Even the remissness and ingratitude of our servants may furnish us with a lesson.
Mrs Taylor, Practical Hints to Young Females
Pattern scrambled to her feet and attempted to dust ash off her hands. ‘One of milady’s books appears to have fallen into the fire, so I was attempting to recover it . . . Please, sir, but is this who you were named after?’
The steward’s eyebrows shot upwards at her impertinence. ‘I beg your pardon?’
Pattern showed him the sooty list of contents. ‘Glaucus and Scy – Scy –’ She stumbled over the unfamiliar word.
‘It is pronounced Silla,’ Mr Grey snapped. Then he gave a slightly self-conscious cough. ‘But the similarity in wording is a coincidence only. Glaucus is an, er, old Cornish name.’
Pattern did not find this entirely convincing.
‘Lady Hawk enjoys the art of the ancient world,’ she said. ‘This house is full of treasures from that time. I would have thought she liked the stories too.’
‘My lady’s reading habits are no business of yours. You are a housemaid, not a librarian.’
But Pattern pressed on. ‘One can learn from books in quite unexpected ways. I used to think fairy tales were for children . . . till I met a man who said they contained many truths about the world.’
Mr Grey’s face grew dark. ‘The Greek myths are not fairy tales. There are no happy endings in them. There is only blood and madness and tragedy. Mortals suffer and are punished, while the gods laugh.’
A chill went down Pattern’s spine. She began to wonder anew about Lady Hawk’s abilities, and how deeply rooted the woman was in the bloodstained powers of stories of the past. The island, she thought, had the feel of something ancient as well as foreign. But what was Mr Grey’s place in all this? He appeared to be Lady Hawk’s faithful servant, yet his words about the Greek myths felt more like a warning than a threat. Perhaps it was not affection for his mistress that kept him loyal, but fear.
‘I find you interesting, young Penny,’ the old man continued. ‘Interesting . . . and curious. We have not had such an enquiring visitor for a very long time. I wonder if, despite all my warnings, you have been trespassing among the snowdrops again? I wonder if it is mere coincidence that my lady’s projects have met with recent difficulty?’
She supposed he was referring to the mechanical failure of Miss Hawk. ‘I am very sorry to hear milady is experiencing difficulties,’ she said blandly. ‘I had not noticed it.’ Her heart was banging against her ribs, but she told herself that if the old man was going to turn her over to Lady Hawk then surely he would have already done so.
‘Don’t forget your place, little maid. Those who tangle with the powers that be are apt to get their fingers burned.’
Then he took the sooty remains of the book from her hand and poked it back into the grate, using the bellows to send the flames leaping upwards so that sparks flew, and the fire hissed.
Luncheon was taken out on the terrace, which allowed Pattern to observe the party from the windows of the adjacent rooms as she went about her work. First, however, she had to shoo away another of Lady Hawk’s pets – a black-and-white-spotted pig that had made its home in the dining room. It grunted in a most aggrieved manner when Pattern closed the door on its snout.
By midday, Miss Hawk was twitching and creaking worse than ever, and although her voice often stammered to a stop, her powers of fascination still held the gentlemen. No matter how persistently the other ladies enquired after Miss Hawk’s health, or how many meaningful remarks they made about fragile constitutions and nervous disorders, the gentlemen resolutely failed to take the hint. The Reverend Blunt and Mr Ladlaw were tireless in their devotion. Despite their collection of bloody scrapes, no reference was made to their recent duel, and they were icily polite to each other at all times.
Thus far, Pattern had found Mr Ladlaw something of a puzzle. He was generally silent and brooding, and kept himself to himself when not attending to Miss Hawk. As part of her preparations for infiltrating the party, Pattern had read those of his poems that had appeared in the London Poetical Review. They had been melancholy musings on nature and its hostility to man, and, though Pattern did not really feel qualified to judge, it seemed clear he had talent. She had also taken the time to read his book, The Towers of Callabrio, which displayed the same descriptive powers as his poetry, but was considerably more entertaining, with a very strong-willed heroine, and full of romantic, supernatural and blood-curdling adventure.
It was exactly the kind of novel that female servants were strongly discouraged from reading. Indeed, Mrs Minchin, principal of the Academy of Domestic Servitude, had always said such books corrupted the mind and led to all manner of Moral Decay. Pattern, no stranger to blood-curdling adventure herself, still found herself turning the pages of The Towers of Callabrio with increasing interest and urgency. A little moral decay was a risk worth taking for such excitement, in her opinion.
However, Mr Ladlaw’s talents had suffered a steep decline since coming to Cull. When tidying his room, Pattern had found the scribbled drafts of love poems to Miss Hawk. They were extremely dreary ramblings in which his beloved was described as possessing curls ‘as golden as Cupid’s bow’, lips ‘like two dancing cherries’, and eyes that were ‘pools to drown love in’. But perhaps it was unfair to judge them too harshly, given the man was labouring under an enchantment. Pattern was more interested in the fact that the handwriting was a match for the letter over which she had found Miss Smith sighing. It had been a love letter, she was sure of it.
The Reverend Blunt was an easier man to get the measure of, and the more Pattern saw of him the more she disliked him. Over luncheon on the terrace, the conversation turned to Miss Jenks, for over the course of the morning the story of her crime had travelled through the house. Lady Hawk remained distracted and out of sorts, unwilling to fully engage in the conversation. Nonetheless, the ladies and gentlemen took up the subject enthusiastically, united in their outrage.
‘Betrayal in servants is a very particular evil,’ proclaimed Honoria Blunt. ‘For at least your common criminal is not living in one’s home and eating one’s food, all at one’s own expense.’
‘I must confess that I never liked the look of Miss Jenks,’ said the Dowager. ‘She dressed far too finely for a servant.’
‘Yes,’ said Adele Grant, ‘there was something sly about her, I always thought.’
‘Perhaps it was the smallness of her eyes,’ suggested Alicia.
Miss Smith, as was her custom, just drooped and sighed.
No one was more outraged than the Reverend, however. He was one of those Christians who believed forgiveness is God’s business, and punishment man’s.
‘Of course the wretched woman should face the full weight of the law,’ he began. ‘Too many servants have grown soft and idle through good living, resulting in an altogether shocking sense of entitlement. It is this laughable sense of their own importance that leads them to abuse the trust of their betters. Such treacheries are a kind of modern plague.’
Pattern, busy rubbing linseed oil into a chair leg, heard all this through the open window overlooking the terrace. She thought of what the Silver Service had uncovered about the Reverend stealing from his own charity, and had to bite down on her lip. Miss Jenks, at least, had not defrauded poor widows and orphans.
‘Alas,’ the Reverend continued, ‘I fear the country as a whole is entering a steep decline. I see evidence of this all the time as I go about my work in the parish. Unwed mothers, feckless fathers, shirkers and layabouts! The trouble is that these people – the most vicious and unprincipled of the lower classes – do not wish to be saved. On the contrary: they revel in their depravity.’ He took a hearty slurp of wine. ‘But we can take comfort, as always, from the words of the Lord. For, as the Good Book says, “Evil shall slay the wicked: and they that hate the righteous shall be desolate.”’
‘Quite so,’ said Lady Hawk. Her preoccupied mood had lifted; her voice had new energy. ‘Dear Reverend, you are very kind to take such a keen interest in my servant troubles. I do hope you will accept Mr Grey’s invitation to go on a boat excursion this afternoon. It is quite the best way to see our seabirds to their full advantage. The Cull cormorant is a treat not to be missed.’
So Reverend Blunt was next in line for punishment! And Mr Grey was somehow involved. Pattern reminded herself that even if the steward obeyed his lady’s commands out of fear, he still remained loyal to her bidding. As she moved from oiling wood to polishing brass, she had to suppress a sigh at the thought of going into battle on Reverend Blunt’s behalf. Not only was he a thief and a hypocrite, but, for such a young man, he really was excessively pompous . . .
Shortly after her mama’s remark about the Cull cormorant, Miss Hawk announced that she was suffering from a headache, and would therefore retire to her room for the afternoon. Satisfied that his rival could make no gains in his absence, the Reverend was only too pleased to agree to Lady Hawk’s plan for a bird-watching boat trip. Meanwhile, Mr Ladlaw offered to entertain the party by reading from his novel. Even the servants were invited to listen.
Pattern was relieved Mr Ladlaw was safe, at least for the moment. Sulky looks and bad romantic verse were hardly the same kind of wickedness as the Reverend’s thievery, Lord Charnly’s violence or the hearts broken by Captain Vyne. Indeed, she was starting to wonder if the gentlemen’s time on the island was actually a process of elimination, a bizarre kind of contest with Miss Hawk as the prize. Did Lady Hawk mean to give the poet Miss Hawk’s hand in marriage as the reward for being the least unpleasant gentleman in the party? Not that Miss Hawk was any great trophy, of course. A wind-up doll rather than a flesh-and-blood woman, and a malfunctioning doll at that . . .
Pattern’s final task in the drawing room was to wash down the paintwork. Moving from the skirting board, she paid particular attention to the windows and frames. This provided her with a good view of Miss Smith. While Cassandra Hawk’s damage was mechanical, Miss Smith gave all the signs of someone who was suffering from an injury to the soul. She had become even more careless with her dress and hair, and her shadowed eyes and wan complexion suggested sleepless nights and anxious days. Pattern, returning to her theory that Miss Smith and Mr Ladlaw had once enjoyed a romantic understanding, felt another spike of bitterness towards Lady Hawk. It was all the more cruel to make a young man fall in love with an automaton when there was a real young lady to whom he had already promised his affections.
How much she had to discuss with Nate! While Pattern had been at the housework, he had promised to try to slip a snowdrop into the gentlemen’s coat pockets as a precaution, since it was clear that both Mr Ladlaw and Reverend Blunt were in very great danger. However limited the flowers’ protection against Dark Arts, it was a great deal better than having none at all.
Pattern felt the urgency of Reverend Blunt’s situation. Her first objective must be to sink the row boat and thus postpone, if not prevent, the bird-watching expedition. But this would only delay his inevitable punishment. If she and Nate could discover the nature and source of Lady Hawk’s power, then perhaps they could find some way of disabling it for good . . .
Pattern was anxious to hear Nate’s ideas, particularly once he had learned of her encounter with Mr Grey and the book of ancient myths. Alas, it was not to be. Pattern had no sooner gone to collect Nate from below stairs than Mr Perks appeared.
‘Ah, Penny, very good. Milady’s pug has made a puddle in the drawing room, so I need you to fetch the ammonia and lye. Quick as you can, now!’
Behind Mr Perks’s back, Nate gave an apologetic grimace, but there was nothing he could do. Pattern Pendragon – dragon slayer, secret agent and aristocrat – must put her battle with supernatural villainy to one side, and go and mop up dog piddle.