But the glory of the day when they finally set out on the road, after leaving a note for the still-sleeping baron, restored both men's spirits. The air was full of lark song, and clouds of little blue butterflies performed their erratic ballet over the strips of fields.
“I didn't really want his money all that much,” said Dolph.
“He may still leave it to you.”
“Not if you succeed in putting an end to this proposed marriage, he won't,” pointed out Dolph.
“I hadn't thought of that,” said Lord Arthur, nodding as a laborer at the side of the road saluted them. “Better write and tell him it was nothing to do with you.”
“On a sunny day like this, it all seems rather grimy-waiting for someone to pop off to get their moneybags.”
Lord Arthur smiled but did not reply. He slowed as they approached a farmer driving a cart and asked the man if they were on the right road to Tregarthan Castle. It turned out they only had a mile to go.
Soon the fantastic turrets of the castle rose above the moorland.
“What a place!” exclaimed Dolph. “Like something out of one of those romances. I wonder if they have ghosts.”
“If they have, they must be very modern ones. The castle is a folly, I believe, and quite new.”
They bowled across the drawbridge under the portcullis, which glittered wickedly above their heads in the bright sunlight. “I wonder if it works,” said Dolph, staring up at it. “I wouldn't want that thing to come crashing down on my head.”
The inner courtyard was empty. No servant came running to hold the horses or to announce their arrival.
Lord Arthur and Dolph got down and tethered the horses to a post and then rang the huge bell that stood beside the brass-bound door.
After some time, the door creaked open. Anderson, the butler, stood looking at them sorrowfully.
“Lord Arthur Bessamy and Mr. Godolphin present their compliments to Mr. Palfrey and wish to speak to him,” said Lord Arthur.
The butler bowed, turned, and walked away. After some hesitation, the two men walked into the hall.
The butler disappeared into a room at the end of the hall. There came the murmur of voices, and then they could hear Mr. Palfrey's voice suddenly sharp and querulous, saying, “Get rid of them. The disgrace of it all. They must not know.”
Lord Arthur raised his thin black brows. “Now, what is it that we must not know? Come, Dolph.” And with Dolph following at his heels, he walked straight into the room from which they had heard Mr. Palfrey's voice emerging.
Mr. Palfrey let out an outraged squawk at the sight of them.
“Gentlemen,” he said, shredding a handkerchief between his fingers, “normally I would be delighted to entertain you, but I am not well, not well at all.”
“We are in fact come to call on Miss Channing.”
“Sleeping,” said Mr. Palfrey. “Can't be disturbed.”
And then they heard cries from the courtyard and the sound of many feet.
All of them stood stock still, waiting. A group of servants entered with a man in gamekeeper's dress heading them.
“It's terrible, Mr. Palfrey,” said the gamekeeper. “Just terrible.”
“Let me just see these gentlemen off the premises,” began Mr. Palfrey, but one of the servants behind the gamekeeper cried out, “They be dead. All of them. Miss Felicity, Miss Chubb, and John Tremayne.”
Like a puppet with its strings cut, Mr. Palfrey dropped into a chair. “You must be mistaken,” he gasped. “Where? How?”
The gamekeeper took over. “We went to look for them like you told us to, seeing as how Miss Felicity had run away, her not wanting to marry the baron.” Mr. Palfrey waved his hands in a despairing way, and turned a ghastly smile on Lord Arthur as if to imply that the gamekeeper was talking nonsense.
“We come to a bit o’ the cliff along to the north,” went on the gamekeeper, “and where the cliff had fallen into the sea during the storm, we found where they'd fallen over.”
“I must see this. I cannot believe it,” babbled Mr. Palfrey, now too overset to worry about Lord Arthur.
They parted to let Mr. Palfrey through, and Lord Arthur and Dolph followed close behind.
As they walked along the cliff, Dolph found himself muttering prayers. If only it were not true. Lord Arthur was clay-white, and his face was set in stern lines.
It was too beautiful a day for tragedy, thought Dolph, in a sort of dazed wonder. The sun still shone, the birds still sang, and the air was sweet with the smell of salt and wildflowers. Tufts of sea pinks grew along the top of the cliff, looking almost shocking in the gaiety of their summer display.
Finally the party came to a halt.
“Look,” said the gamekeeper.
Mr. Palfrey, Lord Arthur, and Dolph looked at the jagged, broken cliff, and the pathetic marks of hands that had clawed into the mud.
“And look down!” cried the gamekeeper. They edged to the broken lip of the cliff. There was a dry bit of turf to the side of the mud. The three men lay down and looked over.
A piece of blue muslin, as blue as the sky above, was caught on a jagged rock halfway down above the foaming sea.
“That was the dress she was wearing,” said Lord Arthur in a bleak voice. “She was wearing a blue gown when we saw her.”
As they watched, a boat nosed round an outcrop of rock far below. The men in it were scanning the water. One of them cried out, and they put their grappling irons over the side.
“Oh, no,” muttered Dolph. “I'm going to be sick.”
But they watched as the grappling irons took hold. A black thing was being pulled up out of the water. It was a trunk with limp, soaking clothes dangling over the side. The men hauled it on board and continued their search.
Still they lay there and watched and watched as the men below searched the restless waves.
At last Mr. Palfrey got shakily to his feet. “It had nothing to do with me!” he cried. “It was not my fault.”
A crowd of locals had gathered. As Dolph and Lord Arthur got to their feet as well, one of the yeoman farmers, a free man whose lands did not depend on Mr. Palfrey, bent down and picked up a clod of earth and threw it straight at Mr. Palfrey.
“Murderer!” he cried.
“Stop them,” shouted Mr. Palfrey to his servants, as more missiles followed.
But his servants stood in a circle, staring at him with accusing eyes.
With a frightened little cry, Mr. Palfrey set off running, as stones and turf whistled about his ears.
Dolph reached up and put a plump hand on his friend's shoulder. “Come away, Arthur,” he said. “There is nothing we can do for the girl now.”
While Mr. Palfrey was fleeing back to the castle, it was still early morning in Williamsburg, Virginia, and Bessie Redhill was at last up for sale. It had been a nightmare of a voyage, as they were driven off their course time after time by storms and gales. Then the good shipMary Bess had limped into Bermuda for repairs and to take on fresh water before finally setting off south for Virginia.
For a good part of the journey, Bessie had hung between life and death. She had been suffering from severe concussion, as well as from the overdose of laudanum; she had been violently seasick and then had contracted a fever. She sometimes thought that the only thing keeping her alive was her burning thirst for revenge. Before she had come down with the fever, she had begged a scrap of oilskin from one of the crew and had sewn that precious will up in it. She had not confided in the captain. The captain was an accomplice of Mr. Palfrey's in her eyes.
Virginia was about the worst place where she could have been sold. The decline of white servitude had begun some twenty years earlier because of the vast numbers of black slaves. Why buy a white, who must be granted his or her freedom and paid wages in seven years’ time, when a black worked for nothing for life? White servants were rated cheap, and their masters often tried by various ruses to prolong their servitude. In other states, Connecticut, for instance, there were no laws under which a runaway could be recovered. But there were such laws in Virginia and a recaptured servant could have years added onto that seven-year term.