Page 56 of The Ladies Least Likely
CHAPTER ONE
M ost people begin the day that will change the course of their lives entirely unaware of what is to come.
But Amaranthe Illingworth anticipated a great event when she set out that morning from her cousin the baronet’s home in Haye.
She drove herself toward the market town of Callington in the trap she had learned to hitch herself, needing only the help of the baronet’s stable boy to fasten the sturdy cob into his traces.
Traffic on the dusty road was light, a few farmers heralding sheep, while the ladies from West Haye, heading to the shops, hailed her with smiles and waves.
In her green riding coat and the smart Joan cap with its frill of muslin about her face, Amaranthe supposed herself exactly the sort of person who deserved to possess a rare, priceless, and irreplaceable manuscript.
The sun of a warm spring day shone on her head, and fortune smiled as well, for there were no other customers to take precedence as Amaranthe stepped into the bookshop beneath the musical jangle of the bell above the door.
Mr. Finney, the proprietor, bustled out from the back room to greet her and obligingly cleared a space on the shop counter as Amaranthe set the leather valise atop it.
He unrolled one of the parchment scrolls and nodded with approval at the dense rows of tiny black script that covered the page, here and there highlighted with red.
“Miss Illingworth, you have the neatest hand I can conceive. What a boon you would have been to any medieval scriptorium,” Mr. Finney said.
Amaranthe laughed. “Perhaps so,” she said, “saving that I would have been barred from the company of monks, given the unfortunate attribute of my sex. These are acceptable, then? I used my own recipe for iron gall ink, which—” She held up a hand to ward off Mr. Finney’s immediate demand— “shall remain my own little secret, for now.”
While there was no binding agent superior to gum arabic, Amaranthe had found with much experimentation—and occasionally irritating the cook—that using vinegar and a touch of indigo extended the life and quality of her ink.
She meant to guard this secret jealously, as having a superior ink would help secure her reputation as a copyist.
“And I used mercury sulfide for the vermillion,” she confided, pointing to a line of script. “So that color ought to stay fast as well.”
“As like to the original as it is possible to be.” Mr. Finney rolled the document with care. “I shall have these pages framed and sell them to antiquarians and visitors. It’s not every town can boast a place in the Domesday Book. Would you like a folio for your own?”
“I have the page imprinted in my head, I assure you,” Amaranthe replied.
“Ancient Calwetone housed twenty-four villagers, fourteen smallholders, and eleven slaves. Assessed for thirty ploughlands, half a league each of pasture and woodland, seven cattle, and one hundred eighty sheep, the whole of it six pound’s value to King William.
If only the Conqueror could see what Callington has become. ”
Mr. Finney chuckled. “You are a rare find, Miss Illingworth, precisely because you can decipher medieval scripts, instead of merely copying them.” He cast a look about the store. “I suppose you wish to discuss payment?”
Amaranthe’s breath grew shallow and high in her chest. Finally.
After two years of longing, copying pieces at her own expense, and scraping together what pennies she could from the stingy stipend her cousin allowed her.
Two years of working long into the night by the cheap tallow candles the baronet doled out to his servants, the acid ink staining her nostrils and hands.
Two years of refurbishing Favella’s cast-offs so she spent nothing on herself. At last, she had earned her prize.
Her vision danced as Mr. Finney draped a small cloth over the counter and a few dust motes rose into the air, sparkling in the sun slanting through the shop windows.
Her blood sang. She felt as Adam must have when his Creator revealed the creature He had made for his companion. But this creation was perfect.
The book was quarto size, regular folio pages folded into fourths, in all not much larger than her hand.
In a fashion not now seen it was a girdle book, with a length of leather extending from its cover that could be tucked into a lady’s belt as she went about her day.
The clasp was not ornate but had kept the pages within from buckling as parchment was prone to do.
With more reverence than the vicar at St. Mary’s used when distributing holy bread, Mr. Finney opened the three-hundred-year-old cover, and the dark ink and brilliant illuminations shone forth as if the scribe had finished them but moments before.
Amaranthe’s blood pounded in her ears. She had worn her most delicate gloves for precisely this reason, the gloves she would wear to an assembly on the rare occasion she and Favella went to balls.
With the lightest possible touch, she turned the pages, marveling at the beautiful script, the fanciful tracery of the initial capitals, the infinitely detailed artwork of the miniatures.
It was not among the costliest Book of Hours one might find, but neither was it the poorest. Her throat tightened as she noted the line of pinpricks down each page and the faint grid of ruled lines, the marks of a careful scribe.
She turned to the front where, on the flyleaf, were listed the names of the book’s proud possessors, all women.
First and faintest was Blanche, Lady Willoughby de Broke.
Then there was the elegant hand of Elizabeth, the third Baroness Willoughby de Broke, who had married a man knighted by Henry VIII and buried her treasure in a handy trunk when their monarch broke with the Roman Church.
Margaret Greville had signed her book boldly; she had held her barony suo jure, in her own right, one of the few English peeresses.
The last name Amaranthe didn’t recognize: Marguerite, Lady Vernay.
Her research on this point had been unfruitful.
Vernay was the courtesy title granted the eldest son of the Duke of Hunsdon, but the current Lord Vernay was a young boy, and of his father the duke’s two wives, neither was named Marguerite.
Less of a mystery was why such a treasure had returned to the tiny town of Callington.
Lady Blanche’s husband, Nicholas Willoughby de Broke, lay interred in their own St. Mary’s, and whomever disposed of Lady Vernay’s possessions must have hoped the book might fetch a fine price from distant family or curious friends.
Fortunately for Amaranthe, no one else, not even the tourists who came to light candles around Sir Nicholas’s magnificent effigy, had shown interest in an old prayer book, and Mr. Finney had agreed to let her barter for its purchase.
Amaranthe reminded herself to breathe. Finally, finally, this precious thing was hers. “I shall wish a proper bill of sale be made out, Mr. Finney, so there can be no doubt in any mind that this book is my property.”
As the ward of her cousin, made so by the lamentable and unforeseen death of her gentle parents, Amaranthe had no legal possessions of her own, and would not until she achieved the age one-and-twenty and could claim, in her own name, the tiny allowance out of her father’s pension that her cousin now commanded for her maintenance.
But she could not wait three years for this book.
This slim volume would be her guide to improving her copyist abilities, showing her how to draw and ink miniatures and design capitals and borders in the style of the medieval scribes.
But more than that, it was the first in the collection she meant to build, a library to rival Sir Robert Cotton’s, one that would establish her renown.
Miss Amaranthe Illingworth, antiquarian.
And besides, it was a beautiful artifact. The one beautiful thing, aside from her older brother Joseph, that she could love in this world, and call hers.
She wrapped the book in cloth and deposited it in her valise, with no inkling of how lamentably brief her possession of this treasured artifact would be.
The stables were quiet when Amaranthe returned to the baronet’s house of Penwellen later that afternoon.
She found it curious that Thaker, the stable boy, did not come to meet her, his hands slick with grease from oiling leather and his pockets heavy with dried apples for Morningstar.
But the quiet vicarage in St. Cleer that had been her home for the first sixteen years of her life had also been home to a small, fat mare whose care had fallen to Amaranthe, so with the familiarity of long habit she unharnessed the placid cob, brushed and fed him, and was returning the harness to its peg when she heard voices in the building.
“I cannot see what possible interest your condition is to me.”
Amaranthe stopped with one foot in midair. Then she put it down carefully. She now understood the expression about one’s blood turning cold. The tone of the baronet’s voice told her she must not make a noise.
“Now what can ee mean? The cheel is yours and ee do know that, aye?”
That was the voice of the new maid, Eyde. She’d come from the village of Laneast, one of many offspring of a manganese miner, and entry into service was quite a step up for her. She’d struggled to adjust to the big house and Favella’s exacting standards.
What child did she speak of? Reuben and Favella had no issue.
Reuben’s tone was icy. “Allow me to remind you that my lady will not tolerate a maid in the family way, and neither will I.”
A pause rolled out. Amaranthe heard breathing. Her own, but perhaps the girl’s also. The air glittered with sharp points of light.