Island of Bones

III.3

Casper gave Stephen very precise instructions on the various herbs he was to gather, and the boy returned to the clearing slowly turning the leaves over in his hands to be sure he had the right ones. His search had taken him higher up Swinside, so he approached the clearing through the trees above it. He was only a few feet from the camp when he heard a woman’s voice, and dropped to his knees.

‘You are hurt, Mr Grace,’ it said, soft and precise. It was the Austrian lady. He hesitated, suddenly shy of joining them, of being a child between adults again.

‘What was that?’ the woman said.

He heard Casper sigh. ‘No creature that will do you harm, I reckon. And I will live through my hurt. Rest for a moment, miss.’

Stephen wondered if he should retreat up the hillside again, but he would not know how long to wait and was impatient to give Casper the herbs he had gathered. Perhaps she would not stay long. He could just make them out through the holly branches. Casper and Miss Hurst were sitting opposite each other on a pair of the low stones by the outside fireplace. The lady was drinking thirstily from a wooden cup. When she was finished, she wiped her mouth with her handkerchief and held the cup out to Casper. He took it from her, looking serious but kind. She smiled at him, but seeing his expression flushed and looked down again.

‘You should not walk so fast in your condition, lady, so very early in the day. You must have had more than an hour in the heat already, and you ladies never dress for walking,’ Casper said, so quietly Stephen had to strain to hear him. Sophia drew in her breath sharply and then began to cry. Stephen frowned, wanting to comfort her, but at the same time wishing she would leave. She wept very quietly, with her head still low.

‘I had thought no one might know it yet,’ she said at last.

Casper drew his bit of wood from his pocket and his knife from his belt and began work before replying. ‘Not many would, from looking at you. It was half a guess. Though you taking sick when you found me says it loud.’

‘You are wise then, in these matters.’

‘There are women in the village better able to tend to you than I.’

‘I heard you spoken of as the cunning-man in these parts. That little boy Stephen said. .’

The mention of his name made Stephen feel suddenly guilty, though he could not say why. He drew up his knees and rested his cheek against them.

‘I do no scrying.’ Casper worked his knife hard into the wood, with his brows drawn together. ‘I shall not look into the water and tell you about your life to come.’

‘But they say you know herbs. There are herbs for what ails me.’

Casper’s knife stopped suddenly. ‘There are. Tansy, Pennyroyal if you know what to do with them, but lady, do not ask me. There might be a thing I’ll do for a sick woman with five little ones to feed already, but I shall not do them for you. It’s playing dice with the Devil and can kill you or take you to Hell first. You are young. And if it is the shame you are thinking of, here you are away from the world, you know.’

Miss Hurst shook her head.

‘There’s life there,’ Casper continued deliberately. His bruises made him look very fierce. ‘And it wants to be. Go to Kendal, call yourself a widow then go back home saying you have picked up an English orphan.’

‘It is not possible! You say it as if it were simple, but it is not.’

Casper took up his carving again. ‘It is simple. Man lies with woman then there comes children and the caring of them.’

‘I am married.’

Casper shrugged. ‘Then you are respectable and all is well.’

‘My husband will not acknowledge me. He says my father tricked him.’

Casper looked up at her. ‘You have proof of the wedding?’ She nodded slowly. ‘And the baby is his? He has lain with you?’ She looked up, her mouth open in shock, and Casper laughed gently. ‘No one tricked him into that. Go to the magistrate then where your husband is, or send your father.’

She started to cry again, and Stephen felt suddenly angry with her. Casper was hurt, and Mr Quince sick, and all she could do was cry. Casper watched her for a while, his knife forgotten in his hand, then patted her awkwardly on her knee. ‘Matter of love, is it? A handsome man. You wish him to come running home from care of you, not fearing the law? If you are free of the child, you think that more like to happen?’

She took out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes. ‘You think I am foolish.’

‘Foolish as any woman touched by love. And that is a fine fool.’

She picked up one of the half-burned sticks from the old fireplace and began to draw circles in the earth. ‘I was happy. I was only two months out of the convent. I thought my wedding night. . I thought I would be free. .’ She started to draw long vicious lines through the circles. ‘He owed my father money. I think he thought the ceremony a — how do you say it — a “lark”.’ Her voice was bitter. ‘But my father is clever. It was legal. My husband found he was trapped in the morning and left, cursing us both. I want to explain I had no wish to trick him.’

‘Where is your da now?’

‘He says he has business, but he did not come home last night and the landlord says there is money owing. Perhaps he has left me too. I hope he will be at the inn when I return. I want him to take me away from here, but he laughs at me.’ She looked up at Casper, her lip trembling again. ‘I could work! I learned music and languages at the convent — I could teach. I should like to. But I have no money now, and with the child. .’

Casper sniffed. ‘How old are you, lady?’

There was a long pause. ‘Seventeen.’

Casper sighed. ‘Speak no more of herbs, but I shall help you if I can. Where is this man, your husband?’

She opened her mouth, then closed it again, before getting up and saying quickly, ‘Oh, I should not have come. You will not help me!’

‘Sit down, lass. And tell me who this man is and where he bides.’

‘No, I cannot.’ She shook her head. ‘I shall return to the inn, and if my father is not there. . what shall I do? I must get away somehow. If he cannot help me, perhaps someone else might. I need only a little money.’

‘You have an offer of help here, my girl.’

‘Perhaps my father has got hold of some money — I could steal it. And if my father is gone then he must see me. .’

Casper was frowning. ‘These are wild words, girl. The heat is pressing you. Be calm now.’

‘Goodbye, Mr Grace. I thank you for your words, but it is not your help I need.’

Crowther and Harriet rejoined their oarsman on the lakeside in silence and settled into separate contemplation of the movement of the water. Harriet knew Crowther well enough not to interrogate him. Her own thoughts she allowed to empty until the song the oarsman was singing curled round some corner of her mind and tugged on it.

‘What are you singing, Isaiah?’

‘Sorry, madam. It is a habit I fall into when I row.’

She smiled at him. ‘If you would be happy to sing out, I should be glad to give you audience.’

The man nodded and cleared his throat, then in a deep bass that seemed to sing in the wood of the boat, began:

‘And when James came back to his country

And Greta answered his call

The light folk fancied the German King

And must have set their standard for him

For the Luck left Greta’s Castle then

And fortune abandoned them all.’

It was a merry tune for such dark matter. Other verses followed detailing Lord Greta’s escape, and there was a coda that covered his brother’s execution in 1746, but at the conclusion Harriet was still frowning over the first verse. She smiled and patted her hands together as the man finished. He nodded shyly and looked to his oars.

‘So the Luck is lost then?’ she said.

‘Some say Lord Greta dropped it in the lake when he was crossing to meet his men in Keswick, though I don’t believe that. Reckon some bright spark thought that story up so he could get pleasure-seekers leaning out of his boat to look for gleams in the muck.’

‘Why don’t you believe it?’

The man paused in his rowing to point behind him, south along the shore from Silverside Hall. ‘He would ride from there, where the Hall was. Why trouble to cross the lake if you had horse and baggage with you? He’d have just ridden round the top through Portinscale, same as they do every day since from Silverside.’

Harriet leaned forward and put her chin in her hand. ‘Did you ever meet anyone who claimed to have seen the Luck, Isaiah?’

‘Oh aye, madam. There was a woman used to care for me when I was a bairn who served in Gutherscale Hall. She’d seen it — rubbed it clean, she said. Used to love talking on that, she did, and on the love Lord Greta had for his land. Must have tore him up to leave it so.’

Harriet searched in the woodland opposite for any sign of the Hall. Isaiah saw what she was about. ‘Have you seen the ruins yet, madam?’

She nodded. ‘I visited yesterday morning. There is not much of Lord Greta’s home left.’

‘It was all cleaned out by the Crown in the year 1716, then when Lord Keswick, Sir William he was then, bought it we thought he’d be in there, but after the fire he let it rot. Daft to rebuild when he had a house. Careful with his money, he was.’ As he mentioned the 1st Baron his eyes flicked carefully towards Crowther, but the latter gave no sign he had heard his father named.

‘I thought I saw some signs of fire there.’

‘Aye, that was the winter of forty-five. Lit up the sky, it did. You’d remember that, my lord?’

‘I was not at home,’ Crowther said, then fell into silence again.

‘How did it happen, Isaiah?’

‘It was a cold evening, some fool lit a fire there, I suppose to sleep by, and got more warmth than he wished for.’

‘Thank you,’ Harriet said, letting her mind drift again.

‘Glad to oblige, madam,’ he replied, and pulled on the oars with new vigour. Crowther kept his eyes on the haze-clouded hills and did not speak again.

When Fraulein Hurst had left the clearing, Casper called Stephen down to join him without turning his head.

‘How did you know I was there?’ Stephen asked, as he slid down the last of the slope.

‘Joe was sitting on that holly and staring down at you the whole time.’

Stephen turned and saw the grey-headed bird sunning himself just where he had emerged from the undergrowth.

‘He didn’t say anything.’

‘He’s a wise bird.’ Casper examined the herbs that Stephen had gathered then began nipping the buds from some and dropping them into the kettle over his fire. ‘My thanks for this, youngling.’

‘Mr Quince is ill. Will you help him? Mr Crowther sent the physician away.’

Casper looked at him. ‘Your tutor is a young fellow — he might be better for not being meddled with. Nature weaves its ways. What manner of sick is he?’

‘He fell into the lake yesterday. That is, Felix pushed him. He was shivering last night and this morning he is all hot and sweaty and rolls his head about.’

Casper began to pick through the herbs Stephen had gathered again. ‘Have you a handkerchief, lad? A clean one, mind.’

Stephen nodded and produced it, then watched as Casper laid it flat on the ground and began to drop buds and leaves from the various plants onto the linen.

‘You’ll take this to Miriam. Tell her to steep it in hot water, not boiling, a pint or so, and give him a glass of it.’ As he spoke he folded the corners of the handkerchief together, then tied them to make a neat package.

Stephen put his hand out to take it, but Casper twitched it away from him. ‘Most people pay for my services, youngling. Far as I can see, the food was from Cook. What do you have for me?’

The boy looked at the ground. His store of coins, such as it was, he had already spent in his mind on little crosses from the museum. Suddenly his face brightened.

‘Your sister, Jocasta Bligh, lives near St Martin’s Lane in London. In her own room. She tells fortunes with cards, has patchwork skirts with lots of colours. She has a little dog called Boyo, and takes care of a boy called Sam. I am sorry I did not say so before — I forgot. And I only knew she was your sister yesterday.’

Casper’s eye became bright and a slow smile opened his face. ‘Now there’s payment that binds me to you and yours, youngling.’ He dropped the package into Stephen’s hands, then rested one fist on the boy’s shoulder. ‘There’s payment, indeed. Now tell me every word you can of her while I let this brew work on me.’