Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave - Stephanie Barron [58]
It was here that I encountered difficulty, and of so decided a turn that I was completely routed. For Bess would not approach the inoffensive gate, and, indeed, rolled her eyes and whinnied in such a violent fashion, backing onto her hind legs, that I lost my grip on the halter and was forced to watch in despair as she hurried herself back to the field's far corner. It was, by all accounts, inexplicable. That the mare had entered by the gate but a few hours earlier was evident, there being none other in the enclosure; but to approach it now was to her of all things the most distasteful.
There are those who will assert that Providence robbed animals of sense, and thus consigned them to serve at man's pleasure. But it was my lot to have a country childhood, and though I was denied a mount of my own, was often to observe my dear Madam Lefroy1 in command of hers. That she worked with the animal's intelligence, rather than doubting the existence of such, was apparent. And so I determined to discover what had so terrified Lady Bess about the gate.
Upon approaching it, I found nothing amiss—it seemed a gate much like any other. A scrap of fabric, grey against the whiteness of the snow, caught my eye, and I bent to retrieve it; a fine handkerchief of lawn, with Isobel's looping monogram. She left them behind her wherever she went; I had myself observed her drop them countless times, and surmised she must keep a running account with a purveyor in Town. But how had one come to be here? I secured it in my pocket, and turned to study the paddock.
As if for the first time, I saw what had filled my sight unnoticed before: several sets of footprints, crossed and trampled one upon the other; led to the small hay shed at one side of the paddock, and the door was slightly ajar. Fanny Delahoussaye again?
There was no sound from within at my approach, unless it was drowned to silence by the excited nickers that rang out from the horses’ end of the field. I touched the wooden door with gloved fingertips, and it slowly swung back on creaking hinges. There could be nothing inside, I determined once my eyes had adjusted to the light, but hay—great mounds of it piled from floor to ceiling, with a slight dusting of snow where cracks in the roof had given way to the weather. The grooms, perhaps, had visited the place upon turning out the horses, and left a sprinkling of fodder fresh upon the snow. I made as if to turn away, when my sharper senses stopped me. The scent of dried summer grass—sweet and musty enough to send one sneezing—had been overlaid with something animal. My heartbeat quickened as I put a name to the odour: it was blood, still warm and wet, and soaked into the hay at my feet.
I bent down and studied the floor, discerning in the dimness a blacker stain. The wetness led to the dark corner of the shed, and though my heart misgave me, I felt that I must know what lay there in the fodder. Lifting my skirts and treading carefully, I crept towards the farthest bale.
The fingers of a hand, reaching in endless supplication from a covering shroud of hay, stopped me still; and for an instant, my courage failed me. That it was a woman's hand I readily discerned, and something very like terror held me in its grip for the space of several heartbeats. But I recoiled at the knowledge of my faint head, and determined to go on rather than back. I reached a gloved hand to the hay and pulled it aside.
It was the maid Marguerite, and in no fit state to be seen.
Her throat had been cut from ear to ear; and her head hung at a lugubrious angle from her neck, which was bedaubed with the welter of blood that had poured from her obscene wound. Her sightless eyes were rolled back into her head so that only the whites were apparent, and her mouth was agape in a silent scream. But it was the limpness of her body, thrown like a rag doll's in the mound of hay, that affected me most strongly; the helter-skelter of limbs, nerveless beyond all mastery, were mute testament to departed life. Had she made the sign of the cross, eyes wide with