Lawrence wanted to scream. He did not.
Instead he stood there and wept. For his brother. For his mother. For opportunities lost forever. For himself.
The funeral party began to disperse. Gwen was one of the very last to leave, and she stood on the opposite side of the grave from Lawrence. They had not said a word all morning beyond a kiss on the cheek before setting off to the church. Her eyes were as red-rimmed as his own as she raised them from the grave and looked at Lawrence.
There were no words that could possibly define what he felt about all that had happened. Lawrence nodded to her and she nodded back, and though he was aware of some transfer of communication it was not on any level where his conscious mind could read it. But he felt it nonetheless.
Gwen’s father took her arm and led her away from the grave, but once, for a fleeting moment, she turned and looked back. Not at the grave, but at Lawrence.
Lawrence stood there for a long, long time, watching her go.
He wiped his face with his hands as if to cleanse it of more than tears, and as he turned he saw his father standing at the foot of the grave. Sir John was looking up the hill to where Gwen’s father was helping her into a carriage, but then he turned and met Lawrence’s gaze. Behind the lenses of his dark spectacles Sir John’s eyes glittered with an understanding of the moment that was, perhaps, sharper and more accurate than Lawrence’s own. Without a word or change of expression Sir John turned away and began walking among the headstones toward the road.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
After a thoroughly depressing luncheon during which he had to be civil to townsfolk he disliked, pretend to remember relatives he had never met or couldn’t recall, and was unable to have a private word with Gwen, Lawrence left the house. He walked down the lawn and into a path that meandered a crooked mile through the tall trees of the forest.
Last night, when he’d given Ben’s things to Gwen, Lawrence had kept one item back. It wasn’t intentional, it had been in his pocket and he hadn’t found it until he’d dressed for the funeral. As he walked he fished it out and studied it. The St. Columbanus medal seemed to display different moods depending on how the light hit it. In bright sunlight the saint seemed to be holding the wolves back through some holy power, but when shadows caressed the design it seemed as if the carving showed the very last moment of the saint’s life.
A frown etched itself onto Lawrence’s face and remained there as the soft turf of the forest gave way to rocks. He glanced up, surprised at how far he’d come. His surprise deepened when he realized that he was not the only person who had walked this ancient path on this dreadful afternoon. Fifty yards ahead, Gwen Conliffe stood on the edge of the cliff that overlooked the deep gorge that marked one corner of the vast Talbot estate.
As Lawrence approached he was struck by the improbable beauty of the moment. Gwen, dressed in mourning colors, stood with her head high, looking out at the panorama of mountains and tree-covered slopes and the eternal blue of the sky. It was a moment of grandeur that took his breath away and he slowed his pace to delay the moment when she would become aware of him and turn, breaking the spell of eternal beauty.
But as he drew closer he saw how very near she stood to the edge of the cliff. Fearing to startle her, he called to her softly while he was still several yards away.
“Hello?”
She started but did not take an unwise step. Instead she turned toward him, alert now, unsmiling, a complex expression in her eyes. She waited until he joined her, then she nodded to the rocky shelves and paths that formed that part of the cliff.
“Ben said you played here as children.”
Lawrence leaned out and stared down into the shadowy gorge. Its depths and the promise of catastrophe that it held had not frightened him as a boy, and it did not do so now.
“It was our refuge.”
“From what?”
Lawrence straightened and turned toward her. “You mean from whom?”
Gwen digested that for a moment. “I’ve known your father for two years,” she said. “In all that time, I’ve never been able to read him. One moment he would be happy, it would seem he never wanted us to leave, and the next it was as if he disapproved of our relationship entirely. Ben told me that it was because I reminded your father of your mother. And I can see that now. Having seen her portrait and seen you . . . I understand how it must have been a constant reminder for your father.” She paused, then added, “He said you did as well.”
The sneer came unbidden but unstoppable to Lawrence’s mouth. “Which is why he put me in an asylum for two years and then shipped me off to my aunt in America. So when I killed myself he wouldn’t have to find me, too.”
“God . . . don’t say such a thing . . .”
But Lawrence just shook his head. “Unfortunately, disappointing him has become something of a habit.”
“He’s suffered so much,” she said. “Some people can’t manage their grief. They never heal, it just consumes them, and in their anger they lash out at the ones they love. The ones who remind them . . .”
“I know, dammit,” Lawrence snapped. “Don’t you think I’ve known that my whole life? I lost my mother to suicide and my father to his own mad grief. I lost my brother back then, and lost him again now. I’ve lost everything. Don’t tell me about the nature of grief. It’s defined me my whole goddamned life!”
Gwen touched his sleeve. “You know . . . Ben wanted very badly to bring you and your father back together. If not in life, then maybe in death he can do it.”
A cold wind blew up from the gorge and tousled his hair. He brushed it out of his eyes and stared down into her face. Several times he opened his mouth to reply, but each time he left his thoughts unsaid. They turned and stood side by side, watching small clouds sail like ships across the ocean of the sky.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
They returned to Talbot Hall without saying much more to one another. There was so much to say, but Gwen’s words had struck deeply. He retired to his room to think.
At sunset he heard noises from outside and came downstairs to find Gwen and her father standing with Sir John on the front steps. Beyond them the Conliffe carriage stood ready and waiting.
Sir John stood as straight and stiff as a ramrod, his face dark and unsmiling. Gwen reached up to give Sir John an embrace, but it was dutiful and careful and there was no joy in it for either of them.
“You’re sure you won’t stay with us one more night?” said Sir John with some frost.
“My father has secured lodgings for us at the inn,” she said. “It will be convenient for the train in the morning.”
Gwen’s father was a thin man with the face and gait of a startled heron. He seemed flustered by everything that had happened and it was clear—at least to Lawrence—that Conliffe was intimidated by Sir John. He shook Sir John’s hand tentatively and snatched his own back the moment it was polite to end the clasp. For his part, Sir John looked mildly amused and even almost pleased at the effect he had on Conliffe.
Gwen noticed Lawrence and looked discreetly relieved at his appearance. “Lawrence, when do you return to London?”
“After I find out what happened to Ben.”
Everyone looked at him in surprise, except Gwen, who nodded. Those words straightened her back and stiffened her chin and, Lawrence thought, ignited a fire in her eyes. She rose to her toes and kissed Lawrence on the cheek.
“Godspeed,” he said.
But her reply, whispered in his ear, was: “Good hunting.”
She stepped back and the tears were gathering once more, so she fled across the courtyard to her carriage. After a sputtering moment, Conliffe bobbed his head at the Talbots, started to offer his hand to Singh, then stopped as if unsure whether it would be an insult to someone of his caste, and finally gave the Sikh a jerky nod and scurried after his daughter.
Lawrence and Sir John climbed the stairs to the landing and lingered there to watch the carriage wind its way down the weedy l
ane. Sir John stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked from the diminishing carriage to the gathering gloom of the afternoon sky.
“You’re going to solve the mystery, eh?” murmured Sir John.
“Someone has to.”
“You don’t have much faith in that fool Constable Nye.”
Lawrence shook his head. “Not much, no. He either doesn’t know how to investigate something like this, or he’s afraid to.”
“And you feel you’re better suited to the task?”
“I couldn’t do any worse than he has,” said Lawrence.
“Mm, true.”
“And I have a stronger motivation. Nye has already given up. I won’t.”
Sir John turned to look at him for a moment, then turned back to his study of the growing twilight. “That’s all well and good, but your inquiry can wait till tomorrow. The moon will be full tonight.”
“So? Are you afraid I’ll run afoul of a werewolf?”
Sir John chuckled. “I suggest you stay inside in case your lunatic notion is correct.” When Lawrence did not reply, Sir John continued. “You do understand the etymology of the word? Lunatic. The root word is luna—the moon. Lunaticus is the Latin for ‘moon-struck.’ People have always known that the phases of the moon, her strength and her pull, affect the moods with the same regularity with which she affects the tides. Madness runs riot at the full moon.”
“Yes,” Lawrence said with great coldness, “I know full well the sound of an asylum filled with madmen on the full moon.”
Sir John said nothing except to inhale deeply and sigh slowly.
The carriage was completely gone now and gloom began to cluster in the lane.
“Will you stay home tonight?” said Sir John.
“If you insist,” Lawrence said with bad grace.
“I do.”
The first of the evening birds raised its plaintive call from the darkening trees.
“I cannot lose you as well,” said Sir John, and before Lawrence could respond the old man turned and entered the Hall. Lawrence stood and stared at the door, which Sir John had left ajar, and a thousand emotions became snarled on the thorns in his heart.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
As the sun dwindled behind the autumn trees, armies of shadows gathered in the forest and on the eastern slopes of the hills and then pounced on Talbot Hall. To Lawrence it seemed as if in the space of one breath and another the old house went from pale walls and reflecting glass panes to a featureless mass as dark as sackcloth. His father had gone to bed early and the house was silent and dark. Not a single light shone in the windows. Talbot Hall had closed its eyes for the night.
Lawrence was fine with that.
He led the black gelding out of the stable and walked him quietly up the lane. He had a pistol tucked into his belt and a folding clasp knife—a gift from a stagehand in Chicago—in his coat pocket and snugged into a saddle holster was a fully loaded heavy hunting rifle. If the moonrise drove the lunatic to murderous rage again, then let him come, thought Lawrence.
Let him come.
By the time they reached the iron gate beyond the arch the sky was beginning to grow ghostly pale. The moon was rising. What was it father called it? mused Lawrence. The Goddess of the Hunt.
That suited him quite nicely. His lip curled back in a snarl of anticipation. Let Ben’s killer come hunting for him. He’ll find that the hunt is already on.
“Let him come,” he said in a low, feral whisper. “God . . . let him come!”
He swung into the saddle and the horse gave a deep-chested nicker as Lawrence kicked his heels back. Together they raced away down country lanes that the moonlight opened before them.
DEEP WITHIN THE woods Lawrence paused at the crest of a hill and looked down on a ring of ancient standing stones, relics of a forgotten age. They stood like silent sentries at the edge of the ancient cemetry that formed one edge of the Talbot Estate. Lawrence remembered coming here with Ben as a boy, making up games of ancient adventure in the depths of the forest. But never before had Lawrence seen the great ring of stones by moonlight. He steered his mount down a switchback path and entered the ring.
The smallest of the stones was twice a man’s height, and though they looked rough and crude, his father had insisted that the stones were made to calculate the movements of the stars.
“A more perfect lunar clock does not exist,” Sir John had told them long ago.
Lawrence rode among the dark giants and then paused before the heel stone, which was painted with pale moonlight. He bent low in the saddle and looked across the heel stone’s flat surface. Sure enough, the rim of the moon was rising in the precise center. Even now, with grief and anger and haste warring within him, Lawrence marveled at it, and for some reason this ancient proof of the dedication to the moon gave him a measure of insight into the obsession of lunatics.
He straightened in the saddle, wondering if this place itself would draw the killer, but after sitting there for five minutes he shook his head. Lingering here felt wrong.
He kicked the horse into a fresh canter and they moved through the woods, angling first toward the town and then skirting it. Finally Lawrence found what he was looking for. Not the madman, but something else that might offer both answers and clues. He heard it before he saw it: mandolins and violins, a concertina and a pennywhistle, and threaded through it was the tinny clash of finger cymbals.
Gypsy music.
He jerked the reins and picked his way through the woods to a distant point where fairy lights danced. The lights grew larger and resolved into torches and lanterns and cook-fires around which a dozen vardos were set. The sides and doors of the brightly colored wagons were carved with horses, birds, lions, griffins, flowers and vines interlaced with elaborate scrollwork. The vardos formed a loose circle around the camp and at its center was a dirt ring edged by a hand-packed rim of raised mud. Men and women sat on wooden folding chairs or sprawled on wildly patterned woven blankets. Children wrestled and played on the fringes or sat in the shadows of their parents to watch the entertainment. Lawrence sat on his mount and watched, too.
A handful of musicians played a rolling, hypnotic tune as a dark-haired, red-lipped, olive-skinned woman danced with erotic abandon in the center of the ring. As she whirled her many skirts floated high enough to show the sleek and muscular curves of her naked legs; sweat pasted her sheer half-blouse to her full breasts, and her eyes flashed dark fire as she moved. She moved like a snake. She had complete control over every muscle and her body rippled and twisted into impossibly erotic shapes as the firelight caressed her flesh.
Lawrence swallowed a throatful of dust and had to shake his head to clear it of her seductive magic. He dismounted and led the horse into a space between two wagons, watching the woman twist and turn and leap and undulate.
“ ’Chavaia!” cried a harsh voice and Lawrence turned to see a burly Gypsy emerged from the shadows, a rifle in his hands. The barrel was not pointed at Lawrence, but the man held it with professional competence and there was no smile of welcome on his dark face.
“I—” Lawrence began, but the man fired off a long string of incomprehensible words in Romany. Before Lawrence could protest his ignorance a boy slipped from behind the man and held up a warning hand. The boy wore baggy trousers that were gathered at his waist with a red sash, a white shirt and a black vest stitched with vines.
The boy listened to what the man said, and then looked up at Lawrence. “He says you must come into the camp and stay with us now.”
“What?” Lawrence said, surprised.
“The woods are not safe.”
It was then that Lawrence noticed that the man with the rifle was not looking at him, but was instead glaring into the shadows of the forest behind him.
“Take your horse, your honor?”
The boy could not have been more than eight or nine, but he already had a smile that was on the unctuous side of earnest. The double entrendre of his question was not lost on
Lawrence. Take your horse, indeed.
Lawrence fished a coin from his pocket and made sure that he jingled the coins so that the child could hear the promise of others. He handed a coin to the boy along with the reins and watched as the boy expertly tied the gelding to a young tree. As the horse turned in place the boy caught sight of the rifle in its sturdy leather scabbard. It made the child pause and flick an uncertain look at Lawrence, who returned the look with a knowing smile.
Lawrence showed a second coin to the boy, producing it with a sleight of hand he’d learned long ago in his earliest days in the theater.
“Here’s a second so you don’t touch that,” he said and then magically produced another. “And a third to take me to whomever sells these . . .”
With his other hand he drew Ben’s medallion from his vest pocket and held it up so that it caught sparks from the campfires.
The boy paused halfway to taking the coins and the sight of the medal wiped the smile from the child’s face. He looked at the image of St. Columbanus and the wolves as it turned slowly in the fire light, then back at the guard with the rifle, who gave a terse nod, and then up at Lawrence. He accepted the coins solemnly, all traces of Artful Dodger impishness gone from his face. Several seconds drifted past before he decided to accept that third coin.
“You want to talk to Maleva,” he said softly and with grim reverence.
“I expect so,” agreed Lawrence. “Lead on, MacDuff.”
The boy did not ask who “MacDuff” was, figuring it for some foreign phrase. He pocketed the coins and gestured for Lawrence to follow him into the camp. As they passed by, the Gypsies watched him with calculated interest. There were fifty or more of them, many of them tinkering away on pots and sham jewelry, a few stringing beads and others engrossed in embroidering flowers on clothing. Cooking pots charmed him with rare spices and a roasted pig sizzled with juices as it was turned on a slow spit. A few of the more dangerous-looking men appraised him for whatever threat he might pose, or risk he might bring, while others calculated his value as a well-heeled customer. Everyone in the camp looked at Lawrence as he passed by, and he knew that each of them, from the youngest child to the oldest crone, could value his clothing and accoutrements to the last halfpenny.