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“I scarce think my personal attributes are sufficient to intrigue a man of Dashwood’s character,” Grey answered dryly.
“More to the point,” Everett said, arching one brow, “what is it in Sir Francis that so intrigues you? You have not spoke of anything, save to question me about him.”
“You would be better suited to answer that than I,” Grey answered boldly. “I hear you are an intimate—the valet tells me you have been a guest at Medmenham many times this year past. What is it draws youto seek his company?”
George grunted in amusement, then flung back his head, breathing in the damp air with enjoyment. Lord John did likewise; autumn smells of leaf mold and chimney smoke, spiced with the tang of ripe muscats from the arbor nearby. Scents to stir the blood; cold air to sting cheeks and hands, exercise to stimulate and weary the limbs, making the glowing leisure of the fireside and the comforts of a dark, warm bed so appealing by contrast.
“Power,” George said at last. He lifted a hand toward the Abbey—an impressive pile of gray stone, at once stalwart in shape and delicate in design. “Dashwood aspires to great things; I would join him on that upward reach.” He cast a glance at Grey. “And you, John? It has been some time since I presumed to know you, and yet I should not have said that a thirst for social influence formed much part of your own desires.”
Grey wished no discussion of his desires; not at the moment.
“‘The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall,’” he quoted.
“‘The desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall.’” George completed the quote, and uttered a short laugh. “What is it that you seek to know then, John?” He turned his head toward Grey, dark eyes creased against the wind, and smiled as though he knew the answer.
“The truth of the death of Robert Gerald.”
He had mentioned Gerald to each of the house party in turn, choosing his moment, probing delicately. No delicacy here; he wished to shock, and did so. George’s face went comically blank, then hardened into disapproval.
“Why do you seek to entangle yourself in that sordid affair?” he demanded. “Such association ca
That stung, as it was meant to.
“My reputation is my own affair,” Grey said, “as are my reasons. Did you know Gerald?”
“No,” Everett answered shortly. By unspoken consent, they turned toward the Abbey, and walked back in silence.
On the third day, something changed. A sense of nervous anticipation seemed to pervade the air, and the air of secrecy grew heavier. Grey felt as though some stifling lid pressed down upon the Abbey, and spent as much time as possible out of doors.
Still, nothing untoward occurred during the day or evening, and he retired as usual, soon after ten o’clock. Dismissing the valet, he undressed alone. He was tired from his long rambles over the countryside, but it was early yet. He picked up a book, attempted to read, but the words seemed to slide away from his eyes. His head nodded, and he slept, sitting up in the chair.
The sound of the clock striking below in the hall woke him from uneasy dreams of dark pools and drowning. He sat up, a metal taste like blood in his mouth, and rubbed away the sleep from his eyes. Time for his nightly signal to Quarry.
Unwilling to allow Grey to risk such company alone, Quarry had followed Lord John to West Wycombe. He would, he insisted, there take up station in the meadow facing the guest wing each night, between the hours of eleven and one o’clock. Lord John was to pass a candle flame three times across the glass each night, as a sign that all was so far well.
Feeling ridiculous, Grey had done so on each of the first two nights. Tonight, he felt some small sense of reassurance as he bent to light his taper from the hearth. The house was silent, but not asleep. Something stirred, somewhere in the Abbey; he could feel it. Perhaps the ghosts of the ancient monks—perhaps something else.
The candle flame showed the reflection of his own face, a wan oval in the glass, his light blue eyes gone to dark holes. He stood a moment, holding the flame, then blew it out and went to bed, obscurely more comforted by the thought of Harry outside than by the knowledge of George Everett in the next room.
He waked in darkness, to find his bed surrounded by monks. Or men dressed as monks; each wore a rope-belted robe and a deep-cowled hood, pulled far forward to hide the face. Beyond the first startled exclamation, he lay quiet. He might have thought them the ghosts of the Abbey, save that the reassuring scents of sweat and alcohol, of powder and pomade, told him otherwise.
None spoke, but hands pulled him from his bed and set him on his feet, stripped the nightshirt from his body, and helped him into a robe of his own. A hand cupped him intimately, a caress given under cover of darkness, and he breathed musk and myrrh.
No menaces were offered, and he knew his companions to be those men with whom he had broken bread at di
Here they passed through a curious portal, this being an archway of wood and marble, carved into what he took to be the semblance of a woman’s privates, opened wide. He examined this with curiosity; early experience with whores had made him vaguely familiar, but had afforded no opportunity for close inspection.
Once within this portal, a bell began to chime somewhere ahead. The “monks” formed themselves into a line, two by two, and shuffled slowly forward, begi
“Hocus-pocus,
Hoc est corpus…”
The chant continued in the same vein—a perversion of various well-known prayers, some merely foolish nonsense, some clever or openly bawdy. Grey restrained a sudden urge to laugh, and bit his lip to stop it.
The solemn procession wound its way deeper and he smelled damp rock; were they in a cave? Evidently; as the passage widened, he saw light ahead and entered eventually into a large chamber, set with candles, whose rough-hewn walls indicated that they were indeed in a catacomb of sorts. The impression was heightened by the presence of a number of human skulls, set gri
Grey found himself pressed into a place near the wall. One figure, robed in a cardinal’s red, came forward, and Sir Francis Dashwood’s voice intoned the begi
In all truth, Grey found the proceedings tedious in the extreme, enlivened only by the appearance of a large Barbary ape, attired in bishop’s cope and miter, who appeared at the Consecration. The animal sprang upon the altar, where it gobbled and slobbered over the bread provided and spilled wine upon the floor. It would have been less entertaining, Grey thought, had the beast’s ginger whiskers and seamed countenance not reminded him so strongly of the Bishop of Ely, an old friend of his mother’s.
At the conclusion of this rite, the men went out, with considerably less solemnity than when they had come in. A good deal had been drunk in the course of the rite, and their behavior was less restrained than that of the ape.
Two men near the end of the line seized Grey by the arms and compelled him into a small alcove, around which the others had gathered. He found himself bent backward over a marble basin, the robe pushed down from his shoulders. Dashwood intoned a prayer in reverse Latin, and something warm and sticky cascaded over Grey’s head, blinding him and causing him to struggle and curse in the grip of his captors.