A Dangerous Collaboration (A Veronica Speedwell Mystery) by Deanna Raybourn (english novels for students .txt) 📕

“Have you seen ghosts?” I asked the boy.

He nodded gravely. “Twice. I saw a dark fellow with a funny sort of tin hat. He were on the beach, lying as still as the dead. Then he seemed to rise up and he kept looking behind him at the sea as though he were seeing something awful.”

“A Spaniard,” his grandmother said promptly. “An Armada ship was wrecked upon these shores, and one or two sailors washed up, half-drowned and despairing.”

“What became of them?” I asked.

“One was a priest, a chaplain to the vessel which sank. He was welcomed by the Romilly family, and it is said they kept him on secretly and he held masses for them, although no one ever saw a trace of him within the castle.”

“And the man on the beach?” I pressed.

“He drew his sword when the islanders came down to the shore,” the child told me calmly. “He did not have time to do more than that.”

“You mean they killed him?”

“He was an enemy,” he replied in the same matter-of-fact way.

“Never you mind, Miss Speedwell,” his grandmother said with a laugh. “We’re a far sight more welcoming to most visitors.”

“I am glad to hear it,” I said, taking another deep draft of my cider.

“There’s another ghost that walks,” her grandson went on. “But I’ve never seen her because she doesn’t leave the castle.”

My pulse quickened. “A ghost in the castle? A lady?”

“The bride,” he said, his dark eyes rounding in excitement. “She walks abroad in the night in her wedding gown, waiting to wreak her vengeance on those left behind.”

A chill passed over the room, but before I could respond, the boy leapt to his feet. “I am hungry, Gran.”

“There is cold meat pie in the larder,” she told him. “Mind you wash first.”

He scampered off and she completed several more stitches on her tatting before she spoke. “He was talking of Miss Rosamund, of course,” she said mildly. “Mrs. Romilly, as she was when she died.”

“You think she is definitely dead, then?”

Her gaze was piercing as it held mine. Her fingers fairly flew as if enchanted, never faltering, but she did not look down at her work once. “She must be,” she told me. “Otherwise how could her ghost walk? No, some folk want to believe she is still alive. But mark me well, miss. Rosamund Romilly is a dead woman. And she is coming for her revenge.”

I stared at her, but Mother Nance continued to stitch away, as placidly as if she had just told me the price of corn.

“Is that one of the things you have seen?” I asked after a moment.

She slanted me a sideways, inscrutable look. “Mayhaps.”

“Do you read tea leaves? Or peer into a bowl of dark water when the moon is full?”

Mother Nance pursed her lips. “You’re a nimble one, aren’t you, miss? You’ve made a habit of skipping lightly through life, no matter what perils besiege you. Troubles fall away from you like water off a duck, do they not? You’ve a high opinion of your abilities.” I started to speak, but she held up a hand. “I don’t say it is a bad thing. Too many women think too little of themselves, content to live by a man’s lights instead of their own. No, your pretty ways have served you well, and you could no more change them than a hen could learn to crow. But you won’t always be so lucky, you know. And mind you remember, ’tis no more than Fortune’s favor that has saved you thus far. If she should choose to turn her back upon you, there be none that can save you.”

She looked like a Delphic prophetess then, warning of doom, and I wondered how much of the effect was put on for visitors. “Thank you for the warning,” I told her sincerely. “Shall I cross your palm with silver?”

She flapped a hand. “I am no Gypsy fortune-teller, miss. Save your silver for the traveling fair. The second sight has come down in our family through the centuries, a gift it were, from the first lady of this island.”

“The giant’s lady?” I hazarded.

“Bless me, no! The giant laid himself down to sleep before history was a thing that was known. And long after, when his story had passed into legend, the first fishermen of Pencarron began to sail these waters. One night, when the moon was full upon the water, and the silver light shone down, one of the fishermen, a comely lad with hair as black as night, trapped a mermaid within his net. She promised him anything if he would free her, and he was a poor lad, so he asked her for a purse of gold. But the mermaid had taken a liking to the boy, handsome as he was, so she told him if he would free her and take her to wife, for half the year she would swim with her own kind and be free as the wind itself upon the waves. But for the other half, she would live with him, bringing with her all the wealth under the sea.”

I interrupted her at this point. “There is wealth under the sea?”

“Of course there is!” she cried. “Pearls and coral made by the fishes, and gold and silver from ships sunk in tempests. All the treasures of the kings of earth are nothing as compared to the wealth that lies beneath.” She leant a trifle nearer, pitching her voice low. “And there is ivory as well, from the bones of those who have gone down to their deaths.”

I gave an involuntary shudder, and she seemed pleased. “Aye, miss. All the wealth you can imagine, as much as all the lords of creation and more again, this the mermaid promised her comely lad. And he agreed, taking her to wife but always minding that he must let her go free for half the year to swim the seas