the liver in small doses,” I told him. “Although in larger amounts, it is an hallucinogen, which is precisely what Asphodel and Ruthven intended, I believe.”
“I sicked up most of what little I drank,” he reminded me.
“It was rather a clever idea, to get me to ingest a substance which would heighten the otherworldly effects of the atmosphere and then have Ruthven start his routine of parlour tricks. Either of them alone wouldn’t have been nearly as effective, but in combination, they might well have caused a suggestive sort of person to fall completely under Ruthven’s spell. ”
“To what end?” I asked. We were at the breakfast table—or what passed for the breakfast table in the Belvedere, namely a repurposed sarcophagus onto which had been placed various covered chafing dishes which rested on vessels of recently boiled water.
The arrangement kept the food hot on its journey from the main house.
I toyed with a few pieces of toast, breaking them into bits to butter lavishly and then feed to the dogs, but Stoker had already heaped his plate twice over with eggs, kedgeree, sausages, and the honeyed cinnamon buns Cook sent down solely to assuage Stoker’s sweet tooth.
“Ah, that is no great mystery,” he said as he speared a crispy sausage. “Ruthven clearly wants to recruit me for the Harpocrates Society. All that talk of broadening my consciousness and bestriding the world—that is the same sort of talk you hear from any gentlemen’s club of newly made men.”
“Newly made men only?”
He chewed thoughtfully at his sausage as he nodded.
“Newly made men are the only ones who care about such things. Old families want to sit quietly by the fire and indulge in their pet interests—coins or stamps or Pompeiian pottery. For proof you’ve no further to look than this place,” he added, waving his fork about.
“Generations of Rosemorran earls filling up this entire building with things that have taken their fancy. Some of it is valuable, I will grant you. But more than half is utter rubbish. Do you think the earls cared? No, they bought what they liked because it was pretty or because it was unusual or—perhaps more importantly—because someone else wanted it. They did not care in the slightest about making their mark on the world because, by and large, aristocrats never do. Their marks have already been made. They inherit enormous houses that their great-grandfathers seven times back nearly bankrupted the family in building. Their only hope is to die without letting the place completely fall down around their ears. New money puts in a pond or a sculpture gallery or tears the thing down and rebuilds it entirely. Old money is content to sit.”
“You have persuaded me,” I told him.
“And that is why,” he carried on as he reached for a cinnamon bun, “I am convinced Ruthven is an impostor.”
“An impostor? Just because he is ambitious? I said you had persuaded me, but you go too far.”
With a smile of purest delight, he reached behind him for a familiar book and opened it to a page he had marked with a desiccated lizard.
“Is that…was that a chameleon?” I asked, plucking it out with two careful fingers.
“Brookesia superciliaris,” he said cheerfully.
“A brown leaf chameleon from Madagascar. Poor fellow must have wandered into one of the crates being packed up and come here as a stowaway. Somewhere along the line, he was flattened. Makes a handy bookmark though, and you will find here,” he said, tapping the page with a forefinger, “the entry in question.”
The volume was a comprehensive compendium of the aristocracy of the United Kingdom with notes regarding Ireland and the Channel Isles, I saw.
Stoker had pointed out the entry headed lord ruthven.
I skimmed it quickly. “ ‘A peerage of Scotland from 1488,” I said. “In abeyance several times, occasionally coupled with the lordship of Gowrie.’ ” I read on. “ ‘Currently vacated.’ ”
I looked up to find Stoker smiling into his buns.
“The title is not extant,” I summarised. “It went extinct when the last Lord Ruthven died in 1853.”
“Which means?” he said coaxingly.
“Which means our Lord Ruthven is indeed an impostor,” I admitted. “Hell and damnation.” I did not know which I found more irritating—that Stoker had thought to investigate the man’s credentials by the absolute simplest means possible or that he had been right and his lordship was a fraud.
“Very well. I concede.”
Stoker paused with a cinnamon bun halfway to his mouth. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said I concede.”
“I do apologise, but I am afraid my hearing is not what it used to be. Could you repeat that, my love?”
I threw the sugar spoon at his head, but he caught it, laughing.
“So you believe the Harpocrates Society is behind this?” I asked.
His expression turned thoughtful. “It is a possibility to which one might take a fancy. For all his correct vowels and courtly manners, Ruthven—for so we must call him until we learn a better name—strikes me as neither to the manner nor manor born.”
“How frightfully lofty you are,” I exclaimed.
“I am nothing of the sort.” He managed to look a little wounded. “I am perfectly happy to make my acquaintance wherever I find agreeable folk.”
“But you are keenly aware of the difference between a gentleman of established blood and one whose wealth has come only recently. How do you account for that?”
“Devil if I know,” he said, furrowing his brow.
“I think it is a matter of upbringing rather than innate knowledge,” I told him. “If one looks at the theories of Descartes—”
“Do not quote Descartes to me over the breakfast table, Veronica. I’ll not have it,” he warned. “French Aristotelians lead only to indigestion.”
“Aristotelians indeed! Just because Descartes—” He interrupted me by putting his fingers in his ears.
“Very well,” I mouthed with a sigh. He dropped his hands with a grin and I went on, avoiding the subject of Descartes altogether.
I was tempted to make reference to Francis Galton, but I thought this might send him entirely round the twist, so I kept my remarks carefully neutral.
“I simply believe that because your father was an aristocrat and related to other aristocrats and entertained aristocrats, you were frequently exposed to their company. You learnt their manners and airs, their little tricks of pronunciation and deportment. And very likely you learnt all of this without ever being aware of learning it. It was inculcated with mother’s milk, I daresay.
And such frequent and repeated exposure to a certain set of rules and habits and affectations has rendered you sensitive to their effects even still.
You yourself make use of these little intricacies when it suits you.
Consider how you managed to so skillfully lord it over the butler in Von Hilsing’s house—you cowed him with nothing more than a superior manner and exaggeratedly correct vowels, even while wearing a threadbare shirt and in desperate need of a good barbering.
Blood may not always tell but upbringing does. ”
“Possibly,” he said thoughtfully.
“And that is why Ruthven has struck a gong with you as an impostor. There is something in his air, in his manner of delivery or comportment, that does not coincide with your picture of how a true gentleman ought to behave. Although, your instinctive mislike of him as one of your own fails to take into account a vital piece of information. You have failed to consider the differences in Continental manners,” I added.
“Continental! You think that jackanapes is European? He is as British as you or I,” Stoker said with a decisive snort.
“You were the one who referred to his courtly manners,” I reminded him. “And there was a slight suggestion of something of liquidity in the vowels, a certain relaxation of the tongue into the back of the mouth when pronouncing the letter ‘L.’ ”
“Could we have rather less discussion of his lordship’s tongue?” he asked as he pushed his plate away. “I find that has as dampening an effect upon my appetite as Descartes.”
I smiled at him and plucked the last sausage from his plate. “As you like, my darling.”
* * *
Ihave often maintained that waiting is the truest test of one’s character.
Whilst I occupied the following hours with work—my emerald swallowtails were coming on nicely, and the article I had promised the Society of Lady Aurelians for their summer number would not write itself—Stoker frequently interrupted his activities behind the curtain with muttered diatribes sprinkled liberally with profanities.
“Why the bloody bollocking hell I am stuck into this nonsense when there are proper specimens I could be fu—”
“Dearest!” I called, putting down my pen as I recognised the futility of attempting to work when he was in such a mood. “I think a little fresh air would do us a world of good.”