Page 13 of Blood on Her Tongue
Chapter 13
Lucy swallowed as she looked at the ring. She suffered from that ache in her throat again, the one that often rose when she was anxious. “Why don’t I take it from you?” she offered.
“I wouldn’t want to impose,” Mr. Hooiman said.
“And you wouldn’t. Katje and I were just about to turn back and go to the house. It would save you the walk. I’m sure you’ve got plenty of better uses for your time.”
Mr. Hooiman hesitated, then dropped the ring in her proffered palm. Lucy knotted it in her handkerchief and took it straight to Mrs. van Dijk. Her husband had been an enthusiastic amateur historian with a particular fondness for the Middle Ages. Though Mrs. van Dijk herself cared more for classical antiquity, she had always assisted her husband in his research and might be able to date the ring.
Mrs. van Dijk locked Pasja into her dressing room, to keep her from interfering. The dog whined softly and pressed her soft nose against the crack at the bottom of the door. They could hear her sniff in violent little bursts. Ignoring this, Mrs. van Dijk washed the ring carefully in a bowl and cleaned it with a soft cloth. “Have you told anyone else about this find?” she asked as she worked.
“Not yet. We thought it best not to talk to Sarah about it. We didn’t want to upset her,” Lucy said.
“Smart girl. Of course, just because this ring was found in the same field as the bog woman doesn’t mean it belonged to her.”
“Of course,” Lucy agreed, “but it won’t hurt to be careful.”
“We must tell Michael, though. The ring was found on his land. It belongs to him,” Katje said. She fidgeted with her necklace, moving the pendant this way and that.
“And we shall, but first I’d like to know a little better what exactly it is that those peat cutters found,” Lucy said.
Mrs. van Dijk held it to the light with a set of tweezers and peered at it through a magnifying glass. “There’s an inscription on the inside of the ring,” she noted. “Quickly, Lucy, fetch me some paper and a pencil. You, girl, please hold this ring for me, and hold it steady. I need one hand for the magnifying glass and the other to write.”
As Katje held the ring, her forehead carved with a frown of concentration, Mrs. van Dijk drew what she saw, then tried to translate the shapes into letters. After a while, she lowered the glass and smiled with satisfaction. “It’s a posy ring,” she said.
“What is a posy ring?” Katje asked.
“No need to keep holding the ring up. You can place it on that saucer, dear. A posy ring is typically exchanged between lovers and sometimes used as a wedding band. It has an inscription on the inside, usually a motto or part of a love poem; ‘posy’ comes from the French ‘ posie ’: poem. Amor vincit omnia , ubi amor ibi fides , that sort of thing, though inscriptions in French were also common.”
She twirled the magnifying glass between her thick fingers as she spoke. “Wearing the words flush against the skin creates a sense of both intimacy and secrecy. Only the giver and the wearer know what the ring says, hence their popularity among lovers. They’ve fallen out of fashion now but were in vogue from the late Middle Ages until well into the seventeenth century. That’s probably when this one was made, though a specialist might be able to narrow the time frame for you. Jewelry isn’t my speciality.”
“What does the inscription say?” Lucy asked.
“‘ Et ipse dominabitur tui .’ He shall rule over you.”
“Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee,” Katje quoted. “Genesis, book three, verse sixteen.”
“Not necessarily what I would have chosen for a ring to my beloved. If I wanted to stick to the Bible, the Song of Solomon seems far more suitable, or some of the psalms. Hush, Pasja! I can hear you trying to sniff yourself through that door,” Mrs. van Dijk said. The dog whined, then wagged her tail; it thumped hard and fast against the floorboards.
“It does clear some things up, though,” Lucy said.
“Such as?”
“Firstly, the giver and wearer must have been Catholic, or they wouldn’t have chosen an inscription in Latin. Secondly, the wearer must have been a woman.”
“That doesn’t necessarily follow from the inscription. A woman willing to show her submissiveness might have given it to her lover, too,” Mrs. van Dijk said.
“But it does follow from its size.” Lucy picked the ring up from its saucer. The gold was cold against her fingertips. She slipped it on the ring finger of her left hand, which was where Catholics wore their wedding rings. “It fits, but only barely, and I’ve got small hands. You’d be hard-pressed to find a man who can wear this comfortably. Besides, it’s more common for a man to give a woman a ring than vice versa.” She removed the ring, having to tug at it gently to make it slip over the joint. Already the gold had taken on the warmth of her skin, as if eager to please.
“What will you do now?” Katje asked.
Lucy knotted the ring into her handkerchief. “I’ll show it to Michael, and I’ll ask him to take me to the local archive whenever it suits him best.” She’d need him to help her gain access; many archives required women to bring a male chaperone.
“Why the archive?”
“If I go through the records there, I might finally figure out the bog woman’s identity. If this ring does indeed belong to her and it indeed hails from the seventeenth century or thereabouts, Mrs. van Dijk has just given me a time frame for her murder. Such a thing must have been noted somewhere.”
“Are you sure?” Katje asked. “You’re assuming her contemporaries knew she’d been murdered, but how could they if we were the first to find the body? When she disappeared, they might have assumed she’d simply left.”
“A woman doesn’t simply leave on her own. Maybe you’re right, though. Maybe no one thought anything of it when she disappeared and I won’t find anything in the archives that’ll tell me who she was and why she was killed. I have to try, though.”
Mrs. van Dijk took hold of her cane from where it rested against her chair and placed it in front of her, her gloved hand caressing the handgrip, which was made of lacquered wood. “Katje, would you be a dear and please leave us? There’s something I must discuss with Lucy here.”
Katje sprang up, made a little curtsy to Mrs. van Dijk, and left, though not before shooting Lucy a curious glance. When her footsteps had died away, Mrs. van Dijk placed the pencil back on the table, gave Lucy a small smile, and said, “My dear, where does this sudden fascination for that bog body come from?”
Lucy found she couldn’t look her employer in the face. She focused her eyes on Mrs. van Dijk’s wayward curls instead, the ginger shot through with gray. “Aren’t you curious yourself, then?” Lucy asked, doing her best to keep her voice light and bright.
“I am, but I don’t have a sister whose temporary insanity had that very same bog body at its heart, so you’ll forgive me if my own curiosity doesn’t worry me but yours does. What do you hope to accomplish by solving this mystery?”
Lucy looked at her hands. The ring had left a little white circle around her finger. She pressed her nail against it, watching it blanch even more. “If I solve it, I might discover how to cure my sister.”
Mrs. van Dijk sighed and clutched the handgrip of her cane tighter. The fabric of her gloves produced a soft, silky sound as she did so. “You’re assuming her illness is connected to the bog body. Sarah believed that, too, and see what good it did her.”
“Don’t you see that’s exactly why I must know more about that bog body? What if she grows obsessed with it again? If we know who she was and why she died, it’ll take away the air of mystery, which is what obsessions thrive on.”
“Your love for your sister does you credit, but here’s a harsh truth: getting to the heart of her insanity shan’t solve it. That’s why it’s insanity—there’s no rhyme nor reason to it for those who don’t experience it. Besides, knowing something isn’t the same as solving it. I may know all there is to know about polio, but that won’t cure my leg, now, will it?”
“I don’t think you can compare those two things,” Lucy whispered.
“Perhaps, but I urge you to be very careful. You are playing with fire here. Your sister may not be well now, but who’s to say she won’t heal of her own accord? Time is the best doctor there is. Your meddling might harm her more than doing nothing would; it might, in fact, also be harmful to yourself. Still, because I care for you and for your peace of mind, I shall come along to the archive with you. The sooner we get this bit of unpleasantness out of the way, the sooner we can go home.”
Startled, Lucy dug her nail so hard into her skin that it tore. “Home?” she asked.
“Of course. I came to attend a funeral. Mercifully, we did not have one, but it does beg the question of why we are still here.”
“Because I can’t leave my sister. You said it yourself: she’s not well.” Michael had been unbelievably patient with Sarah, but there would come a point when it would be impossible to hide how disturbed she was, and then he’d have no choice but to send her to a private asylum.
“Why not? She has all the care in the world she could want,” Mrs. van Dijk said.
“She needs me,” Lucy hedged. She pressed the edge of her handkerchief against her finger to catch the exudate that leaked from the cut.
“You may not be outstaying your welcome—God knows Michael is fond of you, perhaps overly so—but I am. It’s horrible manners, and my mother didn’t raise me to have horrible manners. Besides, this house is drafty and damp. It’s playing havoc with my leg.”
Lucy closed her fist around the handkerchief. The ring lay knotted at the heart. The gold was hard and unyielding. “Then go home and leave me here, if only for a little while longer.”
Mrs. van Dijk let out a harsh little laugh. “My dear, I know you’ve had a lot on your plate lately and are probably not thinking clearly, so let me be utterly vulgar here for a moment and tell you how it is: you are my companion. I pay you to be companionable to me , not to your sister, nor your brother-in-law, nor his poor relation, nor your childhood friend the doctor. If that isn’t to your liking, then perhaps we should reconsider our arrangement. I’ll give you until after our trip to the archive to consider. Please let me know when it suits his lordship to go— if it suits him.”
“Mrs. van Dijk, if I have made you feel…” Lucy began.
The older woman raised her hand and said, “Please leave me. Pasja will start scratching at the door if she has to stay alone in the dressing room for much longer, and as I’ve said, I have been raised to be a good guest. Pull the bell rope on your way out; I wish to let the housekeeper know that I shall eat my dinner in my room. Good day to you.”