When Maidens Mourn (20 page)

Jarvis reached for his ale and took a deep swallow. “It might be interesting.”

“And convenient for you—if Devlin should manage to eliminate them.”

He smiled. “There is that.”

She collected her gloves and rose to her feet.

Jarvis said, “Have you told Devlin of my interaction with Miss Tennyson last Friday evening?”

Hero paused at the door to look back at him. “No.”

Her answer surprised and pleased him, and yet somehow also vaguely troubled him. He let his gaze drift over his daughter’s face. There was a bloom of color in her cheeks, an inner glow that told its own story. He said suddenly, “You do realize I know why you married him.”

Her lips parted on a sudden intake of breath, but otherwise she remained remarkably calm and cool. “I can’t imagine what you mean.”

“Your former abigail confessed her observations on your condition
before she was killed.” When Hero only continued to stare at him, he said, “Is the child Devlin’s?”

Her pupils flared with indignation. “It is.”

“Did he force himself upon you?”

“He did not.”

“I see. Interesting.”

She said, “The situation is…complicated.”

“So it seems.” He reached for his snuffbox. “And the child is due—when?”

“February.”

Jarvis flipped open the snuffbox, then simply held it, half forgotten. “You will take care of yourself, Hero.”

Her eyes danced with quiet amusement. “As much as ever.”

He gave her no answering smile. “If anything happens to you, I’ll kill him.”

“Nothing is going to happen to me,” she said. “Good day, Papa.”

After she had gone, he sat for a time, lost in thought, the snuffbox still open in his hand. Then he shut it with a snap and closed his fist around the delicate metal hard enough that he heard it crunch.

Lieutenant Philippe Arceneaux was playing chess with a hulking mustachioed hussar in a coffee shop near Wych Street when Sebastian paused beside his table and said, “Walk with me for a moment, Lieutenant?”

The black and brown dog at Arceneaux’s feet raised his head and woofed in anticipation.

“Monsieur!”
protested the mustachioed Frenchman, glaring up at him. “The game! You interrupt!”

The hussar still wore the tight Hungarian riding breeches and heavily decorated but faded dark blue dolman of his regiment. At each temple dangled braided love knots known as
cadenettes
, with another braid behind each ear. The
cadenettes
were kept straight by
the weight of a gold coin tied at the end of each braid, for Napoléon’s hussars were as known for their meticulous, flamboyant appearance as for their ruthlessness as bandits on horseback.

“It’s all right,” said Arceneaux in French, raising both hands in rueful surrender as he pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. “I concede. You have thoroughly trounced me already. My situation is beyond hope.”

Sebastian was aware of the hussar’s scowl following them to the coffee shop’s door.

“Who’s your friend?” Sebastian asked as they turned to stroll toward the nearby church of St. Clements, the dog trotting happily at their heels.

“Pelletier? Don’t mind him. He has a foul disposition and a worse temper, but there’s no real harm in him.”

“Interesting choice of words,” said Sebastian, “given that two of your fellow officers tried to kill me in Covent Garden last night.”

Arceneaux’s smile slipped. “I had heard of the attack upon you.” He nodded to the arm Sebastian held resting in a sling. “You were wounded?”

“Not badly. Yet I now find myself wondering, why would two French officers on their parole want to kill me?”

Arceneaux stared at him, eyes wide. “You think I know?”

“In a word? Yes.”

Chien let out a soft whine and Arceneaux paused to hunker down and ruffle the animal’s ears. After a moment, he said, “I make a living teaching French to small boys and working as a translator for a Fleet Street publisher. It earns me enough to keep a garret room in a lodging house, just there.” He nodded to a nearby lane. “My father is able to send money from time to time. But his life is hard too. He owns a small vineyard near Saint-Malo. His best customers were always the English. War has not been good for business.”

“What exactly are you saying?”

Arceneaux pushed to his feet. “Only that men whose profession
is war can sometimes find that their most lucrative employment involves using their…professional skills.”

“For whom?”

The Frenchman shook his head. “That I do not know.” They continued walking, the dog frisking ahead. Arceneaux watched him a moment, then said, “There’s something I didn’t tell you about before—something I think may explain what happened to you last night. When I said I last saw Gabrielle on Wednesday, I was not being exactly truthful. I also saw her Friday evening. She was…very distressed.”

“Go on.”

“She said she had discovered something…something that both angered and frightened her.”

“What sort of ‘thing’ are we talking about here?”

“A forgery or deception of some sort. She warned me that it was for my own protection that she not tell me more. All I know is that it was connected to the Arthurian legend in some way.”

“A forgery?”

“Yes.”

“And why the devil didn’t you tell me this before?”

Arceneaux’s face had grown so pale as to appear almost white. “She said it was more than a simple forgery. The motive behind it was not monetary.”

“Did she say who was involved?”

“There was some antiquary she had quarreled with over it, but I believe he was only a pawn. Someone else was behind the scheme—someone she was afraid of. Which surprised me, because Gabrielle was not the kind of woman to be easily frightened.”

“This antiquary—did she tell you his name?”

Arceneaux shook his head.

But it didn’t matter. Sebastian knew who it was.

I
t took a while, but Sebastian finally traced Bevin Childe to an exhibition of ancient Greek pottery being held at the Middle Temple in a small hall just off Fountain Court.

He was bent over with his plump face pressed close to the glass of a cabinet containing an exquisite redware kylix. Then he looked up to see Sebastian regarding him steadily from a few feet away and his mouth gaped. He jerked upright, his gaze darting right and left as if seeking some avenue of escape.

“No,” said Sebastian with a soft, mean smile. “You can’t run away from me.”

The antiquary gave a weak, sick laugh. Then his jaw hardened. “I have no intention of running. I have heard about you, Lord Devlin. My conversation with your wife was bad enough. I am staying right here. You can’t hurt me in a hall full of people.”

“True. But do you really want them to hear what I have to say?”

Childe stiffened. “If you expect me to understand what you mean by that rather mystifying pronouncement, I fear you are doomed to disappointment.”

Sebastian nodded to the ceremonial cup before them. “Lovely piece, isn’t it? It certainly looks authentic. Yet I knew a man with a workshop outside of Naples who could turn out a dozen of these in a week. Forgeries, of course, but—”

Childe hissed. “
Shhh!
Keep your voice down.” He cast another quick look around. A fat man with a protuberant mouth and full lips was staring at them over his spectacles. “Perhaps,” said Childe, “it would be better after all if we were to continue this conversation outside.”

They walked along Middle Temple Lane, toward the broad expanse of the Temple gardens edging the Thames. Once the precinct of the Knights Templar, the Inner and Middle Temples now served as two of the city’s Inns of Court, those professional associations to which every barrister in England and Wales belonged. The morning sun soaked the upper reaches of the medieval walls around them with a rich golden light. But here, in the shadows of the closely packed buildings, the air was still cool.

Sebastian said, “I’ve discovered that your argument with Miss Tennyson last Friday had nothing to do with the location of Camelot. It was over a forgery. And don’t even attempt to deny it,” he added when Childe shook his head and took a deep breath.

Childe closed his mouth, his fingers playing with the chain that dangled from his watch pocket. His small gray eyes were darting this way and that again, as his frightened brain worked feverishly to analyze what Sebastian knew and how he might have come to know it. With every dart of those frantic eyeballs, Sebastian suspected the man was revising and editing what he was about to say.

“What forgery?” Sebastian asked.

Childe chewed the inside of his cheek.

“God
damn
you; a woman is dead and two little boys missing. What forgery?”

Childe cleared his throat. “Are you familiar with the discovery of the bodies of King Arthur and Guinevere in Glastonbury Abbey in 1191?”

“Not really.”

Childe nodded as if to say he had expected this ignorance. “According to the medieval chronicler Gerald of Wales, King Henry the Second learned the location of Arthur’s last resting place from a mysterious Welsh bard. The King was old and frail at the time, but before his death, he relayed the bard’s information to the monks of Glastonbury Abbey. Following the King’s instructions, the monks dug down between two ancient pyramids in their churchyard. Sixteen feet below the surface they came upon a split, hollowed-out log containing the bodies of a man and a woman. Above the coffins lay a stone slab, attached to the bottom of which was an iron cross. The cross bore the Latin inscription ‘Here lies buried the renowned King Arthur with Guinevere his second wife, in the Isle of Avalon.’”

“Convenient,” said Sebastian. “Almost as if those who buried him looked into the future a few hundred years and knew that someday those monks would be digging up good King Arthur, so they made certain to include in their engraving all the information anyone might need to make the identification complete.”

“Just so,” said Childe with a slight bow. “Needless to say, the monks collected the newly discovered bones and reburied them, first in the abbey’s Lady Chapel, then beneath the high altar in a marble coffin provided by King Edward in 1278.”

“Along with the cross?”

“Of course. It was attached to the top of the sepulchre. But when the abbey was destroyed in the suppression of the monasteries under Henry the Eighth, the bones of King Arthur and his Queen disappeared. For a time, the cross was reportedly kept in the parish church of St. John the Baptist. But it, too, eventually disappeared, probably during the time of Cromwell.”

“And what precisely does any of this have to do with Miss Tennyson?”

Childe cleared his throat. “As you know, I have been occupied in cataloging the library and collection of the late Richard Gough. Amongst his possessions I discovered an ancient leaden cross inscribed with the words ‘
Hic Iacet Sepultus Inclitus Rex Arturius in Insula Avalonia
.’”

“Nothing about Guinevere?”

Childe gave another of his little bows. “Just so. Reports on the exact inscription have always varied slightly.”

“How large a cross are we talking about here?”

“Approximately one foot in length.”

“Where the devil did it come from?”

“That I do not know. As far as I have been able to ascertain, the cross came into Gough’s possession—interestingly enough, along with a box of ancient bones—in the last days of his life, when he was unfortunately too ill to give them the attention they deserved. However, Gough apparently believed the cross to be that which the monks discovered in the twelfth century.”

“And Gough believed the bones were those of Arthur and Guinevere? You can’t be serious.”

“I am only reporting on the conclusions reached by Gough himself. There is no more respected name amongst antiquaries.”

“I take it Miss Tennyson did not agree with Gough’s conclusions?”

Childe sighed. “She did not. Last Friday, she drove out to Gough Hall to view the cross and the bones. The bones are undeniably of great antiquity, but she instantly dismissed the cross as a modern forgery. When I begged to differ with her—”