Chapter 10 Ormdale
Chapter ten
Ormdale
Una woke to the scratch of a busy pen.
The woman scribbling in the notebook by her bedside raised bright eyes as Una stirred.
They were hazel, and in no way remarkable, but the sheer intensity of character in them matched the intensity of her fiery hair and made it hard to look away from the face to which they belonged, when once you had perceived its liveliness.
“Ah! Good morning, Una. No, don’t rush, you are to stay in bed quietly until Doctor Worthing arrives. You see, they have sent me to make sure you are well behaved. Which is absurd, because you are always well behaved, aren’t you, Una? I, on the other hand, am not.”
Una did not know how to answer this, but that caused no surprise because she was often a little muted in the presence of her brilliant first cousin, Edith.
“I’m going to shout down the stairs for supplies, and I’ll have a pleasant surprise for you soon. And if you try to run away and do any work at all“ —her eyes narrowed— “I shall be forced to obstruct you. Which would be awkward, in my present condition.”
With this threat, she sprang up and disappeared into the passage, and Una heard a melodious yodel.
Small, quick, and bright, she reminded Una of a kingfisher.
Yet she was more than thirty, and the mother of three children, two of which had appeared most inconveniently at once.
She was soon to add one more to their number—Una devoutly hoped it was only one this time, for the sake of the peace of Ormdale.
Edith reappeared. “Still there? Good. Neither of us has disgraced ourselves just yet.”
“But Cousin Edith, the menagerie—“
“Will fall apart completely without your particular oversight?” she offered. “Yes. I quite understand. And what if it does?”
Una stared at her. “Well, George said—“
“Please.” Edith held up a hand. “Do not speak to me of my younger brother! George gave up the right to dictate what we do here when he set off for darkest Africa because of a chance remark in an obscure medieval manuscript.”
“The Opus Majus isn’t very obscure,“ Una objected faintly.
Martha came in with a tray.
“Martha, what are your thoughts on Roger Bacon’s Opus Majus?” Edith demanded.
Martha snorted. “I think the only bacon I care about is the one’ll get cold if you chatter nonsense all morning instead of eating it.”
“Thank you, Martha, we would not dream of allowing such a crime,” said Edith. “I see you brought a second fork. I am most grateful.”
Martha left, chuckling despite herself.
“I will talk while you eat, Una, and so we shall be efficient and well behaved.”
Una nodded and took a bite of toast.
“Now we were saying—even if you are absolutely right and everything falls apart in the absence of your excellent oversight, what of it? We dust off our knees and bandage our wounds and behold, a new day will be upon us. Besides, it’s Sunday. Don’t you know you really ought to rest on Sunday?”
Una chewed and held her peace. It was all very well for Edith to speak of sorting things out, but it would be Una and not Edith who did it, because Edith would be required at home at Drake Hall by her devoted husband and pretty babies.
Una did not envy her these accoutrements.
She could see they brought Edith her own fair share things to sort out.
“Do you want to tell me about last night?” Edith asked gently.
There was a tap at the door.
“Oh, good,” Edith murmured, and popped her head out the door.
When she turned round, she held Oolong in a basket.
He was bandaged and weary, and did not even lift his head, though he blinked in greeting.
“I thought you’d want him right away,” she said, and sat down on the bed, offering him to Una.
“Do you remember where I found him, in the beginning? And how he saved me, too?”
The story of how Cousin Edith had rescued the Chinese dragon from the laboratory of a mad scientist in London might just be one adventure among many to Edith, but to Una, the little dragon meant everything.
Una tried to keep back tears as she tenderly lifted him out of the basket, keeping clear of the bandage round his soft belly. Years ago, Una had hand raised a river dragon, but it had outgrown her care and returned to the Orme. Oolong stayed.
Edith looked at her. “How do you feel—really?”
Una wasn’t sure how to answer. She was not ill, and she wanted to be allowed out of bed.
She hadn’t actually been hurt, after all.
Until Oolong had appeared, all she had felt was a growing desperation to be treated quite normally and be allowed to go about her daily schedule.
Seeing him hurt had brought home to her the gravity of what had happened the night before.
What if Oolong hadn’t survived the attack?
“I don’t suppose I need a doctor,” she said at last. “Dr Worthing oughtn’t to waste his time on me.”
Edith’s voice became a little grim. “You were drugged with chloral, Una. It might have seriously harmed you. I do know about these things.”
“You don’t write about them as if you do,” Una muttered. As soon as she said it, Una’s hand flew to her mouth, as if she would recall the rude words.
The two cousins stared at each other for a moment, equally surprised. Then Oolong touched Una’s hand with his soft tongue. Una promptly burst into tears.
Edith moved the tray aside and shifted closer while Una stammered an incoherent apology.
“A wise man once told me it is important to cry when terrible things happen,” Edith said encouragingly, getting out a handkerchief.
But before Una could take it, she snatched it back.
“Oh, dear, no, not that one—that one was used for something vile,” she said, hunting fruitlessly through her pockets, until Una got her own well-pressed handkerchief from the bedside table.
“I’m terribly sorry, dear Una,” Edith said.
“You see, I don’t write my novels to remind people how much things can hurt.
I write them to remind people that hurts can be healed.
So there are some things I don’t dwell on—even things that both of us have faced in our real lives.
Would it have helped you last night, if I had? ”
Edith asked this so earnestly that Una felt even worse about her outburst.
“I’m sorry I was so horribly rude to you just now,” Una said. “I’m not quite myself today.”
“Rude! Not at all.” She hesitated. “Una, it is difficult to talk about such things, but if you ever find you want to talk about how it felt last night or how remembering it makes you feel now, well, you can find me at Drake Hall, and I promise I’ll stop doing whatever I’m doing—even if I’m in the midst of writing down my very best idea—and listen to you. ”
Una did not know what to say, so she folded her handkerchief neatly.
“But just for now, if you do feel up to it,” Edith continued, “I’m dying to know what on earth you think this was all about.
And it might help us catch the horrid man.
Simon has gone off with a search party, but if the fugitive has a scrap of sense, he’ll have slipped away from the dale hours ago.
I want to send a personal description of this fiend further afield. ”
“When I tried to explain it all last night, it sounded—quite mad,” Una confessed.
“Excellent,” said Edith solemnly, “I’m exactly in the mood for madness. Just tell me everything you noticed about him, however small.”
So Una did just that, closing her eyes and describing him down to the smallest detail of dress and manner, while Edith took notes and asked questions.
At last, Una opened her eyes and shook her head. “I’m sorry, I think that’s all I can remember.”
Edith had stopped writing and was looking at her with eyes alight. “Una, do you see everyone like that?”
“Like what?”
“Never mind, that answered my question. So, our villain is under thirty, medium height, pale blue eyes with a black speck—which eye?”
“The left.”
“Did you get an idea of what class of person he might be?”
“I’m not sure. He wasn’t—well, he was different.”
Edith nodded. “Do you mean he wasn’t landed gentry or working class? Might he have been middling, like me?”
Una reflected on this. “He resented me. I don’t know why, precisely, but something about me…he didn’t like. And I don’t think it was for anything I’d done. All I did was give him tea, anyway. I suppose it was the idea of me he didn’t like.”
Una held Oolong closer, suddenly chilled.
“And he didn’t seem like a revolutionary?” asked Edith.
“A revolutionary?”
“Like Janushek? He doesn’t like the idea of gentry one bit, as he likes to tell us all so pleasantly whenever the subject arises.”
“No,“ Una said, horrified at the comparison, “nothing like Janushek.”
Edith looked thoughtful. “Very well. I think we may take the moustache as false, but what about the limp?”
“I think that was real,” Una said slowly. “No, wait. It wasn’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he didn’t have it when he attacked me. His footsteps sounded different. And he didn’t have his cane with him.”
Edith smiled slowly. “How very clever of you. I wouldn’t have noticed that. Any other thoughts?”
Una hesitated. “Well, it just occurred to me…his limp might have been so convincing because it had been real once.”
“You mean, he’d had a game leg, and got over it?”
Una nodded. Her eyes fell on the ring of keys on the night-stand.
“The key,” she whispered. “To the reliquary box—I had it with me in the room—and now it’s not on the ring.”
“Another mystery,” Edith said with relish, and Una wished her cousin was enjoying it all a little bit less.
“But don’t worry, Simon and Janushek will make sure he’s caught or chased away.
Either way, he certainly won’t show his face near Ormdale again!
” Edith looked back over her notes. “So—we have a clean-shaven, possibly religious suspect from Devon who probably served in the African war around nineteen hundred, perhaps invalided home, and perhaps jilted by the girl he thought would be waiting for him—based on his jaundiced view of the female sex—and in his early thirties.” Edith folded her notepaper very cheerfully.
“Well done! I’d say we have a real chance at finding him, especially with that unusual eye.
I’m going to send this description off to London.
But first, I’ll ask Pip to try his hand at drawing him from your very thorough description. ”
“Oh, you won’t have to—Pip sat with him on the train from Ormby,” said Una.
“Really?” asked Edith. “Even better. Would you like to come and stay with us for a few nights? At the Hall? The children would love it, and I’m sure Hanna could stop them jumping on your bed at dawn.”
Una thought her cousin said this as if she weren’t really sure it was true.
“No, thank you,” Una said politely, “though it’s lovely of you to offer. But Cousin Edith…please—there is something I’m anxious about.”
Edith nodded. “It would be odd if there wasn’t. My nerves were wrecked for months after one of my ordeals.”
“It’s Pip. I’m worried about him.”
Edith blinked. “Worried about Pip?“ she repeated.
“Yes.” Una hesitated, realising that this touched on private matters. “He—he had a bit of a shock last night.”
Edith snorted. “I should think he did! We all had a shock, finding you like that.”
“No, it’s something else. I—don’t know if I can say.”
Edith searched her face. “Is he wondering about his connection to our family?”
“Yes.”
Edith sighed. “Then I’m afraid I can’t say anything either. The only one who can is Lily herself.”
Una blanched. It didn’t seem right for her to address such a subject with Lily.
Edith patted her hand. “Pip will sort himself out, Una. He’s going through a trying phase, most likely.
Most boys are unbearable at one stage or another.
And Pip has one of the best men in the world to help steer his course—revolutionary though he may be!
—so there’s no need for you to worry about it.
Now,” she said, lowering her voice, “are you intending to eat this bacon? We mustn’t offend Martha, you know.
And the more food that is gone from your tray, the happier everyone will be, won’t they? ”