less could they say whether the said garments were blue or green, wool or calico, English-cut or sacque like the French. At least “like a lady” could be interpreted to mean not, for instance, in the bodiceand-skirt of a tavern- wench or a farm-girl’s faded linseywoolsey hand-me-downs.
Something a woman couldn’t get into without the assistance of her maid.
And Mrs. Lake had a carriage, a closed post chaise driven by a groom, in which she and Horace rode for some two hours before descending to what—by Horace’s rather sketchy description—sounded like a well-to-do farmstead, a brown wooden house of two storeys set some half mile back from the road.
“The groom took the team around to the stable in the rear of the house when we descended,” said Horace. “I noticed him particularly, because his face was scarred—” With two fingers he touched his hairline and drew them down across his left eyelid, until they converged at a point an inch or so above the right-hand corner of his mouth. “And his eyes were so light, a very pale blue under extremely dark brows. He looked like a rough man—a veritable beast—and I found myself hoping Mrs. Lake would accompany me back as far as Cambridge. Perhaps I should have been more cautious,” he added unhappily, “but twenty pounds is a great deal of money—enough to pay for my board and room here for next year.”
“
For some reason Horace’s blush flared again, and he answered—his voice a little stifled—“Yes. And it was curious,” he added, puzzlement returning him to some of his composure, “because it had clearly been copied by someone who didn’t know Arabic—by someone who didn’t even know that Arabic is written right-to-left, not left- to-right. I could tell by the way the letters were drawn. Even at first glance I asked where she had copied this from—because I’m always looking out for Arabic texts, you understand, and she said, ‘Never you mind.’ She sat me down with the text—it was about two pages long—and pen and ink, at the table in the study of this house, where the light was good, and the whole time I worked, she sat in a corner, watching me and playing patience—”
“Playing
“Yes, m’am.”
“And you translated this document?”
“Yes, m’am.” His cheekbones had now gone a fiery pink. “Her message asked me to bring my Arabic lexicon, which I had.”
“And what on earth was it, to put you so to the blush?”
Horace avoided meeting her eyes. “It was an account—quite—er—Petronian—of an . . . an encounter between Governor Morgan and a female pirate named Jezebel Pitts, which was supposed to have taken place in May of 1688 in Port Royal. It was written not in Arabic, but in English using Arabic characters, as a sort of code- writing, and contained passages that would have been better suited to have been translated into Latin . . .”
“Good grief!”
“The tenor of the account would lead one to believe that the writer had been present, for it included a mix of veritable pornography and quite treasonous and conspiratorial assertions on the part of Governor Morgan—a plot to raid the colony’s treasury with the assistance of—er—Mistress Pitts and her men, though there was no mention of where the bullion so acquired was to have been bestowed, nor of course any indication of whether the plan proceeded to—er—consummation.”
“Consummation indeed,” murmured Abigail, her eyebrows raised nearly to her hairline. “When was Port Royal destroyed?”
“Sixteen ninety-two, m’am.”
“And lies full-fathom five, with nobody to miss the pilfered gold. How long did it take you to translate this remarkable document?”
“About three hours, Aunt Abigail. Mrs. Lake read it through without so much as a blush, and by her expression seemed most vexed that it had nothing to say about the whereabouts of the treasure . . . She asked me, two or three times, if I had translated it all, and I swore to her that I had. In the end she brought me a cup of coffee and some bread and meat, and went to summon her coachman, it being quite dark by then. I will say I was extremely hungry and rather vexed that all I might eat was a little bit of the meat, which is poisonous to my digestion but which would not bring on a migraine like the bread would. And coffee, I believe, is a pernicious drink, not suited to human consumption, so I poured it out after a few sips. To this abstention—for being of dyspeptic habit I depend upon regular meals—and to the exhaustion of concentration, I attributed the sleepiness that overwhelmed me. Mrs. Lake and her coachman had to assist me into the chaise, and I so misliked the man’s appearance that I struggled to remain awake and to observe if I could the countryside we traversed.”
Abigail did a moment’s mental calculation. “With no moon that night you’re fortunate he didn’t have you in the ditch.”
“Yes, m’am. Yet I found the countryside wholly unfamiliar, as one does by starlight, and despite the fact that I was shivering violently, I kept nodding off. At last I woke to find the chaise standing still in what appeared to be a stand of woods. I called out to the coachman and had no reply. I tried to open the door of the chaise and for some reason could not—it was very dark within, since we were in the woods, and in my befuddled state I couldn’t find the door handle. At last, convinced that something terrible was about to happen, I used my Arabic lexicon to break the window-glass and put my hand through to open the door from the outside—”
“Reasoning that Mrs. Lake could scarcely have you up for vandalism if her coachman had abandoned you in the wilderness ?”
The young man’s black eyebrows pulled together behind those thick lenses. “Aunt Abigail, at that point I know not what I was thinking. I staggered when I came down from the chaise, and it seemed to me that I could hear someone or something approaching me through the woods. It came to me, I know not why, that the whole of the events of the evening might have been orchestrated by one of the senior classmen—’tis precisely the sort of thing Black Dog Pugh likes to do—for my discomfiture . . . An’ ’twere not that, I had not liked the coachman’s face nor his mien. It may seem cowardly of me,” he added in a stifled voice, “and foolish, too, but I fled into the woods.”
His long, slender fingers toyed with the corn-bread on the plate; he was caught between the shame of being teased the whole of his short life and the memory of very genuine terror.
“Have you any idea where you were?”
Horace shook his head. “Weyountah says that a farmer from Concord brought me here in his wagon, having deduced—in quite your style, m’am,” he added with a faint grin, “that I was from the College by the circumstance of me clutching my Arabic lexicon to my breast when I was found in a ditch at the side of the Concord Road, raving of pirates and gold. I did not come to my right senses ’til nearly evening and then was vilely sick all the next day. I begged Weyountah and George not to breathe a word of my absence—George is the dearest of good fellows but a complete, er, rattlepate—for fear that I might be sent down for having to do with a woman and for getting drunk, though George has told me that had I been drunk my symptoms would have been quite different.”
“Do Weyountah and Mr. Fairfield know—” She paused as a discreet tap sounded at the door, and Diomede put his head in to ask after the state of the cocoa pot. “Do Weyountah and Mr.—or is it Captain?—Fairfield—”
“Mr. Ryland calls him Captain because that’s his rank in the militia troop he formed.”
“Did he, indeed? Do they know about Mrs. Lake?”
“No, m’am. Weyountah says he thinks that I was poisoned—he has made a study of plants and says there’s something called mad apple or Jamestown-weed that produces such effects—and I said I had gone to visit friends and had eaten of sallet at an inn. Such accidents do happen, he says, and naturally an innkeeper would have sent me on my way when I began to rave. In the light of Mr. Adams’s letter, and Uncle Mercer’s, I had almost convinced myself that something of the sort had indeed taken place—that it was an accident on the part of Mrs. Lake, and there was an innocent explanation. Then, four days ago it must have been, St-John Pugh—a most arrogant bullyboy . . .”
“Black hair, green eyes, and a nose like a suffused potato? Wears a yellow gown?”
“Even so, m’am—the Black Dog, he’s called. I condole you to have made his acquaintance,” added the boy, with his donnish smile. “He has been a senior here at least three years, they say, and has made my stay at this college a calvary. ’Tis only because George took me in as his fag that I’ve had some protection, though George doesn’t truly need a fag the way other seniors have them: I mean, he has Diomede to keep his rooms for him and
