“The mistress fairly haunts this place,” the maid insisted. “Rambles about the ruins at all times. And she’s a close one, she is — never tells a body nothing about her doings, or who to expect at the door. This very morning, I went to answer the bell and nearly stumbled over the mistress. Held out her hand, she did, as though to fend off a dog — and said, ‘Very well, Flora, I shall attend to it myself.’ Wouldn’t open the door before me, and stayed to watch that I was safely gone in the servants’ wing. But later, I saw who had come.”
Lord Harold? But no. There had not been time enough since the chaise’s arrival for a fit of strong hysterics.
“A great, tall man wrapped up in the black cloak,” Flora informed me impressively. “Nose as sharp as a blade, and eyes that glittered dark like a serpent’s. Not that I saw him to speak to — this was just a glimpse, like, through the pantry door. But the mistress was a perfect lamb when he was near — treated him like a prince, she did, with her head bowed and her voice low; and that Mr. Ord — he fair fell over himself with deference!”
“Mr. Ord? He was present, too, at the Lodge this morning?”
Flora nodded. “They all closeted themselves in the drawing-room, and that’s when the black arts was raised.”
“Black arts?”
“Mumbling in a foreign tongue, like spells — and the burning of some stuff, sweetly-sick and unnatural.”
“But Mrs. Challoner is accustomed to speak Portuguese,” I said slowly, “and several of her servants, I believe, can speak nothing else. Can this be what you heard?”
“This waren’t no Portugee,” Flora returned stoutly. “I’ve come to know the sound o’ that talk when I hear it — I know the French, too, as Eglantine uses. Not but what all foreign speech sounds the same — except this sort: the kind she and Mr. Ord and that man in the black cloak were muttering this morning. Sent chills down my spine, it did; and when I considered, miss, that I was all alone in the house — a respectable young maiden, such as might serve for a sacrifice if they found they were in need of one—”
“You were alone in the house?” I interrupted.
“Mrs. Challoner sent that Eglantine, and the housekeeper Mrs. Thripps, off to church with Zé the manservant — and it’s the scullery maid’s day off — and when I considered of my position, miss, and the prospect of maiden sacrifice — why, naturally I had strong hysterics!”
“Naturally.”
A cloaked figure, waiting in the Abbey ruins. I had observed Mr. Ord and Mrs. Challoner bow to him only a few days ago. But why conduct conspiracy in the Lodge itself? What caution — or abandonment of the same — had led to the shift in their meeting?
And what in Heaven’s name was this gibberish about witchcraft?
“... boxed my ears and told me that I was a stupid girl, and if I did not mean to set the whole of Hound on our backs, I must regain control of myself this instant! So I cried all the harder, and she declares as she can do nothing with me. Turned me out of the house to collect my wits — and now I find myself shrieking at you, miss! I expect I’ll learn I’ve lost my place, when I get back to the lodge,” she concluded mournfully.
“Flora,” I said gently, “you must try to remember. Did you overhear the gentleman’s name — the man in the long black cloak?”
She shook her head. “The mistress called ’im by his title. A French handle, it were — not like those spells they was parsing.’’
“What did Mrs. Challoner call him?”
“Mon seigneur.”
My lord. The very words I had heard Sophia utter in the ruined refectory, as I stood below the tunnel hatch. It was something to tell him, I thought — that his spy was engaged in witchcraft. But perhaps the idea should not be news to Lord Harold. He had long been subject to her spell.
I suggested that Flora might do well to visit her mother’s cottage in Hound, and take a tonic from exposure to her little brothers and sisters, before returning to her post in the servants’ wing. She was seized with the idea, and acted upon it immediately, being uncertain how much of liberty might remain to her.
“I may never go back,” she told me defiantly; “but perhaps, when the mistress considers of the stories I might tell, she’ll make it worth my while to remain in her service. ’Twouldn’t do to have a tale of witchcraft whispered about the country, would it?”
“Have a care, my dear. You would be well advised to make your apologies to Mrs. Challoner. I am certain you have allowed your young mind to run entirely away with you.”
She smiled at that, but did not look convinced; and took herself off in the direction of Hound with a pretty air of unconcern. She had learned, at the very least, the endless utility of a fit of strong hysterics; but perhaps she had long employed that particular weapon in her arsenal.
“What did she witness this morning, I wonder?”
“Nothing she will not turn to advantage,” rejoined a wry voice at my back. “Pray God her mistress does not wring the girl’s neck on the strength of her hints.”
“Orlando!” I swept round and detected his figure — woodland green from head to foot — taking its ease against the wall of the south transept. “You have the most uncanny method of materialising from thin air! How long have you overlistened my conversation?”
“Long enough. The maid Flora is full young to possess so canny a brain — but such an one shall never suffer abuse in silence.”
He knew her name, her business, and something of her character — all in the space of a few moments’ conversation. I remembered, of a sudden, Sophia Challoner’s description of the sprite: The valet is a thief and an intriguer; a man as familiar with picklocks as he is with blackmail. Could such an elf be so malign?
He swept off his hat — a black tricorn with a single white feather — and bowed low. “Miss Austen. I hope I find you in good health?”
“Thank you. I am very well.”
“That is excellent news — because your walking companion, alas, is not. She has stumbled upon my bolt-hole in the refectory floor — and stumbled, I fear, to her injury. Her right foot will not bear weight; and in attempting to walk in search of you, she fell into a swoon.”
“Oh, Lord,” I breathed. “Martha! And I have been nattering with a housemaid, when she was every moment in agony—”
“Not agony,” corrected Orlando as I hurried past him towards the refectory. “One is never in much pain, you know, when one is insensible. It was when I heard her fall so heavily to the stone floor that I deemed it safe to emerge from the tunnel hatch. I first made certain the lady was in no danger, and then went in search of her companions. Imagine my surprise in discovering her companion to be you, Miss Austen!”
I paid scant heed to this chatter as he followed me through refectory, buttery, and kitchen itself, to find Martha propped with her back against a block of tumbled stone, and a blank expression of pain on her countenance.
“My dear!” I cried, and sank down beside her. “I owe you an apology! I cannot think how we came to be separated. And you have turned an ankle!”
“The right one,” she feebly replied. “I cannot stand, Jane. I do not know how we are to return to Southampton on foot. I have been sitting here considering of the problem — and I have decided that you shall have to fetch assistance. Much as I blush to require it—”
“Orlando,” I said with decision, “pray go in search of your master. I must beg his indulgence for the use of his chaise — and his coachman, of course.”
“His lordship himself being of not the slightest use in the world,” Orlando observed. “But I must observe, Miss Austen, that my appearance at Netley Lodge will cause considerable talk. I did not arrive with his lordship in the chaise.”
Out of deference for Martha’s ignorance, he said nothing further; but I readily took the point. Orlando had been deputed to spend the morning — or the latest of several mornings — in attendance upon the tunnel hatch, in the vain hope that the cloaked mon seigneur might mutter sedition above it, and encompass Mrs. Challoner in his ruin. If Orlando were to petition at the Lodge for Lord Harold’s aid — or that of his coach — at Netley Abbey, Mrs. Challoner should immediately understand that his lordship’s valet had been despatched to the ruins while his master idled in her drawing-room. Our secrecy should be at an end. Martha’s injury, and my pressing need for assistance, should succeed in placing the French spies on the watch.