C Harris - When maidens mourn

Sebastian watched her twist her handkerchief around her fist.

`Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to do either Miss Tennyson or the boys harm?'

Her puffy face crumpled. `No,' she cried. `None of this makes any sense. Why would anyone want to harm either her or those poor, poor lads? Why?'

Sebastian rested his hand on her shoulder. It was a useless, awkward gesture of comfort, but she looked up at him with pleading eyes, her plump, matronly form shuddering with need for a measure of understanding and reassurance he could not give.

Leaving the servants hall, Sebastian climbed the stairs to the nursery at the top of the Tennyson house.

It was a cheerful place, its walls newly covered in brightly sprigged paper and flooded with light from the rows of long windows overlooking the broad, sun-dappled expanse of the river. The two little boys might have only been visiting for the summer, but it was obvious that Gabrielle Tennyson had prepared for her young cousins stay with loving care.

Pausing at the entrance to the schoolroom, Sebastian let his gaze drift over the armies of tin soldiers that marched in neat formations across the scrubbed floorboards. Cockhorses and drums and wooden boats littered the room; shelves of books beckoned with promises of endless hours spent vicariously adventuring in faraway lands. On the edge of a big, sturdy table near the door lay a cluster of small, disparate objects: a broken clay pipe bowl, a glowing brown chestnut, a blue and white ceramic bead as if a boy had hurriedly emptied his pockets of their treasures and then never come back for them.

A woman's voice sounded behind him. `And who might you be, then?'

Turning, Sebastian found himself being regarded with a suspicious scowl by a bony woman with thick, dark red hair, gaunt cheeks, and pale gray eyes. `You must be the boys' nurse, Miss Campbell.'

`I am.' Her gaze swept him with obvious suspicion, her voice raspy with a thick northern brogue. `And you?'

`Lord Devlin.'

She sniffed. `I heard them talking about you in the servants' hall.' She pushed past him into the room and swung to face him, her thin frame rigid with hostility and what he suspected was a carefully controlled, intensely private grief.

`Seems a queer thing for a lord to do, getting hisself mixed up in murder. But then, London folk is queer.'

Sebastian found himself faintly smiling. `You came with the boys from Lincolnshire?'

`I did, yes. Been with Master George since he was born, I have, and little Master Alfred too.'

`I understand the boys' father is a rector?'

`Aye.' A wary light crept into her eyes.

Seeing it, Sebastian said, `Tell me about him.'

`The Reverend Tennyson?' She folded her arms across her stomach, her hands clenched tight around her bony elbows. `What is there to tell? He's a brilliant man for all he's so big and hulking and clumsy.'

`I'm told he's not well. Nothing serious, I hope?'

The fingers gripping her elbows reminded him of claws clinging desperately to a shifting purchase. `He hasna been well for a long time now.' She hesitated, then added, `A very long time.' Lingering ill health was all too common in their society, frequently caused by consumption, but more often by some unknown debilitating affliction.

Sebastian wandered the room, his attention seemingly all for the scattered toys and books. `And the boys? Are they hale?'

`Ach, you'd be hard put to find two sturdier lads. To be sure, Master George can be a bit wild and hotheaded, but there's no malice in him.'

It struck him as a profoundly strange thing for her to say. He paused beside a scattering of books on the window seat overlooking the river. They were the usual assortment of boys adventure stories. Flipping open one of the covers, he found himself staring at the name George Tennyson written in the same round copperplate as the poem given him by the housekeeper.

Looking up, he said, `Do you know where Miss Tennyson planned to take her young cousins yesterday?'

The nursemaid shook her head. `No. She told them it was a surprise.'

`Could she perhaps have intended to show them the excavations at Camlet Moat?'

`She could, I suppose. But how would that be a surprise? She'd taken them up there before.'

`Perhaps she'd discovered something new she wanted to show them.'

`I wouldn't know about that.'

Sebastian studied the woman's plain, tensely held face.

`What do you think has happened to them, Miss Campbell?'

She pressed her lips into a hard, straight line, her nostrils flaring on a quickly indrawn breath, her forehead creasing with a sudden upwelling of emotion she fought to suppress. It was a moment before she could speak. `I don't know,' she said, shaking her head. `I just don't know. I keep thinking about those poor wee bairns out there somewhere, alone and afraid, with no one to care for them. Or... or...' But here her voice broke and she could only shake her head, unwilling to put her worst fears into words.

He said, `Did you ever hear Miss Tennyson mention the name of an antiquary with whom she had quarreled?'

Margaret cleared her throat and touched the back of her knuckles to her nostrils, her formidable composure slamming once more into place. `A what?'

`An antiquary. A scholar of antiquities. You never heard Miss Tennyson speak of any such person?'

`No.'

`How about the children? Did they ever mention anyone? Anyone at all they might have met in London?'

She stared back at him, her face pale, her eyes wide.

Sebastian said, `There is someone. Tell me.'

`I don't know his name. The lads always called him the Lieutenant.'

`He's a lieutenant?'

`Aye.' Her lip curled. `Some Frenchy.'

`Where did the children meet this French lieutenant?'

`Miss Tennyson would oftentimes take the lads to the park of an evening. I think they'd see him there.'

`They saw him often?'

`Aye. Him and his dog.'

`The Lieutenant has a dog?'

`Aye. The lads are mad about dogs, you know.'

`When did they first begin mentioning this lieutenant?'

`Ach, it must have been six weeks or more ago... not long after we first arrived in London, I'd say.'

`That's all you can tell me about him? That he's a Frenchman and a lieutenant and that he has a dog?'

`He may've been in the cavalry. I can't be certain, mind you, but it's only since we've come to London that Master George has suddenly been all agog to join the Army. He's forever galloping around the schoolroom slashing a wooden sword through the air and shouting, Charge! and, At em, lads!'

`Any idea where this lieutenant might have seen service?

`To be honest, I didn't like to pay too much heed to young Master George when he'd start going on about it. Couldn't see any sense in encouraging the lad. The Reverend's already told him he's bound for Eton next year. Besides, it didn't seem right, somehow, him being so friendly with a Frenchy.'

Sebastian said, `Many émigrés have fought valiantly against Napoléon.'

`Whoever said he was an émigré?' She gave a scornful laugh. `A prisoner on his parole, he is. And only the good Lord knows how many brave Englishmen he sent to their graves before he was took prisoner.'

Sebastian went to lean on the terrace railing overlooking the river. The tide was out, a damp, fecund odor rising from the expanse of mudflats exposed along the bank below as the sun began its downward arc toward the west. An aged Gypsy woman in a full purple skirt and yellow kerchief was telling fortunes beside a man with a painted cart selling hot sausages near the steps. Beyond them, a string of constables could be seen poking long probes into the mud, turning over logs and bits of flotsam left stranded by the receding water. At first Sebastian wondered what they were doing. Then he realized they must be searching for the children or what was left of them.