The Moor - Laurie R. King [6]
When we reached the sitting room, Baring-Gould made for a well-worn armchair and addressed himself to Holmes. "I received a gift today that I think might interest you. That small jug on the sideboard. Metheglin. Ever tasted it?" While he spoke, he propped his sticks against the side of an armchair and lowered himself into it, then reached to the side of the fireplace and picked up a meerschaum pipe with a stem nearly a yard long, which he proceeded to fill.
"Not in some time," said Holmes. I looked at him sharply, but his face showed none of the humorous resignation I thought I had heard in his voice.
"A powerful substance—I would suggest a small dose if you're not accustomed to it. Distilled from heather honey. This batch is seven years old—I should warn you, never drink it if it's less than three. Yes, I'll have a drop. It helps to keep out the cold," he said, in answer to Holmes' gesture. I took my husband's unintentional hint and demurred, reassuring my host that coffee would be sufficient to warm me. While they discussed the merits of the contents of their glasses, I examined my surroundings.
The room was panelled in oak and had a decorative plaster roof similar to that in the gallery upstairs. Up to head height the panelling was simple oak, but above that the wood was carved in ornate arches framing dimly seen painted figures that marched around the entire room, all of them, as far as I could tell, posturing ladies in billowing draperies. I took up a lamp from the table and held it to the figure there, a woman with dogs held straining against their leads: Persuasio it said in a caption above her. Above the fire I found portraits of Gloria and next to her, Laetitia; between all the figures alternated the phrases Gold bydeth ever bright and what was, very roughly, the French equivalent, Toujours sans tache.
"The one over there might be of interest to you," Baring-Gould suggested, and tipped his head at the inner wall.
"Gaudium Vitae?" I asked doubtfully, looking at the figure in her gold tunic, its gold ties blowing dramatically behind her and a massive gold chalice held nonchalantly in slim fingertips at the end of an out-stretched arm.
"I think he means the next one," Holmes said.
In the panel to the left was a woman clothed in orange garments flecked with a design of black splotches that looked alarmingly like huge ants. She had wings sprouting from her temples, and her right hand pointed at a flying white bird that might have been a dove, although it looked more like a goose. At her feet a small white pug-faced dog, tail erect, had its nose to the ground, snuffling busily. Above the wings the caption read, Investigatio. I turned to look at Baring-Gould, suspecting a breath of humour, but he was no longer paying attention to anything but his yard-long pipe. I ran the lamplight over a few more: Valor (this figure was a man, wearing a short tunic), Harmonia with a cello, Vigilantia, Ars, Scientia—a room of virtues.
"Daisy painted them. My daughter Margaret," he explained.
"Really? What was here before?" There must have been something, as the upper portion of wall was obviously designed for decorations. I wondered what Elizabethan treasure had been lost in this slightly clumsy restoration.
"Nothing. They are new. Not new, of course, but the walls were built since I came here, to my design."
I examined the walls more closely. They did look considerably fresher than the seventeenth century.
"Local craftsmen, my pattern based on a house nearby, my daughter's painting