The Grey Dawn Page 12

  “Of course.”

  Elise grabbed her blankets off her bed and scurried after Ellalee. Ellalee breathed a silent sigh as she closed and locked her own bedroom door. Daniella raised questioning eyes to her sister at the entrance of Elise. Ellalee quickly explained as she put the lamp beside the bed. Daniella was as gracious and welcoming as Ellalee knew she would be. Daniella was not unmoved by the woeful cry herself.

  “What was that sound?” Daniella asked, hugging herself. “It sounded like misery incarnate.”

  “I’ve no idea, but I’m sure it is meant to frighten us. I’m not going to give way,” Ellalee said firmly, feeling more secure now that there were with three of them together behind a locked door.

  “It is the spirit of da castle, mum,” Elise stammered. “The spirits of all the dead come t’ warn us.”

  “That’s quite enough,” Ellalee said. “Daniella, there have been accidents among the staff. I wanted to tell you earlier to please be careful and make sure that you are never alone.”

  “It seems that I’m quite well-attended between Simmons and the footmen, Charlie and Mark. Someone always seems to be around. They’ve been most helpful with getting things set up, tables cleared, and even stayed to help wash the dishes. Being scullery maids is surely not in their job description. It seems I’ve gone from one younger brother to three older ones. And speaking of, how is Christopher?”

  Ellalee shared all of Christopher’s vivaciousness which made Daniella stop and say a prayer of thanksgiving for his healing. Then they all got under their covers with Elise in her blankets on the floor between the beds. Ellalee moved to turn down the light when Elise said, “Whatcha know? Ya’ gotta letter here. It slid here between the night stand and your bed.”

  Elise passed up a parchment envelope with Ellalee’s name on it. Ellalee slid out a small sketch of a small rounded bird sitting amongst the reedy grass with a strange sash above its eye. Ellalee frowned and showed the picture to the two girls. Ellalee and Daniella had no idea what kind of a bird it was or why anyone would go through the trouble of sketching it and leaving it anonymously for her, but Elise, having grown up here, at least knew that the bird was a red grouse. Ellalee put the sketch on the night stand and was determined to ask questions about it tomorrow, amongst her other plans.

  Chapter Twelve: The Disappearing Stranger

  The next morning Ellalee woke early and after waking her sister and Elise, she donned her livery and headed to the kitchen. She cornered each of the footmen and Simmons on her way as they went about their usual morning business, and they all agreed that the sketch was one well-drawn red grouse all right, which, all in all, wasn’t particularly helpful. Since she had no better ideas of the red grouse’s purpose or meaning, she tucked the sketch into her apron pocket and set about putting together a tray for Christopher and Gladlia.

  As she descended the cold stone stairs into the damp corridor below, she decided that she must come up with some way to get Christopher up out of that depressing subterranean cell sooner rather than later. She brought the tray into the candle-lit room to the table nearest her brother and the healer. It was as she laid the tray down that she noticed that Gladlia smiled, but her eyes laughed. Ellalee frowned and stifled a groan. No doubt her brother had been entertaining the healer with even more stories. It was everything she could do, not to roll her eyes. If by the time Gladlia finished burning the earl’s ears with her brother’s confessions she still had a place to live and work, she’d eat her shoe.

  “Your brother has grown very resty testy,” Gladlia announced imperially. “I’ve promised to sneak another vial of sleeping medicine into his food if he doesn’t stay still. The cold air down here is doing wonders keeping the swelling down. Ellalee saw that that his broken leg, arms and head were the only thing not covered by thick wool blankets.

  “My leg itches, and she won’t let me move to scratch it. I thought I’d die of an itch on my big toe this morning that I couldn’t reach, and I’m sure my butt is completely flat from all this sitting, and this place is giving me nightmares when I sleep.”

  “As if he sleeps,” Ellalee heard Gladlia mutter as Christopher continued unfazed.

  “Can’t you make her see reason, Ellalee?” He completed without taking a breath and looked up at Ellalee with pleading blue eyes.

  Ellalee ran her hand through his brown curls. “I’ll see what I can do.” Then she looked at Gladlia.

  “At least another two days, better three, and even that depends on the amount of swelling,” Gladlia said only to hear the boy moan. Ellalee bet they’d been through this same conversation several times already.

  Ellalee distracted Christopher with a tale of the strange noise in the walls last night and about Elise spending the night in his sisters’ room. She only called the noise unpleasant, like the baying of a dog and conveyed Elise’s stay like a sleep over with lots of fluffy girl talk.

  “I’m missing all the fun!” Christopher complained.

  “Well, if you call scrubbing and cleaning and cooking and serving fun, then indeed you are. How we would all like to be here, just lounging around being entertained,” Ellalee teased him. She kissed his brow and went back up to the kitchen where Daniella came to her side and whispered to her as Ellalee cleaned up the tray.

  “I heard the earl left early this morning. I only had to cook a meal for the staff. The butler says he will be gone until tomorrow or the day after.”

  This was sweet music to Ellalee’s ears. She would not have to worry about avoiding him and could go about her cleaning without the stress of another encounter.

  “And Mistress Murray is having herself a bit of a sleep-in since she has no kitchen duty thanks to me and no household duties thanks to you and Elise,” Daniella continued.

  Better and better, Ellalee thought and filled her sister in on Christopher’s shenanigans downstairs which brought a smile to Daniella’s face. They agreed that it was truly a gift to see Christopher as his usual spirited self, and yet that wasn’t precisely so. It had been a very long time since she’d seen Christopher like this. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that it was probably back when he was working at the McCarthy’s farm, before the accident, that she’d last seen him smile like he had this morning. What had he said? That he was afraid he’d die that way? A new guilt rose up over all the others. Ellalee hadn’t realized until this morning that maybe the worst of Christopher’s injuries was spiritual.

  Ellalee grabbed her cleaning supplies and worked off her guilt by continuing to scrub the downstairs until each room gleamed. It did her heart good to see the manor returning to its former glory instead of the dust-covered, moth-eaten mess it had become. She wanted to make sure that she got to the earl’s study before he came back home, but it was locked. Finally, she tracked down Winslow who agreed to allow her to clean under his supervision.

  Supervision, indeed, Ellalee thought. Winslow watched her like a hawk as she dusted the books and the brick-a-brack on the desk, cleaned out the hearth, and beat the tapestry and the curtains within an inch of their lives. Dust came cascading around her until her eyes watered. Finally, she couldn’t take it any longer. “Why has no one cleaned? I haven’t cleaned a week’s dust. I’ve cleaned years of dust and dirt and tarnish and grime. This shall be a home worthy of an earl by the time I am done and not the tomb that it has become.”

  “This is a tomb,” Winslow’s voice was not bitter but deep and resonant. “Why clean the sheets of a death bed?”

  “I am not living in a tomb, Winslow. I refuse,” Ellalee replied with grit and then whipped around and began dusting the books. Her eyes roved the titles as the dusted. There were books on horticulture, philosophy, mathematics, and science. There were novels upon novels and short stories and poetry, and shelves and shelves of other books as well. How she longed to take a book, any book, and sink into a chair.

  “Our earl is quite the learned man. Has he read all these books, Winslow?”

  “Of cours
e.”

  “He must have insatiable curiosity,” Ellalee sighed thinking back to the days when she did too and was blessed with a father who saw a daughter’s mind as something of value.

  “Insatiable boredom, belike.”

  “I don’t understand, Winslow.” Ellalee stopped dusting and turned around.

  “What else would he do? He isn’t invited to balls. He isn’t visited by relations or friends. He is rarely invited anywhere. These books are his entire life and his only friends,” Winslow said dryly with all the enthusiasm of a discussion over a fine blade of grass.

  In that moment, Ellalee’s heart broke. She’d been cruel to a man whose life had been nothing but cruelty. She turned around to hide her guilt and continued to clean diligently, trying to make neither conversation nor eye contact as she finished, knowing her emotions were always too easy to read. When she was done, she packed up her brushes, buckets, and rags and moved to leave, but Winslow caught her elbow as she brushed past him in the doorway.

  “You have done well, Miss Ellalee. I, for one, am glad to see the manor like it was before. You have done me a service.” Then Winslow turned his back and locked the door as Ellalee scurried away. His yellow teeth and sallow skin still gave her a very unsettled feeling. If anything looked like it belonged in a tomb, it was Winslow.

  Ellalee continued to clean two hallways and the billiard room before eating the midday meal with Christopher and afterwards cleaned the horror that was the blue parlor whose doors, Ellalee was sure, had not been opened in at least a decade. She hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Mistress Murry, but several times saw Winslow creeping around corners, keeping his ever watchful watery blue eyes on her. She shivered.

  It wasn’t until dinner that a new idea occurred to Ellalee as Daniella was preparing several pheasants that had again been sent by the grounds man, Michael. If there was anyone who might be able to give her more information on the red grouse, it might be the groom or the groundsman. She decided that after breakfast tomorrow, she would see if she could locate one or the other. If Mistress Murray was still taking a hiatus from whatever household tasks she actually did, it wouldn’t be hard to slip away to find out.

  That night, over their evening meal, Ellalee entertained Christopher with the titles of the books she had seen in the earl’s study. They guessed and pondered what type of topics might be covered in each book. Christopher yearned to read the science books, but would have settled for a good story. His reading wasn’t as proficient as Ellalee’s since his learning had stopped all too soon.

  To pass the time, Ellalee made up a story about the ardent young squire, Christopher, who had large blue eyes and a mop of brown curls that he refused to brush.

  “Like me!” Christopher sang out proudly.

  Ellalee nodded. “This young squire was serving a great knight.”

  “Make his name Sir Kent,” Christopher said.

  “Indeed, it was Sir Kent. Sir Kent was sent by Baron de Bressott to do battle with a great green dragon who had crawled out of a cave very near the Wasenwater where he had been sleeping for a hundred years. But tragically, during a brave and heated battle with that old dragon, Sir Kent was attacked and injured. He would surely die.”

  “Ellalee!” Christopher shouted.

  “The dragon thought it was all over but the meal because as it turns out, Sir Kent’s squire only had one good leg. But that old dragon didn’t know a few things. As it happened, the squire, Christopher, why he was faster on a crutch than any person could move on two good feet. Not only that, but his crutch was a secret weapon. That brave squire, Christopher, twirled the crutch over his head thrice, hand over hand, staring that old worm dead in the eye. The dragon seemed to grin. What, after all, was a one-legged boy and a crutch against a great beast like himself? The dragon licked his lips, but just as the beast bent its surly head down to snap its great jaws down on the brave squire, Christopher’s crutch had transformed into a sword which he launched directly into the very maw of the hungry dragon, pinning it jaws forever open.

  “The dragon roared in agony. Its eyes rolled back into its head as it shook its angry head, but that dragon could not dislodge the sword stuck in the roof of his mouth. There was nothing for it. The dragon fled the region, still bearing the sword, and the brave, quick-thinking squire, Christopher, had saved not only his knight, but the village of Bressott as well.”

  “Did Sir Kent get better?” Christopher asked.

  “He did, and he told the baron that he wanted no one but Christopher to be his squire forever more, and together they rode off into the sunset seeking their next adventure.”

  Christopher was bidding for one more story when Ellalee kissed his forehead good night and then kissed Gladlia’s cheek and promised she’d come as quickly as she could in the morning.

  The night passed without further incident, and the grey dawn broke with Ellalee scurrying. She desperately wanted to find out more information about the red grouse. She visited with Christopher and Gladlia that morning to hear a litany of boredom complaints as well as a list of things that Christopher felt he could contribute even with one leg strapped to a table. Gladlia looked worse for the wear as well. Ellalee smiled when she thought about Gladlia’s restraint on her sleeping medicine. If it had been Ellalee, she might have let a dose slip into Christopher’s morning meal just to buy herself a break. It certainly seemed as though his mouth was more than making up for his body’s inactivity.

  After Ellalee brought up the trays, she gave Daniella the good word about Christopher’s rising spirits. Then she waited until no one was looking and struck out through the servants’ door. The barn wasn’t difficult to find. It was a large stone building around the back of the manor built with a slightly lighter stone than was used in the manor itself. The main entrance was marked by sliding wooden doors that were standing open to catch whatever warm rays of morning light that had been able to fight their way through the overcast sky. She entered into the barn taking in the interior. Bales of straw stood just inside the door, and dust motes danced in the soft light. She noted that the floor was stone just like the walls. Wooden beams braced the loft and roof, and wooden walls separated the stalls. She passed one of the earl’s horses who chuffed either in hopes of treats or scratches. Having nothing to offer, Ellalee reached out and scratched the horse behind his ear. The horse dropped his lower lip in contentment.

  Ellalee could hear someone down further and after giving the horse an additional scrub, she hurried toward the soft sounds. Toward the back of the barn, a tack room stood open as well. Horse tack was hung on wooden pegs and saddles sat on wooden posts. Just beyond was the groom mucking out a stall at the far end of the barn.

  The groom was a tall burly man with wild brown hair. At the sight of such a wild-looking man, Ellalee almost turned tail and left, but when she cleared her throat, she was met with kind brown eyes that seemed to slide away. Maybe he was shy or perhaps he was just one of those people who simply fit in a bit better with animals than people. Ellalee introduced herself and showed him the sketched red grouse. The man, who introduced himself as Irwin, took the picture gently from her outstretched hand and turned the picture as he studied it.

  “You usually find them up in the north field.” Irwin replied. His face looked towards her, but he still didn’t make eye contact.

  “How would one get to the north field?” Ellalee asked.

  Irwin motioned her to follow him out of a back door to the barn and pointed between two black bony trees further down a dirt track that seemed to disappear in the hazy mist.

  “Well, you’d take that path up there. A walking path down that way branches off uphill not so far past the gate. That path’ll take you to the north field. It is a high meadow that overlooks the manor and the hills off yonder west. It has lain fallow many years now, and you often find grouse hidden amongst the heather.”

  Ellalee nodded, thanked the man who, after moment, met her eyes and nodded. Ellalee took off through the gate befo
re she could think better of this reckless plan. The mist was cool and soaked her through and through, making her wish she had remembered a shawl or cloak. It wasn’t long before her ankle began reminding her that it wasn’t fully healed, but she strode onward coming to a small walking path jutting off the side of the dirt track. It was harder going up the hill, and between the chill, the damp, and the pain in her ankle, she was tempted to turn back around. Had it not been for her curiosity about the picture bird, she certainly would have.

  The path took her up into a wide field where grass and heather covered the ground which was interrupted by enormous boulders dotting the landscape. On a sunny summer day, the boulders would beg to be climbed and explored, but on this gloomy overcast day, the amorphous grey shapes made the north field seem foreboding as though the rocks were cast down from heaven to obliterate the field. She continued up the path that cut through the north field. In the distance, it looked as though there was a village. She wondered who lived there. Maybe one day, she could invent a reason to visit.

  She turned once, all the way around, taking in the full view of the harsh landscape when she noticed a hooded man in a dark charcoal cloak coming her way from the barrens of the rocky ground. He seemed to materialize from nowhere as though he was born from the boulders or perhaps a specter manifested by the mist that shrouded him. Her initial instinct was that the hooded man was the earl come back early only to find her missing. She felt sick.

  However, as the man continued to approach, Ellalee realized that he could not be the same man. She’d watched the earl for so many days cloaked and face hidden that at first she couldn’t tell how she knew it, only that it was not the earl beneath the cloak. Though this man was just about as large as the earl, his gate was decidedly different. She felt suddenly fearful. She was a long way from the manor, far too far for anyone to hear her call for help, and she turned to leave.