Nettles entered with a pot of coffee and set it down on a sideboard. “Will the gentlemen require anything else?”
“No,” Burton barked. “Get out! We’re not to be disturbed!”
Levi poured each of them a cup and, despite it still being early—eleven in the morning—also went to the drinks cabinet and retrieved a decanter of brandy.
“Hell and damnation!” Burton spat. “It’s my fault. I should have cancelled the party and stayed in London; instead, I’ve drawn a bloody nosferatu here.”
“Nosferatu?” Steinhaueser asked.
Burton flicked his hand impatiently and snarled, “Tell him.”
“Richard,” Monckton Milnes said, “we are still dealing with state secrets. I don’t think the king had it in mind for you to freely dispense information and recruit an army.”
“To blazes with the king!”
Steinhaueser looked at each of them in turn. “The king? What are you all up to?”
Monckton Milnes looked at Eliphas Levi and gave an almost imperceptible nod. The occultist took out his pipe and smoked it while quietly explaining to John Steinhaueser the nature of Perdurabo and the threat he represented.
Burton listened and slowly regained his composure. He threw his cigar into the fireplace, immediately lit another, then sat and glowered at Steinhaueser, watching his every reaction to the incredible tale.
“Is this a—a joke? A legend?” the doctor stammered. “A story?” He looked again from Levi to Monckton Milnes and from Swinburne to Burton. “Surely it’s not true?”
“It’s true,” Burton said. “And I’ll be damned if I let Perdurabo anywhere near Isabel again. I’ll sit beside her the night through with a gun in my hand. But let’s not wait for sundown. Styggins, how did you travel here?”
“In my steam sphere.”
“Good. I want you to take it out for a spin. Drive around the local villages, talk to the bobbies, find out if there are any strangers in the district, especially any who are nocturnal in their habits. Take my valet with you. Whisperers tend to notice things the police don’t.”
Burton addressed Monckton Milnes. “Organise a search of the house. It’s a big place with plenty of rooms, attics, and cellars where a man might hide, so be thorough. Don’t miss an inch of it.”
Finally, he spoke to Eliphas Levi. “Monsieur, will you join Doctor Bird at my fiancée’s bedside? You best understand her condition.”
“Oui, of course.”
The men rose and set about their tasks. Burton went to his room, pulled a leather case from beneath a bed, and opened it to reveal a brace of pistols. He pushed them into his waistband and buttoned his coat to conceal them. Picking up the lantern he’d used last night, he told Bram to follow him, went downstairs, and joined Swinburne and Steinhaueser in the entrance hall. They left the house—the rain had ceased but it was a damp and chilly day—and strode to a row of low buildings that lay a few yards to the east of the mansion. Steinhaueser entered one and a few moments later they heard the unmistakable hissing and panting of a steam sphere. The vehicle rolled out and came to a halt.
Burton said, “If you identify where John Judge is holed up, don’t approach him, don’t challenge him, don’t hesitate for a single moment—just report back here as quickly as you can.”
“Understood,” the doctor said. He gestured to Bram. “Hop in, nipper.”
The boy rubbed his hands in delight at the prospect of a ride in the contraption—in the passenger seat rather than the storage compartment!—and swung himself into it, settling beside the doctor. He looked out at Burton. “And me, Cap’n?”
“The same. If you learn anything, get word back to me immediately.”
Burton and Swinburne watched as the vehicle steamed away toward the estate’s entrance gate.
“What about us?” Swinburne asked.
Burton pointed at a steam-driven landau. “We’ll drive up to the old castle, Algy, and this time we’re going to search it from top to bottom.” Burton swallowed nervously. “Including the vaults.”
They found nothing.
New Wardour Castle held none but the Arundells and their guests and servants, the surrounding villages were occupied by locals and no one else, and Old Wardour Castle was inhabited only by spiders, beetles, and ravens.
Burton had been thoroughly unnerved by the vaults. Dark, dank, and infested, they had too much of the grave about them. Years ago, in India, he’d witnessed holy men being buried alive. Many of them had been dug up days later—in some cases weeks—still living and none the worse for their experience. Others, though, had suffocated to death, their noses and mouths filled with soil and worms. The memory of it had led him to tell Isabel, shortly before his departure for Africa, that when he died, she must not under any circumstances have him buried.
“I should hate to wake up and find myself underground.”
“A cremation, then?” she’d asked, unhappily. Catholics didn’t favour cremations, and she secretly hoped Burton might convert some day.
“Gad, no! I don’t want to burn before I have to! A mausoleum, Isabel. Above ground and with light shining in. We shall lie in it side by side.”
“Oh, I like that idea, but would you mind awfully if we grow tremendously old together first?”
“I shan’t mind that at all, darling.”
Isabel. Isabel.
She was awake.
Sam Beeton announced it as soon as Burton and Swinburne returned to the mansion. Without bothering to change out of his dust-stained and web-bestrewn clothes, the explorer raced up the stairs and along the corridor to his fiancée’s room.
Doctor Bird, Eliphas Levi, Smythe Piggott, and Blanche were with her.
“She’s very weak,” Bird said, “but the trance is broken.”
Burton sat on the edge of the bed and took Isabel’s hand. It was cold. Her eyes opened and she gave him a faint smile.
“I’ve been dreaming, Dick,” she whispered. “I was riding on horseback across an African savannah, leading a band of wild Bedouin women. I felt such . . . freedom.”
“Perhaps it was a premonition,” he replied, knowing how much she desired adventure.
“A premonition. A premonition.” Her eyes appeared to focus on something far away. “Yet I feel I’ve already been there,” she said, dreamily. “Like a memory. I can still smell the spice in the air.”
Burton glanced at Levi. The occultist was standing with his arms crossed over his chest and his back to the window. His brows were drawn low over his eyes, his mouth set in a grim line. Behind him, something dark moved on the exterior sill, attracting Burton’s attention. It was a raven, big and black and staring implacably in at them.
Isabel whispered. “Why do I feel so feeble, Dick? Am I sick?”
He looked back at her. “Yes, dear, but we have two doctors and a nurse in the house. They’ll make you well again.”
“In time for the ball?”
Burton looked at Doctor Bird. The man made the slightest of gestures, indicating that he had no answer.
“Yes, Isabel, and we shall dance the night through.”
“I’ll need the doctors again afterward,” she mumbled.
“Why so?”
“Because you dance so clumsily. My feet will be a terrible mess.”
She sighed, smiled, closed her eyes, and drifted into sleep.
Blanche was clutching a Bible. She lifted it to her lips, kissed it, and placed it on the pillow beside her sister’s head.
“That is wise, mademoiselle,” Levi said softly. “Faith strengthens the will, and it is willpower she requires.”
“But what is wrong with her, Monsieur Levi? Do you know? The doctors can tell me nothing.”
“It is beyond my experience,” Bird confirmed.