The Gilded Cage Page 5

  John’s already moved toward the horses, pushing his face into theirs, crooning quiet things to keep them calm. “We’ve lost a wheel, my lady,” he says. “Get back inside and keep as warm as you can. I’ll go to the house and get help.”

  “I’ll come with you,” I say.

  “No,” he says firmly. Am I mistaken, or does he cast a nervous glance toward the forest? “What I mean is, His Lordship would have my guts for garters should anything happen to you. It’s a cold slog up to the house from here.”

  I’ve walked miles in worse, but that’s when I was just Katherine. “Very well,” I say heavily, stepping back onto the mounting board.

  I settle back into my crooked seat as John strides up the track. Sitting among my fur blankets, I’m overcome with self-pity. What a wretched end to a wretched day.

  As my ears get used to the quiet, I notice the noises of the forest—faint crackles and snaps in the frigid air. The horses stamp their feet to stay warm, and I try to judge the time by the darkening sky.

  Despite the furs, cold seeps into my toes and fingertips. Ten minutes pass—perhaps fifteen—before I notice that I can see my breath. How long could it take John to get to the house and back? Surely he should have returned by now.

  Unless something has happened to him on the way. I peer through the window at the dark forest. The Beast is a myth, I remind myself—but what if John has stumbled and hurt himself? Or what if he came across a poacher?

  Time stretches, out here in the snow. Flakes fall and vanish on the horses’ backs, poor things. Their manes are tinged with white. I’ve learned over long Virginia winters to be wary about frostbite, and to watch for the moment when chilly wakefulness turns into dreamy fatigue. When I start to feel warm again, I know it’s a bad thing. I clap my hands against my arms, stamp my feet to wake my legs. This won’t do. I can’t just wait to freeze.

  So I climb out, lifting my heavy skirts clear of the snow’s crust. I unhitch both horses and throw the blankets over their broad backs. It’s been a little while since I rode bareback, and the larger of the mares stumbles a bit as I mount her, eyes rolling whitely in her head.

  “Let’s just take this slowly,” I mutter.

  I trot her up the track toward the house, leading the other horse close beside us. I daren’t risk going any faster for fear of the ice that might be hidden beneath the snow.

  Finally, frustrated by our slow progress, I lead the horses off the uneven road and down toward the lake. It’s a quicker route, and the ground is softer. According to Henry, the lake was dug by our great-great-grandfather, to make the most of the tributary of the River Avon, which runs through the estate. My own grandfather constructed the elegant Palladian bridge that spans its center in a gentle arch. When I first saw it, I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever laid eyes on.

  There’s a cruel beauty to the landscape. I think, not for the first time, how much I wish to see my new home in summer. “Maybe I could love it then,” I whisper, not knowing I’m speaking aloud until the words are already said.

  The lake is set like a geode into the snow, its icy black center lapping against the hard-set crystals at its shallow edges. The horses, for some reason, don’t want to cross. I nudge the mare harder, and she gives in, taking tentative steps up onto the bridge. The house is just two hundred yards up the lawn now. Nearly there.

  We’re halfway across when a flapping of wings startles the horses.

  A patch of the lake near its center teems with crows. Shabby in their black overcoats, they pick at its surface, like vultures scavenging for carrion. I gaze down at them, and then freeze. My eyes grow hot in my skull, and my fingers clench tighter on the reins.

  Because now I can see that the crows are concealing something with their raggedy bodies. Something dark and unrecognizable, half-frozen into the ice. I dismount and, at the same time, see three figures speeding toward me from the house. It’s John and Mr. Carrick and Henry. Not George. My brother isn’t with them.

  Horror steals over my heart as I move my gaze back to the lake.

  It cannot be.

  On the bank is an overturned boat, just a small thing for an oarsman and a single passenger. It’s tied to a jetty by a thick rope caked in snow. I leave the horses whickering on the bridge.

  John has broken into a run, away from the others, his feet kicking up snow as he descends. He’s shouting something—my name, I think.

  It cannot be.

  I hook my fingers beneath the boat and heave it over. The rope is stiff as I unhook it from the mooring post. With a push, the boat slides from the bank and settles on the water, sending a ripple cracking through the ice.

  Then John is at my side, his arm around my shoulder.

  “Lady Katherine,” he says, “please.”

  I point speechlessly at the water, to the thing half-submerged in the grip of the ice. The crows screech at one another, hopping and swooping in their attempts to get closer to it.

  “It’s just a deer, my lady,” says John. “They sometimes fall in when they try to drink.…” His voice breaks off, ragged.

  And now I know for sure.

  “What’s happening down there?” calls Henry. He’s moving more quickly now, pulling his bad leg through the snow.

  I tug myself from John’s side and steady myself against the boat. Icy water pools around my boots as I climb inside. John follows wordlessly. He turns out the oars tucked into the boat’s sides and, with strong strokes, propels us through jellied black ice.

  Henry calls to us from the shore, a single word that I don’t hear. I motion for John to row on, until we’re close enough to scare off the crows. He drops the oars with a clank into the rowlocks and pulls at my arm, trying to turn me around. “Don’t look.”

  His voice is taut, made to be obeyed, but it’s too late. The body, in dark, waterlogged velvet, is facedown and still, but the hair crawls with faint, underwater currents. One hand taps noiselessly against the ice.

  On its wrist is a stripe of cerulean blue.

  CHAPTER 6

  I FEEL WONDERFULLY WARM, and my head no longer aches. I float blissfully in the dark, my limbs loose and lazy. But as much as I try to ignore it, there’s something terrible pacing at the edges of my mind, looking for a way in. I turn my head from it, again and again, but I’m waking up now, and finally it claws its way into my consciousness.…

  “Let her sleep now.”

  It’s Grace’s voice. Remembering that my brother is dead is a duller pain than I would’ve thought. It turns my body to wood; I can’t believe that I will ever raise my head again. My eyes are sandpaper, too dry to open, until the tears start to fall. I’m doing nothing—not really crying, even—but they’re coming as regularly as rain, and I let them well through my eyelids and onto my cheeks.

  When a stifled sob breaks out of me, Grace and Elsie are on me in a flash, each taking a hand from either side of the couch they’ve laid me across. “Oh, Lady Katherine,” Elsie begins, then bursts into tears. She pulls her apron to her face. Grace dismisses her with a weary wave, and she runs from the room.

  With every beat of my heart, my grief deepens. I’m alone here. My brother, my laughing brother, is dead. No more paintings. No more George. Nobody to call me Wildcat.

  I pull at my clothes, gasping, suddenly unable to breathe, and Grace brings a sharp-smelling vial to my nose, followed by a short belt of brown liquid in a cut crystal tumbler. “This will help get you through until Dr. Ebner arrives,” she says, helping me to sit up.

  The burning in my nose and at the back of my throat distracts me briefly from my misery. When the door shushes open a moment later, it’s with an apologetic air, bringing to mind the days that followed my parents’ deaths. Everyone around George and me moved in slow motion, as though we couldn’t handle sharp movements. I’d felt like I was underwater.

  A man in a tweed waistcoat enters the room, carrying a black leather medical bag. He’s followed by Stella and an ice-pale Jane. I wonder
how long I’ve been unconscious, that she’s been fetched already from Bath. Stella kicks about the room, pleased to see me, but Grace blocks her from jumping on the couch. I want to tell her to put Stella in my arms, but the doctor has already sat down and taken my hand.

  “I’m deeply sorry, Lady Randolph,” he says, his mouth just discernible beneath a bushy gray mustache. His brows droop over whiskey-brown eyes, and I think how much George would like to paint a face like this. George, George, George. Every moment I remember it afresh, and it’s another stab to my chest.

  He places a careful hand to my brow. “Can you stand, my lady? I’m afraid you’ll become overheated. Walk a moment, catch your breath.”

  I stand on yearling’s legs. Just beyond the window, the men carry something between them, unwieldy and wrapped in sodden white. I count four bowed heads around my brother’s body: Henry and John, Matt and Mr. Carrick.

  “Where are they taking him?” I ask, my voice cracking and hoarse.

  Grace shakes her head, just barely, but the doctor ignores her. “They’re taking him to the west wing. It’s the coldest part of the house, you see.” He stops uncomfortably, but I take his meaning, knowing they must keep his body from the heat.

  “What a terrible, terrible thing,” Grace says in a sodden voice. She sits down heavily. “We will build up the railing on the bridge immediately.” She turns her pale face to me. “Forgive me, Katherine, that this accident happened at Walthingham Hall!”

  “An accident,” I parrot dumbly. “But … but George was a strong swimmer. He could swim before he could walk. Even if he slipped…”

  A memory of George as a boy, diving into the ice-cold creek with Connor, threatens to overwhelm me.

  Jane moves forward, silhouetted against the fire’s glow. “It doesn’t matter in such cold water, Kat. Nobody could swim across that lake in winter. It would stop his heart.”

  I turn my face away just as Henry enters the room, trailed by John. Henry moves to my side with speed, which suits me better than the slow, skittish movements more usual to mourning. Laying a heavy hand on my shoulder, he kneels beside me with moist eyes. His skin is sickly pale.

  “Oh, my sweet cousin,” he says. “You can’t know how sorry I am.”

  “He couldn’t just drown, Henry,” I say. “He couldn’t have.”

  The doctor moves toward us, uneasy, and Henry looks at me sadly. “There is no other explanation, Katherine. A young man at his first ball, on unfamiliar grounds. And he’d had a bit to drink.…”

  I clutch at his arm. “But he rode to Bath,” I say. “Matt said his horse was gone first thing.”

  Henry shares a look with Grace.

  “What is it?” I say.

  Henry clears his throat. “Croxley came back to the stables an hour ago. He was cold with wandering, but Matt’s seen him right.”

  I fall back against the couch, shaking my head.

  “He must have thrown your brother on that bridge before running off,” Henry continues. “He could be wild, that one. He damn near toppled me once.”

  Grace tsks her tongue at the profanity, and in the hush that follows, all eyes watch me with unspoken pity. Except John, who lowers his gaze. Dr. Ebner rattles through his medical bag before producing a small bottle of something that I can tell will be sickly sweet just by looking at it.

  “I will examine your brother’s body, Lady Randolph,” he says, “to determine whether it was the fall or the water that killed him. But you mustn’t trouble yourself with such unsavory things. It’s imperative that you take something to calm your nerves.”

  My energy spent, I allow him to administer the syrupy medicine. Grace asks him in quiet tones whether the body must truly be examined, and Henry retreats to the fire, to stand close by Jane.

  The room seems suddenly terribly full with people. As the medicine takes effect, my mind grows fuzzy at the edges. I sense more than see John steal toward me, and then cover me with his coat. Its familiar smell of horses and wintry air fills me with such grief I feel weak.

  As I drift into sleep, I hear two servants by the fire, speaking low. “You won’t catch me going outside after dark again,” one mutters. “Not now that the Beast of Walthingham has claimed another.”

  * * *

  I’m alone now even in my sleep, too drugged and exhausted for dreams. When I wake, it’s still dark. Clutching for John’s coat, I find the silken coverlet of my own bed. Someone’s carried me upstairs and stripped me down to my smallclothes.

  By the fire’s dying glow, I can make out a sleeping shape on a chair next to the bed. My heart expands—then contracts like a fist when I see that it’s too small to be a man. After a moment I understand that it’s Jane. Stella, splayed across her lap, rouses for a moment, then twitches back into sleep.

  My mind flies to my brother, lying in cold solitude at the far end of the house. Can he really be gone? It seems impossible. A cavernous loneliness yawns below me as I shift to sitting, shivering despite the closeness of the air.

  I shroud myself tightly in a trailing blanket and steal from the stifling room, pinching at the ache between my eyes. Silently I make my way toward the west wing, averting my gaze from the door that leads to my brother’s former chambers. I’ve only ever seen the damaged wing from the grounds. A hastily built temporary wall separates it from the rest of the house; when I unlock the workmen’s door and step over the threshold, drafts bite at my skin.

  Moonlight through uncurtained windows illuminates sheet-covered shapes and shining patches of incongruously ornate wooden floors. There’s a slight scuttling sound in the walls; I pause a moment, and it fades away. After a few wrong doors, I find my way to George, laid out in a small parlor.

  They’ve placed him on a high, spare table, so perfectly suited for his long shape that I can’t imagine what use it had before this. I drop my blanket and move to his side. The house breathes around us, full of silent, sleeping life, and I can’t stand the thought that George alone will never wake.

  My daredevil brother thought himself invincible, it’s true. He was known to ride without a saddle, to dive into shady pools without checking their depth, to wander too close to animal dens in pursuit of the perfect vantage for painting. But he was no fool. Why would he ride in bad light on an icy bridge?

  Breathing in through my mouth, I peel the sheet away.

  His body inspires no horror in me, just a great, bottomless pity. I’ve seen death many times before. I even found a body in the river once in Virginia, in high summer. The man was a drifter we never identified, bloated beyond all recognition.

  I make myself look at my brother, clenching my chattering teeth. His skin looks gray in the moonlight, his features unrecognizable. I can hardly bear to see his elegant, able hands, now swollen and still. Only his hair is the same, fluffy and fine. I touch it tenderly, pushing it back from his brow—and see a livid gash, running from his temple and up along his hairline.

  The wound is long and deep. When I was small, the youngest girl on the Andersen farm was found among the blackberry bushes on her father’s land, nearly dead after being mauled by a bear. She survived, but her hair never grew straight along the left side of her scalp, and her forehead was permanently scarred.

  George’s wound looks something like hers—something like the track of an animal’s claw. I lean in closer, holding my breath. The Beast of Walthingham preys on the wicked, they say.…

  Suddenly, the room dances with light. I throw the sheet back over George’s face and spin around, breathing fast. John stands in the doorway, holding a lantern high. His arm is trembling, making the lamplight skitter crazily across the walls. I snatch my blanket from the floor and fold it around my shivering body.

  His mouth is a heavy line, the sockets of his eyes hollowed and strange. For a moment I’m frightened, but then he lowers the lamp, and the shadows retreat. He’s clad only in breeches and a loose nightshirt, his hair tousled with sleep.

  “Lady Katherine. I worried when I heard s
omeone walking about.” He looks no less troubled now, running his eyes over me in the dim light. “You should go to bed, my lady,” he says finally. “The west wing is far from secure.”

  He falls silent as I step closer. “John,” I say. “Please. Please tell me what you know about the Beast of Walthingham.” My voice crackles over the words, and his face goes gentle.

  “My lady,” he says, “I know nothing, because there’s nothing to know. The Beast is a fairy tale.”

  “But there’s something in that forest, isn’t there? Something the servants are frightened of.”

  “The tales of scullery maids don’t hold much water, miss.”

  And yet he’s hiding something, I’m sure of it.

  “But if there’s something to it, anything, you must tell me. This is my home. And I saw something yesterday evening, at the edge of the woods. A man, perhaps…”

  John shrugs. “Big estates like this, they attract poachers. Locals looking for food. There’s no point trying to drive them off; the forest’s too big.”

  “Then a poacher may have done this to my brother.”

  “I did not mean to say … I did not try to imply that your brother was killed. It was, as your cousin said, a terrible accident.”

  “I don’t believe it.” As I say the words, I know they’re true. The pain behind my eyes spreads.

  John dips his head low and looks into my eyes. “Don’t open your heart to pain that has no place there. Your brother’s loss alone will hurt enough. There’s nobody to blame, nobody to hate.”

  “You’re wrong,” I say hotly. “The pain will ease some, if there’s somebody to blame. Somebody to punish.”

  His eyes are startled at this, and he reaches out a careful hand, places it lightly on my shoulder. I grow still beneath the touch.

  “There will always be poachers on these large estates, but few of them are murderers, too.” He drops his hand back to his side. “Poachers will exist for as long as the poor need to eat and maintain their desire to get back at the rich. That is to say, forever.” There’s an edge in his voice that is new.