CHAPTER NINETEEN
By common unspoken assent, all of them hiked across a muddy field and over a low dry-stone wall rather than stay on the path when it passed close by Boggarts Green. After a couple of hundred feet they made their way back to the path, and when they were within a mile of the parsonage and could see the steeple of the church, John Brown rode up on horseback. Because they had stopped frequently to rest, it was nearly noon.
Brown immediately dismounted, and after a quick look at the bedraggled wayfarers he boosted old Patrick up into the saddle. “You’re secure up there, sir?” When the old man assured him that he was fine, Brown turned to Emily. “You found some shelter in the storm, I gather. I’ll hurry your father home, running alongside.” He glanced at the grim figure of Curzon, and went on, “Somebody pinched a couple of horses from a carriage yesterday, and they wandered back to the church. I’ll saddle one of them and bring it along for you.”
“For Branwell,” Emily told him.
“Oh?” He peered at her brother. “Oh. Yes. Why don’t you all rest here with him till I get back?”
Branwell stood up straight, for the moment hardly swaying at all. “I’ll walk, sir,” he said.
“As you please.” Brown gave him a dubious look, then turned to Emily. “For you, Miss Emily?”
She was dizzy and hungry, but she knew she could walk much farther than the remaining distance to the parsonage. She patted Keeper’s shoulder and shook her head.
“I’ll walk too,” growled Curzon.
Brown nodded, started to speak, and closed his mouth. At last he said, uncertainly, “There’s questions to be settled. The church floor is a blown-up mess and there’s a very old dead clergyman been found there.”
“We’ll tell you what happened,” said Emily, “after we restore ourselves.” She pushed back her hair and managed to smile at Brown. “The thing that was under the stone is destroyed.”
“Ah?” He peered again at the battered foursome, more carefully. “Like that, is it? Out there last night?” He looked around as if for reassurance at the wet fields in the bright sunlight. “Yes, I will want to hear it.”
Brown turned and began jogging away energetically, leading the horse. Emily was relieved to see that her father was relaxed and steady in the saddle.
When the weary party came in sight of the parsonage, Anne and Charlotte and Tabby were already on the path, hurrying toward them.
“Papa’s having oatmeal porridge and a cup of tea,” said Anne breathlessly when she was still several yards off. She ran to Emily and took her arm. “Mr. Brown told us you were following. You took good care of her?” she added to Keeper, ruffling his massive head. He licked her hand.
Charlotte and Tabby came puffing up in her wake. “Papa’s going to bed directly after he’s finished his breakfast,” said Charlotte. “Where on earth did you all find shelter last night? At Top Withens? Papa won’t say.”
“Nobody fired a pistol over the churchyard this dawn,” said Tabby, “and I don’t want to trouble the maister. Will you do it now?”
“It,” said Emily, looking at all three of them, “doesn’t need to be done anymore.”
“Ah?” said Tabby. She turned to Curzon and said, “Thank you, sir.”
He looked startled, and tilted his head to blink at her with his one eye. “Thank Miss Emily,” he said.
“Both twins . . . gone?” asked Charlotte.
“Yes,” grated Branwell, not sounding entirely pleased.
“And the . . .” Charlotte hesitated, then went on, “. . . the three, er, deaths?”
Emily gave her a tired smile. “In escrow, for now.”
“I see. Well, perhaps something can be done about that.”
Emily let her suppose it.
“Mr. Curzon,” Charlotte continued, “will you—but you’ll want to return to your rooms to refresh yourself and lie down for a bit, I expect—will you join us for supper?”
Curzon sighed heavily and shook his head. “Thank you, Miss Brontë, but I must be off to London, and this evening is for your family.” He included Tabby in his accompanying wave.
Anne took Branwell’s hand and led him toward the house. “Porridge and bed for you too,” she told him. Looking back, she called, “Our family is eternally grateful to you, Mr. Curzon, no matter what you say!”
Branwell stopped and turned around. “Yes,” he said. “Thank you. For my soul.”
Anne smiled at Curzon and resumed pulling her brother away.
Curzon shifted his weight and pulled Saltmeric’s damp coat more firmly across his shoulders. Looking up at his dark, craggy profile, Emily believed she saw stoic resignation.
He bowed. “I must go. A—a good day to you all!”
And a moment later he was striding away toward the church and the main street.
“Strange fellow!” exclaimed Tabby. “Are we ever to see him again, do you think?”
Emily saw that neither Tabby nor Charlotte would be sorry if the answer were no.
“Excuse me,” she said, and then she and Keeper were hurrying after Curzon, who, to judge by his pace, had indeed recovered from the wounds he had suffered last night.
“Alcuin!” she called.
He stopped by the churchyard wall and turned around. His one eye stared at her uneasily.
She caught up to where he stood, and after a moment she sat down on the wall. Her hat had been lost sometime during yesterday’s strenuous activities, and she shook back her hair, which still carried a scorched smell from the immolation of the werewolves in the ravine.
“London?” she said.
He hesitated, then sat on the wall a foot away from her. “En route.”
“To the monastery in Rocamadour.”
“Emily—yes. Probably.” He tilted his head to see her. “And what will you do?”
“Oh—cook, sew, write with Anne, listen to Charlotte’s money worries, humor poor Branwell. Go for daylong walks on the moors with Keeper.” She shrugged. “The routines that make me happy.”
“Ah.” He looked over his shoulder at the gravestones. “Are there any left?”
Emily dug in her pocket. When she pulled the spectacles out, she saw that one lens was gone; but she fitted them on and turned to look out across the graves.
“None,” she said after peering through the remaining blurred lens for a few moments. She took them off and put them back in her pocket. “More will arrive.”
“I daresay.” He patted Keeper’s head and looked toward the village. “Will the two of you venture back to Ponden Kirk?”
Emily yawned, and remembered only afterward that she should have covered her mouth. “Oh—probably. Not into the fairy cave, but I’d like to see where Minerva’s temple was, this time.”
Curzon yawned too, and shifted on the wet stone wall. “We all need sleep. You crawled right through the cave yesterday,” he went on. “Out through the gap at the far end of it.”
“With all the ghosts of Yorkshire at my heels. Yes.”
“I gather there’s some . . . local folklore, about that. A girl crawling through that gap.”
“Yes.” She yawned again, this time with her hand over her mouth. “I think I’ll sleep for twelve hours! Yes, it’s said that a girl who climbs through that opening in the Kirk will marry within the year.”
“That was it.”
“Nonsense, of course. And a twenty-eight-year-old woman intent on setting fire to ghosts would hardly qualify in any case.”
“I suppose not.”
“I’m quite content with the life I described just now.”
Keeper yawned too, and laid down between their boots.
“As I will be,” Curzon said stolidly,“tending the grapevines at the monastery.” He stood up and held out his hand.
“Miss Emily Brontë,” he said, “it’s been . . . an enrichment to know you.”
She shook his hand. “I’m glad I found you on the moor last year.”
He gave her a crooked smile, nodded to Keeper, and turned away to resume walking toward the main street, though not as rapidly.
Emily watched his back, and his black hair tossing in the wind, until he had disappeared around the corner of the church.
At last she stood up. “Come on, Keeper,” she said, and started back toward where Charlotte and Anne waited on the steps of the parsonage.