An hour later, the explorer joined the Arundell family and their guests around a long dining table. A host of quietly ticking clockwork footmen served breakfast. Isabel and Doctor Bird were absent.
“She’s sleeping in,” Blanche said, in response to Burton’s enquiry. “She had a restless night. Doctor Bird is checking on her, just as a precaution. Ah, here he is.”
“She’ll be fine,” Bird announced, entering the room. He pulled out a chair and sat with them. “But she’s very fatigued. Mrs. Arundell, I ordered her to rest today, but she’s somewhat—um—um—”
“Obstinate,” Eliza Arundell supplied. “Always has been. I’ll go up after breakfast. If she won’t listen to her doctor, perhaps she’ll listen to her mother.”
After they’d eaten, Monckton Milnes and Eliphas Levi took to the library to peruse the collection, while the Arundells, Birds, and Beetons retired to the music room. Burton decided on a stroll in the grounds and was joined by Swinburne. Nettles, the butler, handed them each an umbrella as they stepped out. It was raining lightly but steadily.
“You are marrying into money, Richard,” the poet observed, looking back at the manor as they crossed its lawn, “and plenty of it.”
“The wealth is with Isabel’s Great-Uncle Gerard, Algy. Her parents are sufficiently well off but by no means rich, and the fact that their daughter is marrying a heathen means none of their pile will be coming our way. I have, I’ll freely confess, felt rather guilty about that, but Isabel is adamant she wants only what I can offer.”
“A dreadful headache?” Swinburne quipped.
“A life—which she regards as exotic and exciting—in Damascus.”
Even as he said it, Burton felt a sudden reluctance. Bismillah! Had he become so entwined in this Abdu El Yezdi affair that the consulship had lost its allure? How could he break that news to his fiancée?
He pointed his swordstick at the path ahead of them—the one that led over the wooden bridge—and said, “Let’s follow that.”
They strode along the trail, its gravel crunching beneath their boots, the rain sizzling on their brollies, until they came to the stream.
Swinburne gazed up at the treetops. “My hat! What a ruckus those ravens are making.”
Burton gave a distracted sound of agreement. He stopped and squatted, examining a patch of mud between the gravel and the wooden boards of the bridge.
“What have you found?” Swinburne asked.
“A partial print, made by a woman’s bare foot. We’re lucky we caught it. The rain will have it washed away soon enough.”
“That’s rather incongruous—a barefooted woman out in this weather.”
“She was here last night, Algy. I saw her from my bedroom window. I thought I was dreaming a ghost. Apparently not. Hallo! There’s Tom Honesty.” Burton raised his stick and called to the groundsman, who’d just come into view ahead of them. He was dressed in waterproofs, pushing a wheelbarrow filled with cut logs, which he lowered as the explorer and his companion crossed the bridge and approached him.
“Morning, sirs. Nasty weather.”
“Good morning. It is indeed. I say, Mr. Honesty, this path—where does it lead?”
“Past High Wood, sir. Through Ark Farm. Continues on to the old castle.”
“We can follow it through the farm?”
“Yes. All a part of the estate.”
“Thank you. I think we’ll go and have a look at the ruins.”
“Mind how you go, sir. Walls. Unstable.” Honesty peered up at the flat layer of cloud. “Rain’ll get worse, too.”
The groundsman hesitated.
“Is there something else, my man?” Burton asked.
“Haunted, sir.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The castle. It’s haunted.”
“By whom?”
“Lady Blanche Arundell. Mistress of the castle when the Parliamentarians attacked it. 1643, that was. Her ghost walks the battlements.”
“I presume the current Miss Blanche was named after her.”
“That’s right. Legend has it that the ghost also appears as a white owl whenever there’s a death in the family.”
“I hope, then, that we don’t see one. Good day to you, Mr. Honesty.”
Burton and Swinburne touched the brims of their hats and moved on. As they passed by the edge of the woods, the poet said, “Was your lady of the night the spook, do you think?”
“More likely it was Isabel.”
“Isabel? Really? What the dickens was she up to?”
“I have no idea,” Burton replied. “But as soon as I heard she had a restless night, I realised the figure I saw resembled her, though I glimpsed it only vaguely. She may have been sleepwalking. She spent her childhood on this estate, and in those fields—” he employed his cane to point ahead at the farm’s pastures, “—there was often an encampment of Gypsies. She became rather fond of one of them, a woman named Hagar Burton, who predicted that Isabel would fall in love with a man who had the Burton surname.”
“Fate, irreversible and inscrutable,” Swinburne murmured.
“Perhaps. Of course, when Isabel and I met in Boulogne back in ’fifty-one, she immediately placed great stock in the childhood prophecy. For the past eight years, while I was overseas for extended periods, she drew much comfort from the idea that we were destined to be together. Unfortunately, earlier this year, she bumped into Hagar Burton again, and this time received an utterly preposterous but very upsetting forecast. The gypsy told Isabel that I would murder her while she was still wearing her wedding dress.”
“By James! How positively macabre!”
“If someone you’ve had faith in for a long time told you something you cannot give any credence to, would you not suffer a degree of nervous excitement?”
“And it’s to that you ascribe her sleepwalking?”
“That and her being overwrought about the party. I think she came to these fields unconsciously seeking the gypsy.”
They climbed over a stile and followed the path along the edge of a sloping meadow in which sheep were sat with legs tucked under them and heads hunkered into shoulders. The animals regarded them nervously but didn’t move, unwilling to abandon the dry patch beneath their bodies.
The rain fell harder.
They crossed another field, passed a small lake, and ascended a wooded bank toward Old Wardour Castle. The ancient edifice loomed over them, a massive hexagonal structure of grey stone. The Arundell family had acquired it in 1544 but a hundred years later it was partially destroyed during the Civil War. The southwestern corner was completely wrecked, its walls collapsed, what remained of them ragged, and the rest of the castle had been gutted and badly damaged. Deep cracks were visible in its moss-clad walls and piles of fallen masonry still lay all about.
There were ravens everywhere. Huddled against the downpour, they watched the two men approach, their eyes glittering blackly.
Burton and Swinburne passed beneath the remnant of a barbican and entered through an east-facing arch. They walked along a short passageway into a central courtyard upon which the rain was splashing noisily. The entrances to vaulted rooms lay to the left and right of them, and ahead a columned portal arched over the foot of a spiral staircase.
Swinburne gazed at the irregularly placed windows, the towering walls, the projecting stumps of lost floors and ceilings, and declared, “Rossetti would be transported into a state of ecstasy by this place. He’d have visions of white knights and fair damsels, of courtly manners and just crusades.” He twirled his umbrella and pronounced:
In the noble days were shown
Deeds of good knights many one,
Many worthy wars were done.
It was time of scath and scorn
When at breaking of the morn