The Deeds of the Disturber - Elizabeth Peters [120]
As the Earl continued his narrative, I began to understand his mood. It was pride of lineage that inspired him; his eyes shone and his thin cheeks glowed with febrile colour when he spoke of the long unbroken line of gallant men and handsome ladies who were his ancestors. (History has a kindly way of glossing over little faults like brigandage, slaughter, piracy, and assaults on women, especially when the perpetrators possess titles and landed estates.)
I did not remark on this, as I might ordinarily have done, for it was only too apparent that the miserable youth could not admit, even to himself, that he was the last of his line. Firmly, and yet with a strange air of defiance, he spoke of marrying, and of holding in his arms a son who would inherit his name and titles. A feeling akin to pain stole over me as I listened. This boy would never live to see his son. Even if he succeeded in begetting an heir, the child and its unhappy mother would be infected with the same disease that was slowly killing him. Lord St John, who was across the table from me, seemed similarly affected; his face had lost its mocking smile, and when Liverpool mentioned a certain young lady as one who might be worthy of the honour of becoming the Countess of Liverpool, St John bit his lip with such vigour that a line of crimson droplets sprang up.
It was not difficult for me to persuade Lord Liverpool to show us around the house, whose appointments and design I praised extravagantly, to his obvious pleasure. Only the eighteenth-century wing was in use; but the Queen’s Bedchamber had been preserved in all its state, although the draperies hung in tatters and an agitated rustling betrayed the residence of mice in the mattress.
At the end of the Long Gallery in the Tudor wing – which was filled with paintings of dubious merit but undoubted age – I noticed a heavy door whose massive dark oak timbers and heavy hinges spoke of venerable antiquity. In my impetuous fashion I tried the handle. ‘It is locked,’ I exclaimed. ‘Are the treasure rooms and the dungeons there, your lordship? Will I see skeletons hanging from rusting chains, and horrid implements of torture?’
My little joke eluded Lord Liverpool. He stood staring in apparent consternation; but Lord St John burst into a peal of laughter.
‘That would be quite to your taste, would it not, Mrs Emerson? I fear the skeletons are in the closets, not in the dungeons. That door leads to the oldest part of the house, but it has been shut up for many years. You wouldn’t want to go there. It is full of cobwebs, mice, even a few bats.’
‘Bats do not bother me in the slightest,’ I assured him. ‘The pyramids and tombs of Egypt are infested with the creatures and I am quite accustomed to them.’
‘Ah, but the rotted floors and fallen plaster would bother you,’ Lord St John said. ‘Isn’t that right, Ned?’
‘Oh. Oh yes, quite right. Wouldn’t want you spraining one of those pretty ankles, Mrs Emerson. Er – hope you don’t mind my saying that, Professor?’
‘Not at all,’ Emerson purred. ‘Mrs Emerson does have nicely turned ankles. I am gratified you should take notice of them, your lordship.’
I hastily drew Emerson away.
He had said very little thus far, but he came into his own when we inspected the late Earl’s collection of antiquities. Nothing aroused his passion so much as the wanton looting and dispersal of antiquities that had prevailed in the earlier period of Egyptian exploration and that was still going on, despite the efforts of the Antiquities Department to stop it.
‘He ought to have been hanged,’ Emerson exclaimed, referring to the late Earl. ‘He and all his peers! Look at this, Peabody – Old Kingdom for a certainty, similar in style to the mastabas of Ti and Mereruka – stolen from God knows where –’
The object to which he referred in such vigorous terms was a limestone block covered with exquisite low relief. It depicted part of a scene of hunting in the marshes. The central figure was that of a cat with a fish in its mouth, rendered with a