‘And did you go with this woman?’ Nicholas asks.
‘Yes. She gave us shelter and food, let us play in her garden…’
‘Do you know where this was?’
‘In the country. I remember the smell of the warm grass. There was birdsong and the humming of the bees.’
‘And why did you leave?’ Nicholas enquires, catching the hurried rasp of Quigley’s nib as he writes.
‘We didn’t leave. She took us – to somewhere bad.’
‘What happened there, Elise? Can you tell us?’
‘Have we not taxed her enough?’ asks Lizzy. ‘She should sleep.’
But Elise is not ready for rest. ‘I began to realize she wasn’t an angel after all,’ she says.
‘Can you describe this new place she took you to?’ Nicholas asks.
‘High walls. Dark, and dusty. Very dusty. Even the Cardinal’s Hat was cleaner.’
‘The Cardinal’s Hat?’ enquires Lumley. ‘Is that a tavern?’
‘A bawdy-house on Bankside, my lord,’ Nicholas explains. ‘It’s where her mother took the children when she fell into drunkenness and penury.’
Lumley closes his eyes for a brief moment. A bawdy-house named the ‘Cardinal’s Hat’ – his Romish faith has taken more insults today than he can stomach.
‘By then I was very sleepy most of the time,’ Elise continues without prompting, ‘and I had nightmares, even during the day. I think it was the angel working magic upon me. But I do remember there were other people there.’
‘How many people, Elise?’ asks Nicholas, trying to sound almost uninterested.
‘There was a blind woman and her sister, and an old man with only one hand. They were kind to me. And then there was Jacob.’
He squats down beside her. ‘This Jacob – was he a young man with a round face, a face like the moon? A young man who was very much like a little child?’
Elise smiles at the memory. ‘Jacob is sweet. I’ve known him a long time, since I was small. He lived on Scrope Alley. His father was a poulterer. He used to bring us a chicken once a month, until he stopped coming because my mother frightened him.’
‘Do you know where Jacob is now, Elise?’
‘Yes, of course. Jacob is still with the Devil.’
A muttered Kyrie eleison, Christie eleison from Francis Deniker, followed by an Amen from John Lumley. Lizzy covers her mouth with her hands.
‘And your brother, little Ralph?’ asks Nicholas.
Elise’s eyes become wet and extraordinarily bright as the anguish floods back into them. ‘Yes, Ralphie also. Ralphie is still with the Devil.’
The sound of Gabriel Quigley’s pen as it scratches has slowed. Nonsuch seems too perfect a place in which to write of Satan.
‘How do you know it was the Devil, child?’ asks Lumley cautiously. ‘Did he manifest himself to you?’
A sudden tremor runs through Elise’s body. ‘No, sir, he did not. But only the Devil would be about such work as I saw there.’
And then she tells them of a night, shortly after she had arrived in the place she now begins to call the Devil’s house – the night she went in search of her brother.
‘There was an archway, just beyond the dormitory where we were being kept. There were steps, leading down. I was afraid to go, but I knew Ralphie would be even more afraid down there without me. You see, I thought I might find him at the bottom.’
‘And did you?’
‘No.’
Elise begins to rock back and forth as the memories hem her in. Lizzy moves closer to her, defensively.
‘What did you find there, Elise? Will you tell us?’
‘I found a dead man,’ she says in a coldly matter-of-fact voice. ‘A dead man in a chamber lit by a thousand candles.’
Lizzy stifles a gasp. The scratching of Quigley’s pen has stopped entirely.
‘He was on a cross, like our saviour, but turned all about,’ Elise continues in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘There was blood. I think it must have been old blood, because it came from high up on his leg and ran all the way down to his head, like wax on a candle, only black, as black as the river at night. There was a bucket close by his head. The bucket was full of his blood. I did not know that a man had so much blood in him. I knew then why the angel had brought us to this place.’
39
‘Do we have this aright?’ asks John Lumley sometime later. He is sitting at his study desk like a justice of the peace at the quarter assizes, kneading the collar of his gown as if he’s been called upon to deliver a particularly complex judgement. ‘Will the words do?’
Elise is asleep in the servants’ quarters, after much gentling and soothing by Sprint, Joanna and the other members of the household, along with more fortifying hippocras than a thirteen-year-old should rightly drink.
‘They may “do”, John,’ says Lizzy from her seat at the window. ‘But not for a moment can they accurately convey what the poor child has suffered.’
For his part, Nicholas is retelling Elise’s story in his head, marvelling at her courage, appalled by what she has seen, what she has endured. Her words are seared into his mind. He wonders if the body she’d described hanging upside-down in the cellar was that of the old man with the stump for a hand, or a victim yet unknown. He remembers the wheals on Jacob Monkton’s wrists and ankles – evidence that he, too, had suffered on this monstrous cross. He wonders how Elise could have seen what she’d seen and not gone mad. And he wonders if he’s right – that it all happened barely ten minutes’ walk from the Jackdaw, in the grim heart of the Lazar House.
‘How can we be sure these words are nothing but fantasy, mere dreams?’ Quigley asks. ‘The maid confessed she was often very sleepy and suffered nightmares, even in the daytime. Yet on this particular night, she was apparently in full possession of her wits. Explain that.’
‘I believe the woman she thought was an angel came and went at intervals,’ Nicholas says. ‘Whatever she was giving to Elise and the others to keep them compliant, the effect was dependent on constant replenishment. Elise believed it was magic – “the angel’s magic” is what she called it. Bianca Merton and I suspect it was a concoction of henbane or some other powerful essence.’
‘And who exactly is Bianca Merton?’ asks Quigley, scanning his notes for her and failing.
‘She’s mistress of the Jackdaw tavern, on Bankside,’ Nicholas tells him.
‘Mistress Merton, apparently, is the reason Dr Shelby has come to Nonsuch,’ Lumley tells his secretary. ‘It’s a long and somewhat troubling story, and we have Robert Cecil to thank for it.’
‘A tavern-mistress?’ says Quigley to Nicholas contemptuously.
‘We’re close friends. She knows all that I know.’
Lumley says, ‘Gabriel, do me some service and recount the part where the girl escaped her confinement.’
Quigley does, as though reading a shopping list. ‘Here it is, my lord. “When I heard the sound of the Devil’s footsteps returning, I went back up the stairs. I did not want to leave Ralph, but I knew not where they had taken him. I knew I had to get away from the Devil’s house. I tried to get Jacob to come with me, but he didn’t understand.” Then Dr Shelby asks her how she found a way out. The child states, “I discovered a window, high up. It was boarded, but the boards were loose. Just beyond the window were the branches of a tree.” Then comes some trivia about how the maid used to climb trees when she was younger, how her brother would watch her, laugh and shout “squirrel” – or some such nonsense.’
‘Thank you, Gabriel, you appear to have it down pat,’ says Lumley. ‘What is your view of her story?’
‘If you want my professional opinion, my lord, it’s nothing but invention. Pure childish fantasy.’