When Maidens Mourn (23 page)

Sebastian stayed where he was and let the current owner of Camelot come to him.

D
ressed in the supple doeskin breeches and well-cut riding coat of a prosperous country gentleman, Sir Stanley Winthrop paused at the edge of the clearing, his riding crop dangling from one hand. “Lord Devlin. What brings you here?”

Sebastian pushed to his feet. “You didn’t tell me the island was the site of a rag tree.”

“I suppose I didn’t consider it relevant. Surely you don’t think it could have something to do with Gabrielle’s death?”

Sebastian turned to let his gaze rove over the ancient hawthorn with its tattered, weathered offerings. “It’s an interesting superstition.”

“You consider it a superstition?”

Sebastian brought his gaze back to the banker’s face. “You don’t?”

“I think there are many things on this earth we don’t understand, and the power of the human will is one of them.”

Sebastian nodded to the pile of muddy stones at his feet. “When did this happen?

“Gabrielle found it this way when she came up here a week ago. There’s an old legend that Geoffrey de Mandeville buried his treasure beneath the well.”

“Any idea who’s responsible?”

“Some ignorant fool, I’m afraid. Obviously searching for gold.”

“De Mandeville’s gold? Or Dick Turpin’s?”

“Ah, you’ve heard the stories about Turpin as well, have you?” Winthrop stared down at the muddy mess, and Sebastian caught a flash of the steely rage he’d glimpsed briefly once before. “Unfortunately, both have become associated with the island.”

“Did Miss Tennyson tell you who she thought had done it?”

“She told me that she had her suspicions. But when I pressed her to elaborate, she said she had no real proof and was therefore hesitant to actually accuse anyone.”

“She never said she suspected your foreman, Rory Forster?”

“She suspected Rory? No, she didn’t tell me. How very disturbing.”

Sebastian studied the other man’s face. But Winthrop once more had his emotions carefully under control; the even features gave nothing away. Sebastian said, “Why didn’t you tell me Miss Tennyson returned to the island the evening before she died? Or that you were here that evening too?”

Winthrop was silent for a moment, as if tempted to deny it. Then he pursed his lips and shrugged. “If you know we were here, am I to take it you also know why?”

“I’m told you have an interest in Druidism. That you came here last Saturday dressed in white robes to enact a pagan ritual in observance of Lammas. Is that true?”

A faint glimmer of amusement shone in the other man’s eyes. “What precisely are you imagining, Lord Devlin? That Gabrielle came upon me by chance and I was so horrified to be discovered that I murdered her to keep her quiet?”

“It has been suggested.”

“Really? By whom?”

“You know I can’t answer that.”

“No, I suppose you can’t.”

“
Are
you interested in Druidism?”

“Does it shock you that I should have an interest in the religions of the past?”

“No.”

Winthrop raised an eyebrow in surprise. “In that you are unusual. Believe me.”

Sebastian said, “And did Miss Tennyson share your interest in the religion of our ancestors?”

“She shared my interest, yes. I can’t, however, say she shared my belief.”

“Do you believe?”

Again that faint gleam of amusement flickered in the banker’s light gray eyes. “I believe there are many paths to wisdom and understanding. Most people are content to find the answers to life’s questions in the formal dogmas and hierarchies of organized religion. They find comfort in being told what to believe and how to worship.”

“And you?”

“Me? I find my peace and sense of meaning in ancient places such as this”—Winthrop spread his arms wide, his palms lifted to the sky—“with the trees and the water and the air. The exact beliefs of our ancestors may be lost, but the essence of their wisdom is still here—if you listen to the whispers on the wind and open your heart to our kinship with the earth and all her creatures.”

“Is Lady Winthrop aware of your beliefs?”

Winthrop’s hands dropped back to his sides. “She is aware of my interest.”

Which was not, as Winthrop himself had pointed out, the same thing at all. Sebastian said, “I gather Lady Winthrop’s own religious beliefs are rather…orthodox.”
And rigid,
he thought, although he didn’t say it.

“We must each follow our own individual paths.”

Sebastian studied the older man’s craggy face, the chiseled line of his strong jaw, the fashionably cut flaxen hair mixing gracefully with white. He found it difficult if not impossible to reconcile this talk of spiritualism and harmony with what he knew of the hard-driven banker who had amassed a fortune by financing war and ruthlessly crushing anyone who stood in his way.

As if sensing Sebastian’s doubt, Winthrop said, “You’re skeptical, of course.”

“Do you blame me?”

“Not really. It’s no secret that my life has been spent in the pursuit of money and power. But men can change.”

“They can. Although it’s rare.”

Winthrop went to stand beside the dark waters of the moat, his back to Sebastian, the tip of his riding crop tapping against his thigh as he stared across at the opposite bank. “I once had five children; did you know? Three girls and two boys, born to me by my first wife. They were beautiful children, with their mother’s blue eyes and blond curls and winsome ways. And then, one by one, they died. We lost Peter first, to a fever. Then Mary and Jane, to measles. I sometimes think it was grief that killed my wife. It was as if she just faded away. She died less than a month after Jane.”

“I’m sorry,” said Sebastian softly.

Winthrop nodded, his lips pressed together tightly. “I married again, of course—a most brilliant alliance to the widow of a late colleague. I knew she was likely to prove barren since she’d never given my colleague children, but what did it matter? I still had two children. When I bought Trent Place last year, I believed I’d finally achieved everything I’d ever wanted. Then my last two children died within weeks of each other. Elizabeth caught a putrid sore throat; then James fell and broke his neck jumping his hack over a ditch. There are just too many ways children can die. And when I buried James…” Winthrop’s voice cracked. He paused and shook
his head. “When I buried James, I realized I’d dedicated my life to amassing a fortune, and for what? So that I could build my family the most elaborate monument in the churchyard?”

Sebastian remained silent.

After a moment, Winthrop gave a ragged laugh. “The current Lady Winthrop is of the opinion that my grief over the loss of my children has affected the balance of my mind. Perhaps she is right. All I know is that I find neither peace nor comfort in the righteous dogmas of her church, whereas in a place like this—” He blew out a long, painful breath. “In a place like this, I find, if not peace, then at least a path to understanding and a way to come to grips with what once seemed unbearable.”

“And Miss Tennyson? Did she come to Camlet Moat at sunset last Saturday to participate in…whatever it was you were here to do?”

“Participate?” Winthrop shook his head. “No. But she was interested in observing. I may feel no compulsion to advertise my spiritual beliefs, but neither am I ashamed of them. So you see, if you are imagining that I killed Miss Tennyson because she discovered my interest in Druidism, you are wrong.”

Sebastian said, “Were you romantically involved with her?”

Winthrop looked genuinely startled by the suggestion. “Good God, no! I’m practically old enough to have been her father.”

Sebastian shrugged. “It happens.”

“Not in this instance. There was nothing of that nature between us. We were friends; I respected her intelligence and knowledge and the strength of her will. If my own daughters had lived, I like to think they would have grown up to be like her. But that is how I thought of her—as a daughter.”

From what Sebastian had learned of Miss Tennyson, she was the kind of woman who tended to intimidate and alarm most men, rather than inspire them to admiration. But there were always exceptions.

He said, “I’m told Miss Tennyson sometimes drove herself out here in a gig. Is that true?”

“Sometimes, yes. She didn’t do it often, though.” Winthrop gave a soft smile that faded rapidly. “When her brother complained about her habit of taking the stage, she said she always threatened to take to driving herself instead.”

“But she did drive herself out here Saturday evening?”

“She did, yes.”

“Do you think it is possible she drove herself out here Sunday, as well?”

“I suppose it’s possible.”

The wind gusted up again, fluttering the weathered strips of cloth on the rag tree. Sebastian said, “What else can you tell me about Sir Geoffrey de Mandeville?”

Winthrop frowned. “Mandeville?” The sudden shift in topic seemed to confuse him.

“I understand he’s said to haunt the island.”

“He is, yes. Although the local legend that claims he drowned in this well is nonsense. He was killed by an arrow to the head at the siege of Burwell Castle—miles from here.”

“Where is he buried?”

“At the Temple, in London.”

Sebastian knew a flicker of surprise. “So he was a Knight Templar.”

“The association is murky, I’m afraid. They say that the Knights Templar came to him when he lay dying and flung their mantle over him, so that he might die with the red cross on his breast.”

“Why?”

“That is not recorded. All we know is that the Templars put de Mandeville’s body in a lead casket and carried him off to London, where his coffin hung in an apple tree near the Temple for something like twenty years.”

“A lead coffin? In a tree?”

“That’s the tale. He’d been excommunicated, which meant the Templars couldn’t bury him in their churchyard. Those were dark times, but there’s no denying de Mandeville was an exceptionally nasty piece of work.”

“‘Those were the days when men said openly that Christ slept and his saints wept,’” said Sebastian softly, quoting the old chroniclers.

Winthrop nodded. “In the end, the Pope relented. The edict of excommunication was lifted and the Knights Templar were allowed to bury him. You can still see his effigy on the floor of the Temple today, you know.”

“Unusual,” said Sebastian, “if he wasn’t actually a Templar.”

“It is, yes.”

“And the belief that his treasure lay at the bottom of this well?”

Winthrop was silent for a moment, his gaze on the muddy hole the well had now become. “Tales of great treasure often become associated with sacred sites,” he said. “The memory of a place’s importance can linger long after the true nature of its value has been forgotten. Then those who come later, in their ignorance and greed, imagine the place as a repository of earthly treasures.”

“You think that’s what happened here?”

“Unfortunately, there’s no way of knowing, is there? But the association of Camelot, the Templars, and the tales of lost treasure is definitely intriguing.”

“Intriguing?” said Sebastian. “Or deadly?”

Sir Stanley looked troubled. “Perhaps both.”

Hero spent the rest of the morning sorting through the stacks of Gabrielle Tennyson’s books and papers, looking for something—anything—that might explain her friend’s death.

She couldn’t shake the conviction that the key to Gabrielle’s murder lay here, in the piles of notes and translations the woman
had been working on. But Gabrielle’s interests had been so wide-ranging, reaching from the little-known centuries before the Celts through the time of the Romans to the dark ages that befell Britain following the collapse of the Empire, that wading through her research was a formidable undertaking.

It was when Hero was studying Gabrielle’s notes on
The Lady of Shalott
that a loose sheet of paper fluttered to the floor. Reaching down to pick it up, she found herself staring at a handwritten poem.

Hero leaned back in her seat, her hand tightening on the paper, the breath leaving her lungs in a rush as a new and totally unexpected possibility occurred to her.

H
ero was curled up with a book in an armchair beside the library’s empty hearth, a volume of seventeenth-century poetry open in her lap, when Devlin came to stand in the doorway. He brought with him the scent of sunshine and fresh air and the open countryside.