The Water Nymph: The Arboretti Family Saga - Book Two Page 4

  Richard Tottle had long been a source of information about the goings-on behind the doors of the Palace, both official and unofficial. He had been printing, “By Order of The Queen,” all official laws, speeches, and proclamations since he had become a master printer eight years earlier. He was so well-informed, in fact, that the Queen herself consulted him to find out what was stirring in her own court, and it was therefore to Richard Tottle that Crispin had gone to learn who was trying to turn Her Majesty against the Phoenix. From Tottle, Crispin was supposed to have gotten an encrypted list of those close to Queen Elizabeth who might be behind the destruction of the Phoenix. He had found half a piece of parchment containing such a list clutched in the dead man’s fingers, but the other half was gone, crudely torn away as if during a struggle. Recovered by the wrong person—one who could decode it—the lost half of the list would be a clear signal that someone was looking into the Phoenix’s detractors. A clear signal that Crispin, whose investigation had to be completely clandestine, could ill afford.

  If this devilish Sophie Champion woman did not have the piece of parchment, as it appeared she did not, then it was in somebody else’s hands, and he had better take steps to invalidate it as quickly—and secretly—as possible. Which promised to be difficult if she was roving around unsupervised, undertaking an inquiry, arousing people’s suspicions before he had even talked to them, as seemed likely given the interest she had already evinced by following him home. Running through these thoughts, Crispin picked up first her red doublet, then her leggings, then her hat, halfheartedly searching each for secret compartments and double linings. He was about to return to his seat, vanquished, when he saw Sophie glance anxiously at her right boot.

  Despite this clue, he almost missed it. He slid his finger around the inside of the shoe, tugged at the laces that looped up the front, and had just decided that she was trying to trick him, when he felt the heel give way. It pivoted, and from inside it he lifted a gold medallion and a piece of paper. He set aside the medallion, apparently an image of the goddess Diana, and unfolded the paper.

  There were only three words on it, but their juxtaposition made his stomach tighten. The first two, which had a thick, black line through them, were “Richard Tottle.” The next was “Phoenix.”

  “Is this your marketing list of murder victims?” he asked coolly, waving the paper in front of her face.

  “Certainly,” Sophie replied, equally coolly. “There are more names in the other shoe.” When she saw him glance in the direction of the other boot, actually hesitating about whether to try it or not, she laughed aloud.

  The laugh brought the raven half out of its renewed nap, just enough for it to chant, “Get the girl,” once, and resume snoring.

  Crispin returned his attention to her. “I know who Richard Tottle is—”

  “—was,” Sophie corrected helpfully.

  “Was.” Crispin bowed his thanks. “But who is the Phoenix?”

  “A mythical bird.” Sophie’s tone was pedantic. “From antiquity. Each time it is killed, it rises anew from its own ashes and therefore would be a very unsatisfying murder victim.”

  “Thank you for the lesson in classical mythology. Why is it on your list? Do you presume to travel through time?”

  “Why should that matter to you?” Sophie eyed him keenly, then wished she had not. After she had reviewed all the reasons that she hated him that could not be erased by his long dimples, she spoke again. “Lord Sandal, I have done everything you asked. I have answered your ridiculous questions. I have stripped off my clothes. I have waited patiently while you ruined my boots. But now I must go. I am hungry and thirsty and I have not slept in three nights. Or rather, four. And, unlike you, I am interested in finding out who murdered Richard Tottle.” She had not realized that this was the case until she spoke the words, but she immediately saw it was true.

  Before, Richard Tottle’s death had been an ill-timed inconvenience, one that put a stop to her investigations into Lord Grosgrain’s accident. Since Lord Grosgrain had been killed on his way to his strange meeting with Richard Tottle, Sophie had thought it possible that the two—the meeting and her godfather’s death—were connected. And now that she knew that someone had left her pistol alongside Richard Tottle’s body, now that it was clear that someone was trying to implicate her in his death, possibility turned to probability. What was more, this was strong evidence that Lord Grosgrain had been murdered. For if Lord Grosgrain had really died in an accident, her inquiries would not have excited anyone to action and certainly would not have threatened anyone so much that they tried to entangle her in a crime. Whoever killed Richard Tottle, she suspected, had killed Lord Grosgrain as well.

  The last time she had seen Lord Grosgrain, when she had given him the bill of credit made out to Richard Tottle for twelve hundred pounds, he had said he would be able to repay her soon and then added, in a voice with a tinge of fear, “unless the phoenix gets me first.” He often used phrases like that, referring to the “black dragon” or the “red lion” or the “green bear,” all of which Sophie knew were alchemical terms for the potions he was always concocting in his unflagging attempts to produce gold from lesser metals. At first she had assumed the phoenix was merely a potion she had never heard of, but after Lord Grosgrain’s accident she had thought better of it. She and Octavia and Emme had spent a day and a night skimming through his books and papers, reading everything that was not in his strange personal code, but found no mention of a chemical called the phoenix. It was then that she realized the ‘phoenix’ must be a person. Probably a person with information about her godfather’s death. In her initial message to Richard Tottle, which went unanswered and forced her to track him down at the Unicorn, she had asked both what Lord Grosgrain was supposed to be paying him for and who the Phoenix was.

  Crispin studied her as she sat wrapped in these thoughts, lost in thoughts of his own. The paper in her boot was a clear sign that she knew something, something he needed to know, something he was determined to find out. It was no use asking her questions, he saw, and simultaneously saw how he could get answers without them. He liked his plan so well that he almost had difficulty repressing a smile. Almost.

  Crispin’s tone was lazy as he broke the silence of the room. “Why are you so interested in uncovering Richard Tottle’s murderer? I do not recall him mentioning you. Was he a friend of yours?”

  Sophie countered with a question of her own. “Was he a friend of yours? What were you doing in the smoking room anyw—” She stopped speaking abruptly and her eyes grew large.

  “You only just thought of it?” Crispin chided her. “It only just occurred to you that I might have murdered him?”

  “But why did you use my pistol?” Sophie blurted. “Or rather how did you use my pistol? And why, if you wanted to frame me, did you take it away? And what were you looking for?” The demands toppled out, one after another.

  “All marvelous questions,” Crispin lauded. “Unfortunately, I’m not really in the mood to answer them. Oh, perhaps one: I took the pistol to use as leverage against you. So I could induce you to answer my questions.”

  “Leverage,” Sophie repeated under her breath, and then leveled her eyes at him. “It won’t work. I’ve answered all the questions I plan to. Now I am going home.” Sophie rose, and as she did so the silk robe fell open at the neck, revealing the swell of her breasts.

  Crispin shook his head slowly from side to side and concentrated on her mustache. “I doubt you could solve the murder of Richard Tottle without my assistance.”

  Sophie, suddenly conscious of the feeling of his eyes on her body and annoyed with herself for this consciousness, sat back down clutching the robe closed. “I need nothing that you have to offer. As it seems to me, your entire method consists in luring women to your home so you can torment them. If that is the best you can do to find the murderer…” She let her voice trail off with disdain.

  “And just how would you s
et about it?”

  “I might try searching Richard Tottle’s quarters. Perhaps he left whatever you were looking for there.” She leaned forward, and the robe slid open again. “If you were even looking for something and did not manufacture that merely as an excuse to order me out of my clothes.”

  “If that is the best you can do to find the murderer…” Crispin met her disdain and raised it.

  It did the trick. “The worst that I could do, Lord Sandal, is undoubtedly superior to your best,” Sophie growled. “From what I have read of your adventures, you are better equipped for pursuing coquettes than murderers.”

  If Sophie had known him longer, she would have known that the glittering of Crispin’s eyes boded ill for her. They were the eyes of a predatory animal, ready to pounce and sure of a victory. “Even if that were true,” he purred at her, “having observed the feeble quality of your mind, I bet that I am still a thousand times better equipped to find the murderer than you are.”

  Her reaction was instantaneous and satisfying. Sophie barely recognized her voice through her anger as she said, “Would you care to wager on that?”

  Crispin leaned back in his chair to gloat. “Wager on the fact that I can find the murderer before you can? Certainly.”

  “Very well. What about a thousand pounds? One for each time you are better equipped than I am to find him.”

  Crispin appeared to think for a moment, then shook his head. His eyes were still shining. “I would not like it to be said that I bankrupted a lady.” Sophie was about to assure him that her coffers were more than adequate to the challenge, but he went on. “Besides, monetary wagers lack excitement. Why bother to strive for something you already have? Instead of stating now what we are willing to lose, I propose that we each write down what we want to win. Something marvelous, our secret, deepest desire. The wagers will be kept locked away, so neither of us knows the stakes, until the murderer is caught. Then the loser must provide whatever the winner asked for.” He saw her hesitating, then added, “I do this only out of courtesy to you, so you will not be bored. I suspect that losing is much more interesting when you do not know what you will be expected to give up. Of course, since, unlike you, I never lose, I can only guess.”

  “In the interest of making your first time as thrilling as possible, I accept the terms of your wager.” Sophie took the quill and the piece of paper he slid across the desk to her, thought for a moment about what she might possibly want from him, let the quill hang in the air, thought again, and then, with a sly smile on her face, carefully wrote a dozen words. When she had folded her paper in quarters and he had done the same with his, she asked, “Who will hold on to these?”

  Apparently by magic, a slender man somewhere between the ages of thirty and eighty materialized in their midst. “Good evening, my lord,” the man said, as if there were nothing the least bit unusual about his master sitting in the library in the middle of the night with a barely clad woman wearing a mustache. “I took the liberty of bringing these,” he continued, lifting two silver goblets and a glass carafe of glimmering red wine from the tray he carried. “Would you like me to lock those papers in the safe?”

  Crispin spoke not to him, but to Sophie. “This is my steward, Thurston. I propose we entrust the bets to him.”

  Those who knew Thurston had long since ceased to be astonished by his ability to appear without ever making a noise and to anticipate every command before it could be spoken, but Sophie, new to his talents, was staring at him as if he were some sort of apparition. She nodded mutely and kept her eyes on him until he had, noiselessly, disappeared through the door.

  When she turned them back to the plaguesome man behind the desk, she saw that he was extending one of the goblets toward her. “Let us drink to our wager.”

  Sophie raised her vessel to him, then drank the contents down in three swallows.

  That was a mistake.

  Crispin leapt from his seat but was still not quite fast enough to keep Sophie’s head from grazing the corner of his desk before she lost consciousness.

  Chapter Three

  I have always been a connoisseur of Beauty. From when I was a child, I understood that Beauty was the true and only good. Who can deny the evidence of their eyes when every day the old, the poor, the ugly, are removed from our world by death, in order to make it better and more perfect for the young, the rich—in a word, the beautiful? Everything I have done, and everything I will do, is for the sake of Beauty alone. She sanctifies my actions, washes the blood from my hands, and praises me for my ruthlessness and loyalty.

  I knew I had been elected when I was very young. I was a striking child I was a very striking child, and from the earliest age, I harbored a repugnance for the ugliness of my family’s poverty that even my mother deemed unnatural. She, curse bless her memory, had married for love beneath her station and had thus condemned me to a life of unadulterated horror, of watching others ride the fine horses I deserved to ride, wear the rich velvets and furs that I deserved to wear, wield the power I deserved to wield.

  I understood then that, of all things, poverty is the enemy of Beauty. It destroys her, covers her in its filth, drags her down so that

  The servant heard his master’s pen drop with annoyance as he entered the room and knew he would receive a stern lecture for this interruption, but he had no choice. “A man to see you, Your Excellence,” he announced, then rushed to explain, “I would not have broken in on your writing like this, but he says he has important information for you. He told me to show you this.”

  He extended a gold signet ring for his master’s perusal. He watched as his master ran a finger over the single feather embossed into the otherwise smooth surface of the ring, then finally said, “Send him in, Kit. The usual precautions.”

  Kit returned leading a tall, blindfolded man with his hands bound behind his back. His clothes were slightly too small for him but well made, and he had a livid scar across his forehead. Kit pushed him into a chair near the desk, then stepped back two paces.

  The blindfolded man turned his head from side to side as if trying to scent out the presence of the person he had come to see. He jumped slightly as a voice quite close to his ear whispered, “What do you have for me?” It was a voice the blindfolded man did not recognize, and he frowned, trying to decide if it came from a young person or an old one, a man or a woman.

  “I sent my calling card,” he answered finally.

  “Your calling card.” The whisper was tinged with amusement. “Where did you get it?”

  “That does not matter. What matters is that I got it. I know how to find him. I can get you the Phoenix.”

  “What makes you think I want the Phoenix?”

  The blindfolded man squirmed against the restraints on his hand. “I beg your pardon for my mistake. Give me back the ring and I will go.” He rose to stand, but a powerful hand on his shoulder stopped him and shoved him back into the chair.

  The man shifted uncomfortably as the whispering resumed, right in his ear. “You are overhasty. I did not say that I did not want the Phoenix. Do you mean to tell me that you know who he is?”

  “I know how to find him,” the man replied, not answering the question. “I know how he thinks. He has already fallen out of favor with Her Majesty, so he does not have the power he is accustomed to. Weakened, he is easy prey. And I can get him for you.”

  A hand touched the man’s shoulder, pulling him forward. He had the feeling of eyes boring into him, studying him, his scar, his clothes. Then he felt warm breath on his neck. “I believe you can get the Phoenix.” The hand on his shoulder relaxed somewhat. “And I believe we shall get along very well together. Contact me when you have destroyed him. And do not be slow about it. The time is ripe for our undertaking now.” The hand left his shoulder completely. “You are dismissed.”

  The blindfolded man did not move. “We have not yet discussed my compensation,” he said slowly.

&n
bsp; “You will get your share when our undertaking is successful.”

  “I want one third of the profits.”

  “What?” The pitch of the whisper rose precipitously. “One third? Are you mad?”

  The man leaned forward, this time of his own accord, and lowered his voice. “Do you want the Phoenix or not?”

  There was silence, during which the man heard only his adversary’s short, angry breathing, and then, in a staccato whisper, “One quarter of the profits.”

  “One quarter,” the man confirmed, adding, almost offhandedly, “And the girl.”

  “What girl?”

  “Sophie Champion. The girl you are trying to frame.”

  A new tone crept into the whisper. “Why? Why do you want her?”

  “Why do you want the Phoenix?” the man challenged.

  “That is none of your business.”

  The blindfolded man nodded. “Precisely.”

  Another long moment passed in silence. “Very well, you shall have Sophie Champion. And one fifth of the profits.”

  The man turned his face toward his invisible companion. “You said one quarter.”

  “I changed my mind. I have no tolerance for weaknesses of the flesh.”

  “You cheating bastard,” the blindfolded man said through clenched teeth.

  “No names, please. A simple yes or no. Do you accept? The girl and one fifth of the profits?”

  “Yes.” The man’s jaw was still tight. “Yes, I accept.”

  “Good decision. “For one fifth of the profits, I shall have the Phoenix—”

  “And I,” the blindfolded man interrupted, “shall have Sophie Champion.” A slow smile spread across his face as he spoke. He was still wearing it when he left the workshop a quarter of an hour later, a strange, inscrutable smile.

  A smile, the old beggar woman slouched in a doorway outside Sandal Hall thought to herself, that she never wanted to see again. A smile that chilled her blood and haunted her dreams for days to come.