Part 10 (1/2)
Grim-faced, Jennet ignored him. She stood again, took up a rag and bucket, and started the cleaning. An hour pa.s.sed. In spite of her best efforts, Jennet remained all too aware of Mark's nearby presence. The pull of pa.s.sion was there, no doubt of it. The practical side of her nature urged her to encourage him, too. If Lady Appleton left him in charge at Appleton Manor when she returned to Leigh Abbey, he would doubtless become an important member of the local community.
Jennet tried, briefly, to imagine a future here together. A third aspect of her character, a deep-rooted superst.i.tiousness, kept interfering. Lady Appleton thought she had proof the ghost was contrived, but Jennet was not convinced. A bit of cloth lying beneath a litter of kittens did not settle anything. It might be, as Lady Appleton claimed, a piece of the apparition's veil. Or it might be something else entirely.
Everyone knew there were ghosts. Why, old King Henry's fifth bride-or was it his sixth?-was said to run shrieking through the corridors of Hampton Court, begging them not to cut off her head.
The cleaning progressed while Jennet's imagination roamed freely. At last, careful not to disturb Dame Cat, she came to the final ch.o.r.e and stuck her rag beneath the altar to clean out the acc.u.mulation of dirt. To her surprise, her fingers encountered the sharp corner of a solid object. Perplexed, she drew out an oddly shaped box.
”What have you found?”
Jennet looked up, surprised to find Mark at her elbow. He had to have been watching her closely indeed to appear so quickly. The thought pleased her.
”I cannot tell,” she said, ”but I do think it was deliberately hidden here.”
”Open it,” he suggested.
Jennet needed no urging. Curious, she lifted the lid to reveal a small, mottled object nestled on a pad of velvet. With instinctive distaste, she recoiled, thrusting the box away from her. ”What is this thing?”
Mark frowned, then took the case from her to examine its contents more closely. Slowly a sardonic smile crept over his features. He removed the mysterious object and offered it to her. Reluctantly, she let him place it on her palm.
”What is it?”
”It seems Sir George had papist sympathies.” Mark chuckled at her confusion. ”The box is a reliquary, and that appears to be a knucklebone.”
Jennet hastily dropped it, wiping her hands on her ap.r.o.n as she made a low sound of distress.
Mark laughed outright. ”What? No respect for a saint's relic? 'Tis said such things have miraculous powers.”
His mockery irritated her so much that her fear vanished. ”I do much doubt that,” she declared. ”If it were so, then papists would still rule England. 'Tis more likely this is a fraud sold at some fair.” With as much dignity as she could muster, Jennet got up off her knees, dusted her skirt, and turned her back on Mark, leaving the bone where it had fallen. ”This chapel is clean enough,” she declared. ”Add fresh rushes and we are finished with our task.”
When she got no answer, she glanced over her shoulder. Mark had retrieved the relic and was placing it almost reverently back inside the box. Jennet frowned. All of a sudden she felt as chilled as she had been by the sight of the ghost. Was this discovery an ill omen? Try as she might, Jennet could not shake off the premonition that worse discoveries were yet to come.
Chapter Eighteen.
”Join us,” Euphemia Denholm invited.
Susanna hesitated, not because she objected to the chance to talk to her near neighbor, but because she could not sit without taking up a needle to help in the embroidery of a particularly complex piece of tapestrywork.
The entire distaff side of the household at Denholm had been recruited to complete the project. Next to Mistress Denholm sat her daughter, Catherine, and then, in descending order of importance, all the maidservants, Grizel included. The invitation was meant to include Susanna's maid, as well. Susanna could only hope that young Bess had more skill with embroidery than she did, else Effie was going to have to pick out and rework a great many st.i.tches after they left.
”I am not known for my needlework,” she warned as she took the place made for her on the bench, between Effie and Catherine. Bess settled herself farther down the line, smiling shyly at Grizel, as if she already knew the other girl.
Did she? Susanna wondered, but she left that question for later. It was well she'd decided to leave Jennet at home, she thought. This was not the time for distraction, and Jennet, for all she meant well, did not go unnoticed long, even when she was in the company of her betters.
Her own fault, Susanna realized. She'd encouraged the younger woman to express herself freely. Like Mark, Jennet would do anything for her, and for both of them Susanna felt an almost sisterly affection. To those who believed in a strict hierarchy, in separation of the cla.s.ses and the superiority of gentle or n.o.ble birth, such behavior was nigh unto treasonous.
”This is to be a gift,” Effie informed her as they sat and wrought. ”For a wedding. You'll not know the bride, but the family is an ancient one in these parts. Connected to the Stanleys.”
Susanna let her hostess rattle on, all the while looking for an opening. She ran idle fingers over the silken textures, hesitant to spoil such a masterpiece with her own inept additions.
She had questions to ask, but she knew the interrogation must be done subtly. She took the first st.i.tch, uncertain whether she would mention Jane's name at all. Or Edith's. She did not want Effie to think she'd been investigating the past, not if there was even the slightest possibility that someone at Denholm was involved in murder.
With a skeptical glance at the section of tapestry beneath Susanna's hands, Effie cleared her throat and hesitantly asked, ”How do you occupy your time in Kent if not in needlework?”
”With my herbs and potions, and the compiling of a cautionary herbal.”
Effie looked puzzled. ”Do you mean to say you are a writer of books?”
”Not yet, but my goal is to produce a complete compendium of the dangerous side effects of plants. My sister died many years ago from eating banewort berries, which she mistook for cherries. Such deaths can be prevented if every gentlewoman and goodwife's training in the preparation of herbal remedies includes detailed descriptions of harmful herbs.”
”Banewort? What is that? I do not know it.”
”In these parts it is called dwale. I have seen it growing by the highway, and henbane, too. There are thimbleflowers under a good many hedges, and cowbane grows in ditches and stagnant water. Another poison, tansy, grows hereabout as a roadside weed, for it thrives on peat land. Monkshood does not grow wild in England, but I fully expect to find it in some gardens, as it also has so many medicinal uses.”
”I am sure Randall permits no poisons to grow in our herb garden.” Effie drew herself up a little straighter and sniffed, as if she'd just been insulted.
”Ah, but that is the point, you see. Everyone does, sometimes without realizing it. Poisonous plants almost always have benign uses one would be loath to do without. My herbal will be a warning to housewives, a clear indication of how much is safe and what to avoid. And, as far as may be known, what course to follow should accidental poisoning occur.”
Every ear was now c.o.c.ked in Susanna's direction, but it was, surprisingly, Catherine who spoke. ”Father warned us about cowbane.”
Susanna's interest quickened. ”What did he say?”
”That some poor fool in Red Bank had mistaken it for smallage and boiled it in a sallet for supper and was found dead the next day.”
Effie looked disapproving. ”Enough of this dismal talk. Let us speak not of deadly herbs but of those that heal.”
Mischief sparkled in Catherine's eyes as she addressed a question to Susanna. ”Then tell us, Lady Appleton, what antidotes do you recommend should one be accidentally poisoned?”
”That is difficult to answer. At home I keep many ingredients at hand. In case of accidents.” Unable to resist the chance to educate a young gentlewoman, Susanna offered up her opinion on the efficacy of universal cures. ”Some claim any poison can be expelled from the system by ingesting wormwood. Others swear by a dose of unicorn's horn. Or they recommend swallowing a toadstone. I believe it is necessary to know what poison has been consumed before selecting a likely cure. And any such remedy must needs be administered quickly if it is to have any chance of success. Cures are effective only a fraction of the time and some poisons simply work too fast. In those cases nothing can be done.”
”So, you account yourself a skilled herbalist,” Effie mused. ”Mayhap you'd be willing to make a suggestion or two to help my dear husband's condition.”
At her side, Susanna felt Catherine tense, but she kept her attention on the girl's mother. ”I will be delighted to try. Deafness, if caused by accident, apoplexy, or a fall, can sometimes be restored in part by a mixture of gall of hare and grease of fox. Warm it to the temperature of blood and dip black wool in it and put that in the ear. Another remedy, though I cannot vouch for its effectiveness, advises using the black wool to apply juice of wormwood tempered with the gall of a bull.”
”Randall's deafness does not concern me as much as another ailment.”
Stiff knees, Susanna recalled. She searched her memory for cures. ”Have you tried a poultice of rue and borage mixed with honey? That does well to reduce swelling.”
”It is greater swelling I desire.” Effie had bent over her work, making it difficult for Susanna to hear her next mumbled words. ”It availed me nothing to apply an unguent compounded of castor oil, spikehead seeds, earthworms, and fermented goat's milk.”
For a moment Susanna thought she had misunderstood. Was the problem gout? For that there were several possibilities. ”Populeon ointment,” she mused aloud, ”made of poplar buds. Or stag's marrow, or one can also lay on the affected part a paste compounded of styrax, bitumen, sandarac, myrrh, and camphor. Or, an alternative might be cantharides paste, made from the dried, crushed bodies of beetles, but that can also be a poison and must be used with care.”