Three

From John O’Groat’s House to the Land’s End

There be no land fairer than our Sweet Devon.

–Old Devonshire Rhyme

Captain Lord Nicholas Ryder reined in his black warhorse at Copplestone Crossroads, the better to survey the beauty of the surrounding countryside. Every vista that met his eye was a picture of peace and plenty: reapers working in the fields, cattle grazing in grassy pastures, wagons piled high with hay.

Ryder grinned and patted the glossy black neck. “So you like it here? Well, so do I. When the war is over, we’ll come back, and I’ll put you out to stud with some saucy Devon mares.”

He legged the stallion to a trot across the front park of Hawthorne Hall, the estate that would soon become his family’s West Country haven. And the Ryders stood in dire need of a safe haven. If Bonaparte crossed the channel as he had threatened, the Ryder estates in Kent would become a battlefield.

The family needed a safe place to remove to, especially now that his younger brother had married and set up his nursery. Hawthorne Hall would provide the Ryders with a peaceful, prosperous refuge should war break out on their home ground.

As he rode across the lush acres that would soon be his, the eerie sound of music drew him towards a field that the Hawthorne Hall workfolk were preparing to denshire. Denshiring was an ancient farming practice unique to Devon, and he was curious to see how it would be done.

He slowed his horse to a walk, the better to observe the tenants and laborers at their work. They seemed to know he would be their new master, for the men pulled their forelocks as he rode by. The women bobbed curtsies and eyed him with the interest that women always eyed him with.

He eyed them back with equal interest. They were all typical Devonshire dumplings—flaxen-haired, apple-cheeked, short, and broad at the beam. Today they wore straw chaplets on their towheads and garlands on their ample bosoms, for the denshiring was celebrated as a sort of festival at Hawthorne Hall.

In honor of the occasion, several rude tables had been set up. A gaggle of giggling dumplings ladled out boiled apples and oatcakes while a fiddler, piper, and drummer played an ancient, almost-familiar harvest song about John Barleycorn.

Ryder dismounted in the smoke-wreathed presence of Tobias Stokes, the chief field steward of Hawthorne Hall. A sturdy specimen of Devon yeomanry, Master Stokes wore a smock-frock and leather hat and puffed vigorously on a long-stemmed clay pipe.

“Good afternoon to yer lordship.” Stokes freed his lips from the pipe and tipped his hat. “If it’s the denshiring ye’ve come to see, ye be in good time. The lads are set to do the field yonder soon as they say the rhyme.”

He pointed his pipe stem to where half-a-dozen young men were lighting torches in a bonfire. The rest of the workfolk joined hands in a circle around them. A sudden silence fell, broken only by the rustle of wind, the crackle of wood in the fire.

The piping rose up again, high, eerily sweet, and strangely recognizable to Ryder, as if he had known it all his life, only he didn’t know he knew it.

Slowly at first, then with increasing speed, the farming folk of Hawthorne Hall began to move clockwise around the bonfire. They chanted as they circled and stamped their feet to mark the cadence of the rhyme.

Faster and faster spun the wheel of dancers, faster and faster ran the measure of the ancient psalm to the life-giving grain, to its winter death and its miraculous rebirth in the spring. Faster and faster came the drumming, keeping time as the fiddler and piper struck up a wild eldritch tune.

There was an uncanny power to the music and the dance that made the hair stand up on the back of Ryder’s neck.

With a crescendo of shouting, the circle broke apart and the young men ran across the field, firing the stubble and turf with their torches as they went. With the flames licking at their heels, they leaped the firebreak to be greeted by cheers, kisses, and mugs of good barley ale. But before any of them took a sip, they poured a few drops on the ground as a libation to the Harvest Goddess.

Ryder watched the spectacle with grim fascination. Though not a superstitious man by nature, he found himself unsettled by what he had just experienced. It struck him as being unfathomable and not amenable to his lordly control.

He wondered if similar tomfoolery was being practiced on the neighboring estate, Robson Major. He devoutly hoped not because he was keen to acquire Robson Major despite its dilapidated condition. It was a crime that such a well-situated property should be so neglected. He only hoped the newly widowed owner would have enough sense to appreciate his willingness to relieve her of her burden.

Among other things, it had given her the opportunity to travel. She was just now returning from a brief sojourn in the Cotswolds, where she had been much taken with the picturesque landscape. The fact that she had left her late, unlamented husband planted six feet under said landscape only increased her appreciation of it.

Being the widow of the deceased Russell Fulton was infinitely better than being the wife of the living, breathing Russell Fulton—an existence that could only be likened to hell on earth. In marrying him, she had disregarded the wishes of her family and the warning of her Sight, and she had paid a terrible price.

Mercifully, there had been no children, for she had dosed herself liberally with every preventative potion Devona had ever taught her. And every time Russell Fulton demanded his husbandly prerogative, she called upon her wicce to make her womb stone against his seed.

But she was done with Russell Fulton now, having carted his mortal remains (nicely prettied up by the local barber) to his family’s ancestral seat at Fulton Park. Once there, she had put on her grieving widow’s mask for the benefit of his relatives. Her convenient black veil hid the bitter smiles that stole over her face as she listened to the Fulton family eulogizing the dear departed.

Much was made of the fact that Russell had been a notable whip. This she knew only too well, for he had not scrupled to use his whip on her. In the end, it was his whip that got him killed. He had used it once too often on a spirited stallion named Nero and gotten himself trampled for his pains.

Only one other person knew of her late husband’s cruelty, and that was Devona’s niece, Margery, who had come to do for her at the time of her marriage. Margery was a stolid, middle-aged countrywoman who bore no trace of her aunt’s “hocus-pocus” and often remarked that she was glad of it, for it only led to trouble.

As their coach rattled into Devon, Annis leaned forward and nudged her dozing maid. “Margery, wake up. We’re nearly home.”

Margery smothered a yawn. “Thank heavens! I’m well-nigh jounced to jelly.”

“Margery...” Annis’s expression was somber as she caught the older woman’s hand in her own. “Margery, I want you to swear you will never tell anyone how Mr. Fulton mistreated me.”

Margery’s eyes widened in surprise. “But what’s to keep you from speaking now that he’s gone? It fair turns my stomach to hear folk gabble about how genteel he was. When I think of how I found you, all tied up and bloody, and in that yoke—”

Annis winced. “You must never speak of that again. My family would be distressed past bearing, and think of my humiliation if it got about the neighborhood. You must swear you’ll never breathe a word of this to another living soul.”

Margery shook her head in bewilderment. “I don’t see the sense of it. But if that’s what you’re wanting, I’ll do like you say.”

Annis heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Margery. Now I can be certain no one will ever know what he did to me.”

While he lived, Russell Fulton had also made certain of that. He was careful to never let slip the public facade of being an indulgent husband to his young wife. Even in death, his plump, bland features showed no trace of his secret perversities. Lying there in his open coffin, dressed in his beau’s best, he looked as if he had been embalmed with marzipan.

It made Annis furious to see him smiling up at her with treacly smugness, as if he knew something she did not. And in the dark corner of her heart where she had wished him dead a thousand times, it also made her very much afraid.

By the end of the laying-out, she could barely make herself look at him. And duty demanded so much more. When the awful moment came, she forced herself to totter over to the flower-decked bier and touch her lips to the corpse’s waxen smirk.

Though dizzy with nerves and revulsion, she made herself stand in place, knowing a well-bred widow simply wouldn’t bolt away from her husband’s coffin as if she couldn’t bear the sight of him. Her gaze traveled past the lilies on his breast to where his hands lay folded across his bulging middle. And there in his grasp was a thing that made her go clammy with fear. There in his grasp was an expensive new riding whip.

All the nightmare memories overwhelmed her...the animal yoke...the whip cutting her flesh like a fiery razor. She gave a strangled gasp, and for the first and only time in her life, fell over in a dead faint, much to the approval of the assembled Fultons, who were gratified to see that dear Russell’s widow was properly grief-stricken.

Annis shuddered anew at the memory of it, though logic told her it was Russell’s relations who had put the whip there. But some things were beyond logic, and she had heard too many tales about how the dead could escape Death’s Cauldron to come back and wreak vengeance on the living. She couldn’t help but feel very uneasy that her husband had gone to his grave with a whip clutched in his dead hand.

Having gotten a change of horse at the Green Lady, Annis and Margery were eagerly anticipating their journey’s end. Looking back later, Annis realized the ensuing events at Copplestone Crossroads should not have surprised her. Crossroads were numerous in Devon, and each had its own lore, legends, and magic charms. Things happened at crossroads.

“Why, look there!” Margery pointed to a well-dressed young lady who stood by the roadside waving a handkerchief. “I do believe it’s Miss Susannah trying to wave us over.”

Annis pulled the check string, and the carriage rolled to a halt, allowing the girl to scramble inside. “Susannah! What are you doing on the front road? Your aunt wouldn’t like it, I’m sure.”

The girl cast a nervous glance out the carriage window as if expecting imminent pursuit. “Aunt Hortense doesn’t know I’ve slipped out. Annis, I must speak to you—” She broke off as if suddenly recollecting her manners. “But first, pray accept my condolences on the unfortunate passing of Mr. Fulton.”

“ ‘Twas a shock, to be sure,” Annis replied, doing her best to look bereaved. “But I take great comfort from the fact that he has undoubtedly gone to his just reward. Now tell me, what is the matter?”

“It’s not what he has done. It’s what he won’t do!” Susannah seemed on the verge of tears. “I thought he had some regard for me, but now he barely even speaks to me.”

Annis sighed. She knew for a fact that Hal, who had just turned eighteen, was deeply enamored of Susannah, his childhood playmate. But Susannah Somerset was something of an heiress, not to mention being distantly—very distantly—related to the current Duke of Beaufort.

Susannah’s Aunt Hortense made much of this ducal connection (although His Grace had never been known to make anything of it at all). Hortense Somerset was determined to marry her niece into the wealthy upper reaches of the aristocracy. Financially embarrassed baronet-in-waiting Halford Robson did not fit the bill.

“Susannah,” she told the younger girl gently, “I think you must know Hal’s true feelings. But he is too proud to offer for you because his prospects are so thin. However...” she continued in a reflective tone, “all this could change. I mean to move my family back to Robson Major. Hal could set up his own household at Robson Minor if he wished. Perhaps if he has a home to offer you, he might not be so stiff-necked about your fortune.”

Susannah brightened for an instant, then wilted just as quickly. “Even if Hal had his own establishment, my aunt will never consent. That’s what I want to tell you. She means to sell Hawthorne Hall and buy another estate in Sussex.”

Annis was shocked. “But Hawthorne Hall has been your home since the day you were born! And your father’s home before that.”

“Aunt Hortense doesn’t care a fig for that,” Susannah said bitterly. “She thinks that if I’m no longer going to own Hawthorne Hall, Hal will break it off with me. She thinks he is only courting me because he is ambitious to unite Hawthorne Hall with Robson Major.”

“Well, really!” Annis huffed. “I assure you, Hal has no ambitions in that direction.”

His big sister did, however. Knowing of the young couple’s romance, she had naturally begun to speculate on how Hal’s marriage to Susannah would improve her family’s holding. And if that was fortune-hunting, so be it.

If only Hal weren’t being so stubborn about Susannah’s inheritance. But perhaps a big sister could be forgiven for mixing in, especially since true love and financial advantage seemed to be running in the same direction.

“Do pluck up,” she told the younger girl. “I’ll speak to Hal tomorrow, and we’ll see what can be done.”

Susannah clutched her hand in silent gratitude and then cast an anxious glance out the carriage window. “I must fly before I’m missed. Tell Hal I’m thinking of him,” she added, blushing.

“I’ll tell him considerably more than that,” Annis vowed as Susannah slipped from the coach and scurried furtively into the shrubbery.

Margery tsk-tsked. “Poor lass, and poor Master Hal too. But what’s to be done?”

“I don’t honestly know,” Annis admitted. “But I can’t let that dragon of an aunt ruin their chance for happiness.”

But then all thoughts of Hal and Susannah were temporarily forgotten, for home was now in sight.

Three stories of gray stone filigreed with climbing ivy and embossed with green moss. But it was the chamfered windows and castellated rooftop that showed the true antiquity of the habitation.

Annis supposed that if the famous Mr. Rowlandson were to do an engraving of the house, he would have to entitle it A Medieval Manor House in Decline. Even so, there was an air of triumphant permanency about Robson Major that proclaimed the survival of a good many vicissitudes, from fire and plague, to hard winters and civil war, to the rapacious tenure of Russell Fulton.

Sight of those old stone walls made Annis’s spirits soar. At long last, Robson Major was back in Robson hands. And it was only right, for the oldest daughter of the house had paid for it with her maidenhood and with her blood.

Beamish, the aged butler, had assembled the staff so that they might express their regrets over their master’s passing. But since Russell Fulton had treated his servants little better than he treated his dogs, these expressions of regret were not fulsome. Annis was soon able to retire to her chamber, her mind awhirl with plans to remake her family’s fortunes.

But that night Russell Fulton came to gloat over what he had done to her. He came as he had come to her on their wedding night, rampant with lust beneath his white nightshirt. He came to mock her in a jangled, discordant, singsong verse that sounded like shards in her sleeping ears.

And it was true, so true. He had dazzled her with the lure of becoming the mistress of her old home and freeing her family from the dreaded mortgage note. So dazzled was she that she refused to let herself think about That Which Married People Do Behind the Bedchamber Door. And echoing through her widow’s slumber came the frightened voice of the sixteen-year-old innocent she had once been and would never be again. “Mr. Fulton...I don’t like this...Mr. Fulton, please...”

She awoke panting, her body drenched with sweat. With shaking hands, she lit a lamp and looked in every corner of her chamber. Not real. Not real. But not mere nightmare either. It was something far more menacing.

She knew instinctively that the evil spirit of Russell Fulton was trying to insinuate itself into her dreams and rob her of her rest. He was trying to avenge himself upon her from beyond the grave and feast upon her living life because, in death, he knew what no other living person knew—that she had let his murderer go free.

“And I’d do it again if I had the chance,” she murmured defiantly, for the witchling widow was not without weapons to fight back against the Unquiet Dead.

Glancing out of her casement window, she saw that the waning moon was riding low in the sky. The phase of the moon was propitious for what she would do now, but she would have to hurry, for it wouldn’t be long until moonset.

She opened Devona’s chest and took out the athame, the ancient knife that was among the magical tools Devona had left her. The bronze blade was pitted and dull, for it had never been used to cut through anything but evil manifestations.

Hastily, she cast her circle and knelt in the center of it. She took the athame in both hands, letting it become an extension of her will and resolution. In a low voice, she began the chant:

Having launched her husband into eternity for the second (and hopefully the last) time, Annis arose the next morning, determined to remove all traces of his baneful influence.

She spent most of the day scouring the manor house clean of his possessions, saying quite truthfully that she found them to be painful reminders of their life together. After a discreet interval, she planned to sell the painful reminders to a merchant in Plymouth who owned a saleroom.

At teatime, she went into the library intending to indulge herself in one of her most unrefined habits—reading at the tea table. But fortunately, her mother wasn’t here to see it, and besides, who could blame her, for she was deep into Lord Byron’s voluptuously romantic Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.

Devona had taught her that poetry was a form of white magic. This was why most spells were spoken in rhyme, the better to beguile the ear and impress the mind. And so the darkly handsome Byron must be the supreme white wizard of the day, for with a single volume of verse, the young poet-nobleman had managed to put most of the female readership of England—her included—under his potent masculine spell.

“A gentleman to see you,” Beamish intoned from the doorway in stately if somewhat quavering tones.

Hastily hiding Childe Harold under her chair, Annis took the calling card from Beamish’s silver salver. It read Nicholas Ryder, the Right Honorable Baron Ryder, and it revealed him to be the owner of an estate in Kent called Ryderslee and a townhouse in London on Grosvenor Square.

She was instantly intrigued. Titled gentlemen from the other side of England rarely made the social rounds in this rural corner of East Devon. What could it mean, his coming here?

She pondered the card at such length that Beamish cleared his throat in gentle reminder. “What answer shall I convey, madam?”

Annis shook herself out of her reverie. “Inform his lordship that I shall be delighted to have him join me for tea.”