Wings of Fire - Charles Todd [58]
Mrs. Hawkins promised them tea shortly, and left them. Dr. Penrith, pleased to see anyone to till his empty hours, profusely welcomed Rutledge and insisted that he take a chair close by the hearth. A small spaniel, resting her nose on her master’s foot, stared at him myopically as he came across the room, and thumped a tail on the hearth rug. Rutledge, feeling like a man unfairly condemned to walk in flames for a time, like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, commiserated with his host on the afflictions of age, and then gently turned the conversation to the Trevelyan family.
Smiling, Dr. Penrith began to reminisce about Adrian Trevelyan, with whom he’d had a running battle over ancient Cornish legends as well as the Arthurian romances. With a chuckle he added, “Half the parish histories in England’ve been written by parish priests and doctors, but that old fool studied at Winchester and Cambridge, and thought himself a scholar. Pshaw! He wanted to track Arthur back to the Romans, but he’s a West Country hero, and nothing to do with the Romans!”
Rutledge could hear the fondness in his voice, and pictured the two men arguing over their port for the sheer joy of contradiction and controversy. In lonely lives, even the smallest battles gave great satisfaction.
“Lancelot came from France,” he pointed out, shifting in his chair as his knees turned to burned toast. Hamish, as always sensitive to Rutledge’s moods, grumbled about hellfire and damnation in the back of his mind.
“Aye, and wasn’t it just like a Frenchman to get around Guinevere! There’d been no whispers of such goings-on until Frogs took up the tales!”
Rutledge stifled a laugh and used the opening to change the direction of the conversation. ‘‘What were the whispers about the Hall, and Adrian Trevelyan’s beautiful daughter?”
“None!” the doctor turned to retort angrily. “Like Caesar’s wife, Rosamund was always above reproach!”
“What happened to Richard Trevelyan?”
The old eyes clouded with pain. “Who can say? If the gypsies had taken him, you’d think he’d have come home when he could get away. But there’s been no boy ringing the doorbell to claim he’s Richard. And no man either.”
“Would Rosamund have believed them if they had come?”
“She was an intelligent woman. She tried to believe he’d been taken away—or run away and been lost, then found and not returned. It kept hope alive in her heart, and she told James the boy would turn up, wait and see! That he’d gone off to join the army, and some farmer or carter would be bringing him back soon enough, tired and hungry.”
“And Miss Olivia?”
Dr. Penrith frowned. “Now there was an odd thing, you know. Miss Olivia never cried. She went out with the searchers, riding a pony because of her bad leg, and was gone all that day and the next, until I met her on one of the roads and sent her home. I’ve never seen a child look so tired; I thought she’d made herself ill again. But she stared at me, then said, ‘Richard wanted a tombstone with an angel on it. He told me so. I want to buy one, just a small one, to remember him by. Can you tell me how much it will cost?’ “
“How did you answer her?” Rutledge asked, intrigued.
“That they don’t put up tombstones until they have the body, and she said, quite seriously, ‘But that’s not true. There are markers in the churchyard for any man lost at sea.’ She had a raging fever by the time they got her home, and I heard no more about angels and tombstones.”
Rutledge found himself thinking of a poem in one of the earlier volumes. It began,
They stood an angel in the churchyard for the man they
lost at sea,
But for him I loved so dearly, there was never place for me
To come and mourn his passing, touch the earth beneath
my hand,
Or bring him blood-red roses ...
He tried to recall the last lines and failed.
But Hamish, the soft Scottish burr clear