Chapter 37 “Fare Thee Well” Harker
“Fare Thee Well”
Harker
With practiced speed, Mrs. Moyle grabbed a towel and stanched the pool of milky tea.
“Who was it, Mrs. Moyle?” I asked, knowing what Mina feared.
The lady shivered and shook her head. If she suspected me like others seemed to, she did a fine job of concealing it. Though she clearly wasn’t altogether comfortable.
“Jeremy found the body in a pool on the heath,” she said.
I believed the young poacher I’d spoken to was called Jeremy.
The lad had apparently disregarded my warning.
“He came here frightened half to death,” continued Mrs. Moyle, “and I sent for Mr. Hilliard. The poor boy wasn’t making a great deal of sense, but the constable seemed to piece together that by the state of the remains, the death wasn’t a recent one. ”
Mina’s posture eased, and she and I exchanged a glance. I said, “May I ask where they’ve gone?”
“Back out to the heath so Jeremy can show him. They left not ten minutes ago.”
To Mina I said, “I should go and meet them there.”
She nodded. “We’ll both go.”
“I’d rather you stayed here with Mrs. Moyle.”
“Do, dear,” entreated the good lady, and I could see how worried she was for her young friend. “I promise not to put you to work.”
If I had entertained any fantasy that marrying Mina would make her more likely to conform to my wishes, that notion was now dispelled.
She stood up from the table, fixing her eyes first on me.
“I’m sure you would, but I’m coming.” Then on her employer, more softly.
“Please don’t worry. I promise to return as soon as we’ve seen the constable. ”
While I was chewing on that, she continued, “I don’t suppose you’ve seen Jack recently? Last night or this morning?”
The lady’s forehead creased deeply. “No, I’m afraid I haven’t. I hope you don’t mean to say he’s gone missing!”
“He has. Father Kelly glimpsed him last night. I fear he’s not quite right in his mind. Will you keep an eye out for him? And if anyone from Wheal Enys comes in, maybe ask them?”
“Of course, dear.”
I drained my teacup in one draught and rose to my feet. Mina picked up a scone, and we started for the door. Before we could take our leave, Mrs. Moyle, eyeing us expectantly, asked, “Was there something the two of you wanted to tell me?”
Mina stepped closer to her. “It’s not exactly the right moment for this, but I wanted you to hear it from me. Harker and I are to be married. Father Kelly will read the banns this Sunday.”
Mrs. Moyle’s brows lifted almost to her hairline, much as Father Kelly’s had, and her gaze moved between us. “Heavens!” she said again. “Congratulations to you both.”
“I can’t imagine what you’ll be thinking of me,” Mina said, “and I promise to explain better when I have more time.”
Mrs. Moyle reached out and squeezed Mina’s hand, a smile defeating the worry in her expression. “You finding love is the happiest news I could receive, Mina. I do want to hear all about it, but we’ll catch up later.”
Mina folded her arms around the lady, and Mrs. Moyle let out a soft laugh as she returned the embrace. “All will be well, my dear,” she said. “You’ll see.”
Once we were out on the road again, I said, “This Jeremy Martin—he’s one of the boys who snares rabbits on my estate, isn’t he?”
Mina nodded and broke her scone in half, steam rising from its fluffy center. “I know you warned him away, and I did, too, but his father died not long ago, and I think his mother may depend on the meat. He’s got a limp, and I doubt they’ll have him at the mine.”
I wondered if she had any idea how good hearted she was, or how uncommon that was. At least based on my limited, book-forged understanding of the world.
“I’m glad he hasn’t come to any harm,” I said.
“When I spoke to him, I noticed he wore a crude cross around his neck. Maybe it’s kept him safe.”
“Mmm. When I found him in the birchwood, there were several other boys hiding in the trees. Their numbers may also make them a less-than-ideal target.”
We were close enough to each other that I felt her shiver as she looked up at me. “The very idea there’s been a body in the pool. You and I stood there together only the other day. You skipped a stone!”
I reached for her free hand. “I can’t understand it, either.” And I wonder how many more such surprises are in store.
“It frightens me that they’ve found this one so clearly on your estate.”
I ground my teeth together. “Yes. The constable will have many questions, and there’s very little I can—”
My thought was cut short by the sound of voices. The morning’s fog had somewhat thinned, and I glanced up to find that a man and woman had stopped just on the other side of the road and stood watching us.
“God above,” the man muttered, “can that be Tregarrick? Penrose has been telling anyone who’ll listen—that wolf has skulked out of his tower to sniff round his sister. Says it was him that attacked her!”
“That’s the miller and his wife,” whispered Mina, “from down near Coldvreath. I don’t much like the way they’re staring at us. Can you hear what they’re saying?”
“Yes,” I said stiffly.
“That’s her, sure enough,” the woman replied to her husband. “I’ve seen her at The Magpie.”
“Keep walking,” I said quietly. We were almost to the path that led through the hedge to the chapel.
As Mina stepped through, the miller said in a louder voice, “If the constable is too much of a coward to do his job, I guess some of us will have to do it for him!”
My blood ran colder, and I stopped and turned.
“No!” Mina said frantically, reaching for my arm. But I pulled away and strode directly into the road, stopping halfway across and lowering my spectacles.
All I did was stare at them, but it made their eyes go wide. The miller pressed a hand to his wife’s back, and they moved quickly along.
“That’s only going to make things worse,” Mina scolded as I joined her.
“It was worth it. I’m not going to allow people to threaten us in the streets. Taking the high road is never going to make the right sort of impression on a man like that.”
“While you’re sounding rather too much like Jack for my comfort right now, I’ll admit I’m worried about the mood in the village. Even Mrs. Moyle, who always thinks the best of everyone until they give her reason not to, seemed unsettled by you.”
“She’s worried about you,” I muttered, “and she should be.”
Mina’s head lay to one side as she tried to draw my eye. “You’re still cross with me for refusing to stay behind. You need me, Harker.”
“That, my love, is the understatement of the century. But if anything were to happen to you, I might as well give myself over to the mob.”
A smile bloomed unexpectedly, raising rosy smudges behind those crimson stars scattered over her cheeks. “Then we best look out for each other.”
My poor besieged heart gave a throb of longing as she took my arm, and together we started down the path to the pool.
Mist still blanketed the heath, but as we drew nearer, we could see two figures. The taller of them turned, and one hand moved inside his jacket—where I suspected he’d concealed a firearm.
“Good morning, Mr. Hilliard,” I called in as peaceable a tone as I could muster.
His hand remained where it was as he replied, “I’m afraid it is, in actuality, rather a grim one, Mr. Tregarrick. I apologize for trespassing, but police business, you understand. I had intended to come up to the chapel after.”
“I understand, sir. What have you found?” My eyes moved to young master Jeremy, whose terror of me was plain on his face. Mina went to stand beside him, and Mr. Hilliard’s eyes followed her.
“This is no place for you, Miss Penrose,” he said.
“That’s where you’re wrong, sir,” she replied in a firm tone that carried a tinge of defiance. “Mr. Tregarrick and I are engaged to be married, so these matters concern me, too, you see.”
The constable was now the third person to raise his brows and stare upon hearing this news. “Is that so?”
“It is,” I confirmed. “It will be made official this Sunday.”
“Mr. Hilliard,” said Mina, “might I ask whether you’ve seen Jack today?”
He blinked a few times, obviously still trying to make sense of what we’d told him. Finally he said, “I’m afraid I haven’t been to the mine yet this morning, Miss Penrose.”
I was about to ask him again what had been found, when a fluttering motion caught my eye.
My gaze followed as the flutterer landed on the reedy bank.
Another magpie, or perhaps the same as visited us here before.
The bird got hold of something and began tugging.
It looked like nothing more than a soggy weed, but the creature flapped about, unbalanced by the weight of the thing.
“Get away from there, now!” called Mr. Hilliard, waving his hat until the bird lifted away with a chittering squawk, dropping its prize into the water.
“May I step a little closer, sir?” I asked.
He eyed me with speculation. Giving me a solemn nod, he said, “A very little. Don’t disturb anything. And avoid stepping on the soft ground until we’ve had a chance to look things over properly.”
I left the others beside the stone slab and made my way around toward the spot where the bird had landed on the bank.
Then I carefully stepped to the edge of the scrubby heath grass bordering the pool.
Quite a few recent shoe prints had pressed into the mud at the water’s edge.
They were all the same size and shape, and I guessed they’d been made by Jeremy.
The sky was uniformly gray, leaving no reflection on the pool’s surface.
My eyes found the thing the magpie had dropped near the bank in a couple of inches of water.
Not a weed, but a chain. A silver necklace, I thought, by the dark tarnish.
I wondered whether the chain still bore its ornament—and, looking more carefully, I saw that it did.
Recognition arced through me like lightning through a Franklin rod.
I began to tremble as my gaze expanded out around the necklace. A few feet away, in slightly deeper water, I discovered what had brought the constable here.
The skull and rib cage rested in soft clay in the shallows, while the lower regions of the remains were lost to the deeper, darker water.
The skeleton had been recently disturbed, maybe also attributable to Jeremy.
By the ridges in the clay, and various depressions around the rib cage, I thought maybe he’d poked around with a stick until it had lodged somewhere, when he’d dragged it partway toward the shore, abandoning it once he realized what he’d gotten hold of.
My gaze returned to the necklace. Perhaps it had been what originally caught the boy’s eye, as it had the magpie’s.
A cross carved from red jasper.
Peering through a slit, I see a man and woman standing at the water’s edge. My hiding place is a cave whose roof is a great stone slab resting at one end of the pool. A void left by the collapse of the burning manor—perhaps a cellar once—its entrance concealed year round by bramble and deer fern.
The woman wears a familiar red cloak. She is crying. Though I am the spirit of the wood, I am also myself, and I know this man . . . my father.
“I’m sorry, Ruby. But you knew this day would come. The boy’s time is close now, and you won’t be safe here once he’s changed. Until he learns control, we will have to manage his thirst in other ways.”
“And what of your thirst, sir?” Ruby asks in a voice breaking with grief.
“My thirst will wane as his waxes. So it was with my father, and his father before him. It is greatly diminished already, as you well know.”
Ruby dabs at her nose with a handkerchief. “When he has . . . somewhat recovered, may I come again?”
“Ruby,” my father gently scolds, “did I not warn you against becoming attached to the accursed Tregarricks?”
“I suppose it was advice easier given than taken, sir.”
“Well, I am sorry for it. Perhaps in five or ten years you might safely return to us. But why not take what you’ve earned and go somewhere you may start fresh? Go to London, where you may find people more open minded, and make pupils of the children of the ton.”
“Perhaps I shall.”
Her reply carries a note of defiance, but my father chooses to ignore this. “I’m sure you will make a success of it, my girl.”
“I could have been, you know.” She looks at him. “Your girl.”
He reaches out and touches her cheek. She must be nearing forty now. Her dark curls have begun to thread silver. My father’s true age hasn’t caught up to him yet.
I hear the pain in his voice as he answers, “Don’t make me remind you—remind us both—of the many reasons that may not be. Responsibility for the death of one person I loved is all the burden I’m strong enough to carry.”
Ruby looks away, endeavoring to control her emotion.
“Fare thee well, my sweet.” My father’s hand moves to the small of her back for a moment, and she leans toward him. But he withdraws it quickly and turns from her, facing me briefly—and unaware—before moving out of my view as he starts toward the chapel.
Ruby remains, her back shuddering with each quiet sob.
After a few moments, she fumbles with something at her bodice, pulling out a chain with a cross pendant carved from red jasper.
She’s worn a cross since her first day on the estate, though it wasn’t always this one.
The jasper pendant was a gift from my father.
She lifts it over her head and looks as if she might cast it into the dark water, but I sense she doesn’t have the heart.
This moment is a gift—an opportunity to indulge without consequence. The temptation is too great. My father feeds less than he used to, and the taste of Ruby’s blood is familiar—almost comforting—to the creature whose memory I am now sharing.
There is no one else about, but there are eyes in the black chapel. I breathe a thick mist into the air to ensure our privacy. I leave the shelter of the cave. I am swift, and she hasn’t heard me. But at the last moment she turns, and I see her face. Her wide-eyed terror.
I seize her, lifting her off her feet, and the necklace flies from her hand, splashing into the dark water after all.