Chapter 41 #2
I castigated myself bitterly for not seeing what the consequences of my actions might be, but I had one consolation.
In my stubborn insistence on confronting Simon alone, I had possibly saved lives that might otherwise have been lost in the fire.
It was a very little consolation, but I clung to it like a drowning woman.
It meant something to me that at least I had done one thing right.
Val confessed his own actions privately to Father, who took it rather handsomely and made arrangements with Mordecai for Val to work with him in his practice and under his direction.
I thought this new gentleness of Father’s might perhaps be Fleur’s doing, but I could not be certain.
In any case, Val moved back into March House, and their quarrels were largely a thing of the past.
Even the matter of the raven was settled, its presence at Grey House becoming public knowledge thanks to an enterprising newspaper reporter.
Father was summoned to the palace, but Her Majesty, who was in a rather good mood due to the Jubilee celebrations, and who it must be said always had a fondness for handsome men as well as a natural sympathy for another widow, insisted upon writing out an order making me a gift of the raven in recognition of the bird’s valorous conduct.
My letter of thanks was answered with a somewhat terse reply from her secretary.
I think she had begun to regret the impulsive gift by then, and I heard later that she had had a rather severe interview with Reddy Phillips’ father.
No one knew the exact details, but I did not think it an accident that a sizable statue of Prince Albert was immediately commissioned by the Phillipses to be placed on the village green near their country house.
Free at last to enjoy my new pet, I bought him a handsome cage and applied myself to thinking up a proper name for him. Not surprisingly, the staff of Grey House was dispersed save the handful I retained for myself, some going to the country, most being found new posts in London.
So everyone settled into the same, or more comfortable, circumstances than before.
Everyone except me. I found myself brooding, silent for long periods of time, and thinking thoughts best left to darkness.
I thought often of Simon and his terrible love for Edward.
There had been a house party at the Phillipses’ country house the same summer I had gone to the Lakes with my aunt, the summer before Edward and I wed.
I had not wondered about it before, but now, when I thought of the melancholy sketches of the Gothic folly, and Portia’s revelations of what the Brimstone Club had done there, I guessed.
They had been lovers there, perhaps for the first time.
That whole group of young men, so eager to be thought devils.
Was this the worst of their secrets? Affections that would never be accepted? Love that could never be revealed?
But then I remembered what Simon had told me once, about fearing death so much that he had tried anything to save himself.
And I thought of Portia, chattering on about the Brimstones and their belief that drinking from the skull of a virgin could cure diseases.
Magda came to me, quietly, simply appearing in my room at March House late one evening.
We talked for some time. She stroked my hand, murmuring endearments and lamentations in Romany as I spoke.
I had worked it out for myself by then, but she confirmed it.
It had been Simon who despoiled Carolina’s grave, not Valerius.
In his desperation to find a cure for his syphilis, he had exhumed Carolina to take her head for a drinking vessel.
He had taken to his heels when Magda had appeared, probably quite relieved when she did not reveal his filthy secret.
But she had plotted her own revenge, even then.
And Simon’s suffering at the end was not entirely due to the advanced stages of his syphilis, she admitted to me through her tears.
The arsenic I had discovered in her room had not gone completely unused, in spite of her claim to me that she had harmed no one.
I sent her away again then, sickened, but more sympathetic to her than I would have liked.
I had forgotten to ask her about Mariah Young, the one mystery I had not solved, but I found it difficult to care.
I had unearthed too much misery in my meddling, and I did not have the stomach for more.
I dreamed of Carolina that night, as I dreamed of all of them, Simon, Edward, even my mother sometimes.
In an effort to end the dreams, I went to Highgate one afternoon, alone and heavily veiled.
I walked through the cemetery, grateful for the quiet, broken only by the soft dripping of the rain onto the gravestones.
I stood for a long time by Edward’s grave, thinking over all that had passed, all that we had been to each other and all that we had not.
I said goodbye that day, for the first time, and the last. And just before I walked away, I laid a small wreath of laurel at Edward’s feet and another just next to it, at the stone whose inscription read only “Sir Simon Grey.” There was no body there, and no poetry to mark where his body should have lain.
But I had given him a place next to Edward for all of eternity.
That should have been enough to appease any ghosts who might have lingered.
I knew as I walked away that I would not come again.
But still the dead came to me. I dreamed of them, nearly every night, waking shivering and alone, and often weeping. Morag brought me warm drinks and bathed my brow, but we both knew it was time for me to move on.
“I shall speak to Mr. Aquinas about packing,” she said one night, after a particularly unspeakable nightmare. “It is time to go.”
I nodded, and between the two of them, they made all the arrangements. My father helped, and it was soon settled. My clothes had been replaced, thanks to Portia and the Riche brothers, and some new things ordered, suitable for travel.
“You will go to your brothers,” Father advised me. “Ly writes that they are most concerned for you and would be happy to meet you in Florence.”
I nodded, listlessly. “That will do.”
He talked on, detailing things I did not care to know, before he reached down suddenly and took my hand.
“Julia, listen to me.” I looked up and saw him, really saw him for the first time in days.
“You have suffered a terrible blow, but you shall recover. You are young and strong, and you will feel this pain acutely because as yet in your life you have not suffered much. But you must believe me when I tell you that this will be blunted, the edge will not cut so deep after a while. You will enjoy life again, and you will laugh and love and weep for others.”
He held me then and I wept against his shoulder, sobbing out an entire marriage worth of betrayal and pain and despair into his jacket. He simply held me, stroking my hair until I had finished. Then he pulled back and smiled at me.
“A good wet weep is always just the thing. You will feel better soon. Not just yet, but soon. And when you do, enjoy it. Life is too uncertain, my dear. You must seize happiness where you find it.”
I nodded, and after he left, I thought for a long time on what he had said.
But I was still not ready to face Brisbane.
He had not written to me, or attempted to call upon me, and I woke the morning of my departure feeling grateful for it.
I did not think I would have the strength to go if I saw him just then.
How could I tell him that when I saw Grey House, blazing up into the evening sky, my regrets were for him, for what would never be between us?
I had not mourned Edward then, or Simon. I had mourned him.
But there was time now to sort my feelings, and understand myself better, to ponder questions still unanswered.
I still did not know quite where I stood in Brisbane’s estimation, or for that matter, he in mine.
Italy would be a new beginning for me, I thought exultantly.
A renaissance in the land of rebirth, I decided as I walked out of March House, into the warm June sunshine.
I had just stepped to the open door of Father’s carriage when a messenger ran up, panting and holding a hand to his side.
“Lady Julia Grey,” he gasped out. I motioned to him.
“I am Lady Julia.”
He extended his grubby hand, bearing a small package, wrapped in brown paper and scrolled with my name.
I gestured to Morag to give him a coin and settled into the carriage, glancing out the window as I did so.
Across the square, barely visible through the leafy shade, I saw an old man, twisty-legged and very still, with a stout white cat with a plumed tail perched quietly on his shoulder.
A breeze tossed the leaves, blocking my view, and by the time they had blown back again, the spot was empty.
I sat back and thumped the roof of the carriage with the end of my parasol.
The driver sprang the horses and we were off, Aquinas mounted with the driver, Morag seated opposite me.
We would take Father’s carriage to the station, then the train to the coast. We were sailing to Italy, through the Strait of Gibraltar, and I was very nearly numb with anticipation.
Morag busied herself taking inventory of our reticules and boxes, certain that we had forgotten something.
I waited until her attention was engaged before I unwrapped the little package.
There was a box inside, but no message. Just a bit of soft cotton wool and a thin silver pendant, struck with the head of Medusa, strung on a black silk cord.
I turned it over, running my finger over the new engraving, freshly incised onto the reverse of the gorgon head.
It was a series of letters and numbers, a code, but perfectly decipherable to one who had been fed Shakespeare with mother’s milk.
2HVIIIIii362. No child of Hector March could mistake that attribution.
It was from The Second Part of Henry VI, the third act, the second scene, line 362.
For where thou art, there is the world itself.
I threaded the cord under my collar, tucking the coin into the hollow of my throat, where it had lain so often on him. As I did so, Morag looked at me suspiciously.
“What was that, my lady?”
I passed the wrappings to her.
“A going-away present,” I remarked lightly. I settled back against the cushion, anticipating my year away and the sharp pleasures that might await me at the end of it.
Of course, I did not realize it at the time, but it was to be nothing like a year before I came home again. I did not know when I would see Brisbane again, but I knew that I would. Someday.
And indeed I did. That is when we found the body in the chapel. But that is a tale for another time.