“Elizabeth warned me they were out of practice with polite society,” I offered.
Lucy scoffed. Behind her, a faded threadbare boar loomed in the heavy tapestry. “Out of practice? More like they were both raised by wolves. I can’t imagine, if Elizabeth were here, she’d tolerate their behavior. A rifle to Montgomery’s head!”
I rubbed my hands together in front of the fire and thought of the first time I’d met Elizabeth. She’d dragged me through a kitchen window and dumped me on a hard stone floor. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised by our reception after all.
“Well, we are imposing on their goodwill,” I said. “I’m just grateful to be out of that carriage. Besides, Elizabeth should arrive in a few days—”
A door slammed again and Valentina returned, though without any sort of towel or blanket for us to dry ourselves. If she noticed that we were all soaked to the bone and shivering, it only seemed to give her perverse satisfaction. “Carlyle will help your associate unload the carriage and carry the sick gentleman upstairs. McKenna said to bring you down to meet the rest of the staff. You’ve arrived at an unfortunate time. We’re in the middle of a funeral.”
Lucy’s face went white. “Who died?”
Valentina’s mouth quirked, the first flicker of emotion we’d seen other than sullenness. “The last group of strangers who came to this door.”
I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not.
“Follow me,” she said. “The ground is frozen until spring thaw. We can’t bury our bodies until then, so we hold our funerals inside.”
I hesitated. “Inside? But where?”
Valentina met my eyes, and I realized that I wasn’t certain that I wanted to know where, exactly, the bodies were kept. Nor that Ballentyne Manor was anything like the safe haven I’d expected.
“You’ll see for yourself. I hope for your sake—if you truly are the mistress’s ward—you have as strong a constitution as she does, Miss Moreau.”
FOUR
VALENTINA LED THE WAY down the damp cellar stairs with a candle in one hand, despite the line of electric lights running alongside us.
“Best not to rely on the electricity,” she explained over her shoulder. “The lights have gone out on me too many times when I’m down here alone, and it’s blacker than the devil.”
The farther we descended, the colder the air grew. My breath fogged in the dim lights. No wonder they stored the bodies here—the temperature and sulfuric gases released from the bogs would preserve them in near perfect condition until the spring thaw, and the stone walls would keep away the vermin.
Montgomery was close behind me, but Lucy trailed at a distance, holding her hem high so as not to drag it on the slick stones of the spiral staircase. At last we reached the bottom, where the distant sound of a droning voice came from a room ahead that glowed faintly in the electric lights.
“It was the plague,” Valentina said.
“Plague?” Lucy asked.
“The ones that died. The plague killed them. Beggars following the winter fair circuit. Several women and children among them, too.”
She spoke casually enough, as though dead children were as common as the sheep dotting the landscape. Lucy gasped, but Valentina’s straightforward attitude didn’t bother me. Back in London, it was all high tea and polished silver. Very refined, very polite. At least these people, sullen though they were, didn’t deny the dangers around them.
Lucy lifted her skirts higher, as if the plague might be lurking in the damp stone underfoot, and Valentina smirked. We followed her through an open doorway into a chamber where a dozen or so servants, most of them young girls, gathered around a brass cross set on an altar.
“A chapel?” Lucy whispered to me. “In the cellar?”
I nodded. I’d heard about places like this. In such cold climates, when going outside was nearly impossible half the year, old households had built chapels indoors. Parts of this one, crumbled as it was, looked as though it dated back practically to the Middle Ages.
A few of the girls looked up when we slipped in, curiosity making them fidget. None were dressed as puritanically as Valentina, though all their clothes were rather dour and old-fashioned. It was a stark contrast to their bright eyes and red cheeks. Clearly they hadn’t known or cared about any of the deceased, because I caught a few excited whispers exchanged about Lucy’s and my elegant dresses, and Montgomery’s handsome looks.
Valentina shushed them and they snapped back to attention.
At the head of the room stood an older woman with a red braid shot through with white hairs, who wore a pair of men’s tweed trousers tucked into thick rubber boots. She was reading a few somber verses from a leather-bound volume in a heavy Scottish accent. She hadn’t yet noticed our presence.