Chapter Twenty-five Passed like a Spirit
Chapter Twenty-five
Passed like a Spirit
Trewense Manor was a vast and unhappy estate.
It had latticed windows, Tudor beams and a history of ill-luck and ill-fated wives.
It officially lay within the Gerrans boundaries and a thick wood pressed about it, as though to keep the coastal views of Portscatho at bay.
Kensa had been to the manor once, when Mr Skewes had gone to see his sister, though she had not gone inside.
It was smaller than she remembered, draughty too, which she confirmed when she was escorted through the servants’ entrance and into a dull kitchen, one she could have worked in had Mr Skewes had his way.
A single scullery maid ignored her, a snivelling face pressed close to the dishes she washed.
‘Wait ’ere and you’ll be seen to,’ said the groundskeeper, ducking his head out of the door where his accomplice had already fled.
Kensa called after him. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Where everyone else has gone,’ he said, beard shaking. ‘Far away from here.’
Kensa would have recognised Mr Skewes’s sister anywhere.
It was common knowledge that she considered her brother’s dalliance with Derwa to be one below his station.
For that reason, neither Kensa nor Elowen had ever met the woman.
Mrs Howard did not introduce herself, though Kensa knew her name.
Beneath the woman’s greying hair was a chestnut warmth, though one would not have known it with how tightly it was bunned behind her skull.
‘You are not who I sent for.’
Kensa’s tone was measured and flat. ‘I am all there is.’
‘Humph.’ Mrs Howard turned as a reed in wind and down a narrow hall.
After a small, belligerent moment, Kensa followed.
She had never seen as many paintings as held in Trewense Manor.
Their gilt frames portrayed people who appeared as grim as the dark-panelled wood at their elbows.
Men stared down with austere expressions as though to pin her to the polished boards.
Women smiled wanly, draped over settees or dressed as Grecian visions, each arranged in beguiling poses, as though waiting for a lover standing outside the frame.
One wall held a large tapestry, an old battle in faded colours, where horses raged and spears flew.
It was horribly familiar to Kensa. Below it was a gold plaque and the inscription:
THE LAST KING OF CORNWALL
Kensa recognised his blue, blue eyes, despite their muted thread.
Across these walls were Sir George’s family and here was the Bucka, a man once: a relation, it seemed.
Did the Father of Storms know? He must. At her belt, the bone-handled knife called to her grasp and she longed to run it through the weaving, slice him from his horse and crow her victory.
Instead, she kept walking – through the house owned by the man who’d taken her father.
‘You are not to address the baronet unless asked.’ Despite her quick and precise pace, Mrs Howard was never breathless and seemed far more competent than her brother, as though to compensate for his many losses.
‘If you are spoken to, you shall keep your eyes downcast. Give only the information required, nothing more, and refer to him as Sir, is that understood?’ Kensa remained silent and Mrs Howard continued.
‘We summoned the family doctor from St Mawes first, only he’s come down with the sweating sickness.
That left either a wise woman or a naval surgeon and, quite frankly, Sir George chose the former. ’
‘Why?’
‘I suppose he wishes to keep his leg, not have it cut off.’ Mrs Howard put her fingers to her mouth. It was only then her steps wavered, masked quickly with a cleared throat.
The floor fell from chequered tiles to polished wood and a grand staircase led them upwards. Yet, despite the manor’s size, it was strangely empty.
‘Where is everyone?’ Kensa had not seen another soul aside from the housekeeper and the scullery maid. ‘Doesn’t a house this big need people to run it?’
Mrs Howard lingered on the top stair. ‘When the staff heard what happened to Sir George, nothing could keep them here.’ Her judgement was so pointed that Kensa could have hung her coat upon it. ‘Only my daughter and I remain and we are no fools as to believe a ghost story.’
Kensa’s conscience flared. ‘What if I told you the others were right?’ She was rooted to the mid-stair point. ‘There is a monster here, though it is no ghost, it is flesh and bone and will hurt you if it gets the chance.’
Mrs Howard sniffed. ‘Far worse has been claimed of the baronet.’
Along the final corridor on the manor’s east side was an open door. There was an odour – musk and over-boiled sweetness – blood. It met Kensa as soon as she stepped into the room and it met her as a regular acquaintance. She halted. She’d never been in a man’s bedchamber before.
Sir George’s room was large, as one would expect it to be.
In the expansive bed was a shape. Kensa did her best not to look at it.
She was abruptly aware that she was a young woman and, when Mrs Howard left, she would be alone with an older man.
The magistrate lay flat and unmoving below a thin white coverlet.
A purple hue stained his lips and red blotches fanned across his pale sheets.
Kensa cleared her throat. ‘Sir?’
There was no answer. Perhaps she was too late to save him. Had she wanted to be? Uneasy, Kensa dropped her satchel and began her ministrations. Mrs Howard lingered at the room’s edge, hands bunching the keys on her waist.
‘I gave him ample laudanum,’ said Mrs Howard. ‘It’s what he asked for, I could not refuse him.’
This is the man who killed my father, this is the man who killed my father, this is—
Kensa peeled the sheets away and found the magistrate stripped from the waist down.
It saved her a job to cut away his clothes.
Although his leg was bound, it had been done poorly and in haste.
Throughout her examination, Sir George did not speak or groan.
Did he know she was here? Kensa had never heard his voice.
Even at the May Day festival, when she had collided with him, he had not uttered a word.
‘If he dies, it’ll be on your head,’ warned Mrs Howard.
Kensa allowed the encouraging threat to drift over her head. Regardless, death would come and it would wear Isolde’s nightdress and she did not know what to do when it did.
In her determination to ignore Mrs Howard’s vulturous hovering, Kensa did not see the spare individual in the room with her.
He had been still enough and it was dim enough that he blended into their surroundings.
Worse, he wore black, cut close to his form, like another man she knew.
Caught unawares, Kensa’s peripheral sight translated his slim clothes into an eel-skin coat.
‘You.’ She leapt back from Sir George. Her palm flew to the knife she carried, then froze. It was not the Bucka. It was the curate in his clergyman’s garb and his eyes were mercifully blueless. ‘You,’ she said again, with less heat in it, her heart beating a protest against its confines.
Mrs Howard called from her perch in the doorway, ‘Is there anything I can fetch you, Mr Delavaud?’
‘Tea would be most kind,’ said the curate and his voice leapt into Kensa’s ear like a flea. ‘For myself and, well, it’s Miss Rowe, isn’t it?’
Kensa shook her head, aghast.
‘Oh, I beg your pardon, Mrs—’
‘No, it is Miss Rowe.’ Kensa returned to Sir George’s injury. ‘Why’re you here?’
‘Tea, I think,’ he confirmed, and Mrs Howard bustled along the hall.
Kensa would rather have dealt with the Father of Storms himself than with a holy man.
He walked to the bed’s other side with a candle’s upright and unyielding shape.
And, like a candle, she supposed he would melt easily enough.
There was road dust on his travelling cloak, which he had untied and draped on his chair.
In his hand was the King James Bible and Kensa realised he had appeared for the same reason he had visited Elowen on the night she almost passed.
‘I will not let the magistrate die,’ said Kensa fiercely, trying to convince herself.
Mr Delavaud’s brow creased, a thin line drawn at the middle.
Rationally, it was normal to send for a curate in such times, as none knew how quickly the end could come. It was no insult, it was practical. And yet it made her uneasy; the thought that she could fail, might want to fail.
‘Are you well, Miss Rowe?’
‘Aye.’ Kensa pushed her palms to her eyes, cursed and turned back to the bed.
Sir George was hairy in the way men are hairy.
What’s more, there was a lot to him. Kensa tried to cover it – him – with the bedsheets.
She could sense Mr Delavaud watching her and tried in vain to keep her hands from quivering.
Frustratingly, the whole coverlet was heavily soiled.
Her attempts to protect her patient’s modesty only spread mess further along her arms and the bed and there were still man-parts in her sight-line that she was not keen to see or touch.
Eventually, with some manoeuvring, she managed to hide enough fleshy bits to observe Sir George’s injury.
Along his upper thigh were gory marks where a poacher’s trap had pressed its metal teeth through flesh.
As soon as Kensa removed the bandages, blood pulsed anew.
She was quick to act, going through the motions and remembering what she had been trained in during her short time as Isolde’s apprentice.
Sir George was hot with fever. Occasionally, he groaned: a good sign. ’Twas better than silence.
Mr Delavaud leaned closer. ‘Can I help?’
‘No,’ said Kensa.
Mrs Howard returned with a tea tray, which she placed at the curate’s side. The housekeeper’s lips grew thinner each time she entered the bedchamber and, as such, she did not remain long, speaking on a meal to be readied if the magistrate could eat it.