#i wanted to encapsulate the opposite energies of suffering and see which would win

[tangirlisfangirl]

my,,,,,my notifs,,,,,,,,

[upstartpoodle]

Bad Tidings (Chapter 3)

Rating: G

Pairing: George x Elizabeth

Summary: The third chapter of the banshee AU, in which George and Francis have a conversation about Ross and Agatha, Caroline makes an appearance and George returns to Bodmin for the first time since his encounter with Elizabeth on the moor.

Previous chapter

Chapter 3

“Francis, may I ask you something?”

It was a few days after the disastrous maiden voyage of the Queen Charlotte and George was sat by the fireside in the parlour of Trenwith, swilling a small glass of port absentmindedly in one hand. Francis sat opposite him, still looking tired and a little pale from the aftermath of the putrid throat, dressed in his shirtsleeves and wearing a dull and rather listless expression on his face. At George’s words, his eyes flickered upwards to meet his friend’s, and he frowned slightly.

“That rather depends on what the question is,” he replied, waving the hand unoccupied with his own glass of port in a vague gesture, “but I suppose I shan’t know that until you ask.”

George was too used to Francis’ manner to be put off by the odd reply, and took it as permission to ask.

“At…at your father’s wake,” he began a little cautiously—Francis and Charles had always had a complicated relationship and he wasn’t entirely sure how the other man would react to him bringing the subject up, “I overheard something your aunt—”

“Oh you overheard, did you?” interrupted Francis with a shrewd expression on his face, though the wry quirk of his lips belied his words.

“I happened to be attempting to distract myself from Dr Choake’s descriptions of the best ways to address the balance of the humours” returned George with dignity.

Francis snorted.

“I will concede that Dr Choake discussing his science is something to be avoided at all cost,” he said with a smirk, “but I was not aware that you found Aunt Agatha’s conversation to be much of an improvement.”

George did not grace this comment with a reply. It was true that he did not remotely care for the old woman’s company—a feeling that was by no means diminished by the fact that she had, as far as he could tell, yet to realise that his name was not “that upstart”—and it was also true that Francis probably wouldn’t have minded even if he said that she was an abominable harpy whose conversation he would only endure if it were somehow the means to preventing the apocalypse, but nevertheless, it still felt rather rude to admit it.

“Yes, well, as I was saying,” he said, wondering how best to bring the matter up without sounding as if he had lost his mind, “I heard her mention something about a sort of…wailing she had heard when…”

He trailed off, unsure of how to continue. Francis stared at him for one long moment, bemused, before he broke into a bout of incredulous laughter.

“Good God, George, whatever do you want to know about that for?” he exclaimed between chuckles.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” replied George quickly. “Something happened recently which reminded me of it—that is all.”

Francis, who still looked rather amused, regarded him searchingly for a moment before shrugging and taking a sip of port, a thoughtful expression on his face.

“Well it was just the wind, obviously,” he said at length, “but she was obsessed with it—kept saying that it was some omen of terrible things to come. You know, she told us that it was a banshee, for Christ’s sake!”

“A-a banshee?”

“Yes, you know, a female spirit that goes around screaming outside the households of people who are about to die or washing their clothes in streams or whatever rot they’re meant to… Are you alright, George?”

“Oh, yes I-I’m fine” replied George, although he felt that the stammer in his voice had probably betrayed that he was, in fact, not fine at all.

“I always thought you were a better liar than that,“ snorted Francis sceptically. "You’ve turned paler than I am and you don’t have the excuse of having recently suffered a serious illness, so I’m afraid you have rumbled yourself on that count.”

George remained silent. Even if he told the bare minimum of the truth, without speculation—that being that he had seen a woman on the moors who, along with having a singing voice exactly as Agatha had described, had been washing his cousin’s clothes in a stream and had somehow known he was going to die several days before the event occurred—Francis would probably think that he had been subject to some sort of stress-induced hallucination. If he went further and said that that woman had possibly been one of the spirits he had just described, he would think him mad. Besides, George could barely believe that himself. It was too far-fetched, too… He frantically scrambled for an explanation, something rational and sane but…his mind, so used to the rigid order of finance and the harsh measures of schemes and advancement, utterly failed to come up with an alternative reason for what he had seen that day on the moor. He swallowed, staring morosely into the fire flickering in the grate.

“It is nothing” he said quietly, not quite able to meet his friend’s eye.

Francis narrowed his eyes, watching him sharply for one long moment before muttering a slightly grumpy “if you say so” and taking another long sip out of his glass, frowning. George watched him out of the corner of his eye, not wanting to reveal too much by making direct eye contact. Francis was unlikely to press for answers now that he had made it clear he did not want to give them—it was simply not his way—but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t find it odd, or that he might not later remember it at some inopportune time, and he did not wish to give his friend any reason to be suspicious of him. An uncomfortable silence stretched out between them, both of them staring determinedly into the fire, before Francis spoke again.

“What are you going to do about Ross?”

“What?” George asked. He had been caught off-guard by the sudden change of subject, and it took him a few seconds to realise what Francis was asking him.

“What are you going to do about Ross?,” Francis repeated, a slightly wary expression on his face. “He led the raid on the Queen Charlotte after all, did he not?”

George’s heart sank. As much as he appreciated that Francis was not digging for the cause of his strange turn, if there were two subjects he very much wished to avoid, it was Ross and the Queen Charlotte. All he had been doing for days was picking up the pieces of that particular fiasco, to the point where burying himself in work could not distract him from the image of Matthew’s corspe, stretched out on the strand. As for Ross…well, if he never saw him again, he would consider it a cause for celebration.

“I have had enough of Ross,” he sighed bitterly, taking a sip of his port as he mulled the matter over in his head. “I don’t give a damn about what he does anymore. From now on, I will live in my world and he can live in his, and our interactions can be kept to a bare minimum.”

Francis looked sceptical, but he was telling the truth. He couldn’t deny that Ross’ words to him on the beach had hurt terribly, that they had lit a spark of rage in his chest at this man who dared to claim he cared for all men whilst acting as if he had the right to decide who deserved to live and who deserved to die. It would have been a lie to say that the spiteful part of him hadn’t desperately wanted—didn’t still want—him to pay for those words, to make him hurt in turn, to punish him for his unkind disregard, and perhaps if he had not been so occupied by something else entirely, he might have let it win. Instead, his mind had seized so absolutely on the strange and—in hindsight—rather disturbing encounter with the woman on the moor to distract him from the grief that he did not dare wallow in that that he could barely concentrate on the matter of Ross long enough to summon up the anger needed to lash out at him, let alone to form an actual plan of how he would go about it.

“So he is not in danger of any…retaliation?” asked Francis, sending him a penentrating look.

“Not from me,” George replied, bringing up a hand to his temple tiredly, “but Uncle Cary wishes to lay charges against him.”

That, he had to admit to himself, hardly encapsulated his uncle’s fury over Ross’ raid of the Queen Charlotte. He carefully kept the wince from his features as he remembered the man’s shouted words to him when he had pointed out that neither Matthew nor Captain Bray could testify to anything they had not witnessed, and later his barked orders to “stop moping and do something about that thieving wastrel”. The cruel part of him agreed wholeheartedly with uncle, but the rest of him couldn’t summon up the energy to care, and as such he suspected Cary would soon take matters into his own hands.

He was proved right the next day when, after going an entire morning and a good part of the afternoon without seeing his uncle, Cary turned up to tea with an entirely too self-satisfied look on his sharp features and, snatching up a crumpet from the table, explained what he had done, and what he planned to do to ensure that Ross was punished for his transgressions.

“Assaulting a customs officer?,” George asked, sipping his tea, a frown creasing his brow. “What evidence do you have for that?”

The first two charges had not surprised him—there were few people in the county who were not at least fairly certain that Ross had incited his tenants to raid the Queen Charlotte of its goods—but that was the first he had heard of the man being suspected of such a thing on that occasion, for all that he—and indeed anyone else who knew the reason why he had been shipped off to the Americas all those years ago—was aware that the man was most definitely capable of it. As such, he began to suspect that his uncle had not deigned to restrain himself simply to truthful allegations, and all of a sudden he began to see the shape of the other man’s plan.

“None at the moment,” replied Uncle Cary with a pointed look, “but some can always be created.”

George shrugged, taking a bite out of his own crumpet. He may no longer wish to deal with Ross, but that spiteful part of him was strong enough to keep him from caring what was done to him. Let his uncle exact his revenge, he thought laconically. He may not wish to participate, but he had no reason to intervene either.

He barely paid attention to what his uncle was doing in the coming days, something which seemed to greatly confuse Tankard, who was used to answering directly to him in most matters. Instead, when his mind was not occupied by work, all he could think of was the woman on the moor, and what Francis had told him about what Agatha had believed the source of the wailing noise outside Trenwith had been. His mind grasped onto any explanation he could think of with an almost feverish desperation, but there were only two that he could hold onto for any length of time: either that the woman had indeed been a spirit sent to forewarn him of Matthew’s death or the—more likely, in his opinion—option that he had at some point misplaced his sanity and failed to notice it. Neither of these were particularly comforting thoughts, and as a result he slept poorly, his overtaxed mind making his dreams strange and disturbing. He wished he could talk to someone about it, to hear a reassurance that he had not gone mad or… But he did not know anyone he trusted enough to be able to confide in them about it, not even Francis, who was his closest and—if he were to be honest with himself—only friend.

If only I was acquainted with someone who had some knowledge of such things, he thought with a soft sigh as he filled out the ledger in that silent, horribly empty study. An image of Agatha with her tarot cards flashed through his mind, fogged and heavy from lack of sleep, and he scoffed at himself.

“I must be tireder than I thought,” he muttered to himself, leaning down to give Ambrose a scratch behind the ear. “I would never stoop that low.”

The day before Ross’ trial, George and his uncle went to Bodmin for the election. The realisation that he had to go there—a place in such close to proximity to the moor—had prompted several mixed reactions in him. Would he find some sign there about what it all meant? Would the woman be there? Would he see her again? As a result of this, all through the carriage ride to Bodmin, he had no idea whether he should be dreading going there or wishing to get there sooner. In the end, he elected to focus as much as he could on the business at hand, that being ensuring that the candidate the Warleggans had chosen to back into parliament. After all, if he hadn’t been mad when he had seen the woman, he most certainly would be soon enough should he continue agonising over the matter as he had been.

Unwin Trevaunance, the man he had chosen to lend his support to perhaps, he admitted to himself, against his better judgement, was easily one of the most ridiculous men he had ever met. As such, he couldn’t help but be somewhat astonished when he was introduced to the man’s intended, Caroline Penvenen. He was not sure exactly what he had expected when he met her, but it had not been what he was faced with—the young lady was fiercely intelligent, with a bold manner and a razor sharp wit that he had immediately found himself being subjected to upon approaching her, and, he didn’t think he was presumptious in thinking, a completely unsuitable match for Unwin. They couldn’t possibly make each other happy, but Unwin only had eyes for her beauty and her coffers. That was the way of such matters in the circles they moved in, though, George supposed, remembering that said circles would soon expect him to take a wife, and for that wife to be a lady of consequence with whom he could make a mutually beneficial arrangement.

“I must apologise for my niece,” muttered Ray Penvenen as the pair of them followed the couple as they left the hall to greet the crowd. “Caroline has always dearly loved to be shocking.”

“Think nothing of it” murmured George truthfully. He had rather suspected that her words were more intended to score a point than strike a blow in any case, and besides, he had heard far more malicious things from a good many people over the years.

There was a slight breeze in the courtyard when they stepped up on the stand, cool for the time of year, and George supposed it must have come down from the moor. He instantly stopped that train of thought, reminding himself of exactly why thinking overmuch about the moor and everything that came with it was a bad idea. This, however, was immediately undermined as, all of a sudden, he began to hear a dreadfully familiar sound, faint, but nevertheless cutting above the ruckuss of the crowd gathered before them like a knife.

“Whatever is that noise?” Miss Penvenen, who appeared to be the first to notice it after himself, asked with a frown on her delicate features. She looked rather uncomfortable, he couldn’t help but think, and, after everything that had happened, he couldn’t help but sympathise.

“What noise?” replied Unwin disinterestedly, too distracted by waving at the crowd to pay any attention to anything else.

“That…wailing,” Miss Penvenen said, glancing around her with a slightly uneasy expression on her face. “It’s a bit like…well it sounds as if somebody’s singing…”

“Oh, that’s nothing to worry about, my dear,” said Ray Penvenen jovially. “One hears it all the time in Bodmin, especially during the Assizes. It is simply the way the wind travels through the town—that is all. The locals prefer a different expectation for it though—something about a creature up on the moors sending them bad omens or something of that ilk.”

“A creature? How thrilling.”

Despite her words, however, George did not think Miss Penvenen looked especially thrilled. It was a nice enough explanation, and if he had not seen the cause of the sound with his own eyes, he might have seized on it too, for all the fact that there was hardly any wind in the courtyard that evening somewhat contradicted it. But as it was, he had to accept that there was something entirely different going on, and the fact that at least two other people could hear the sound suggested that it was not, as he had previously been suspecting, a figment of his imagination. Well, perhaps he had not gone mad after all, which, when considering only alternative explanation for the phenomenon he had been able to come up with, was not quite as comforting a thought as it would have been otherwise.

The wailing became louder and louder as the evening progressed, and it was clear that it was having an effect on the crowd gathered to listen to the results of the election. There had been shouting before, of course, and an air of restlessness no doubt caused at least in part by the copious amounts of drink the members of the throng had been consuming, but there now sat a deep, fearful tension over the onlookers. George remembered what Ray Penvenen had told his niece about what the locals believed the sound to be, and could only suppose that this was, at least in part, the cause of the crowds new frenzied energy.

It was after he, having momentarily forgotten the screaming song that was echoing painfully in his ears, had bid Unwin to take the second chair upon drawing level with his opponent that that awful sound reached its peak. As it had when he had first heard it up on Bodmin Moor, it seemed to bounce around the courtyard and into his ears, almost defeaning him. Once again, he felt faint from the force of it, and he surreptitiously put out a hand to steady himself against a nearby post. He could only be thankful for the fact that everyone’s attention was on Unwin, for he did not particularly like the thought of almost the entire population of Bodmin seeing him have a turn like a delicate lady out of a sensational novel.

“Oh don’t do it, please. Can ’ee not hear ’er screaming up on the moor?” he heard the voice of a woman cry as if through glass, or thick molasses.

“I b’ain’t a-feared,” came the reply—a man’s voice this time and, with a momumental effort, George raised his head to see that one of the crowd had stepped forward and was addressing Unwin, his expression stormy. “Who are ’ee?”

Unwin, typically, looked stumped by this simple question, but George couldn’t hear his reply. The wailing was so loud now that he could hear nothing but that mournful, unearthly sound. Then there was another voice—a woman’s. It was familiar to him—so familiar—yet far away, and he could neither place it nor hear what she was saying. His mind tried to snatch for the sound, to pull it closer so that he could figure out what that voice that he somehow knew but could not recognise was trying to tell him, but it skittered away from him, indistinct in the fog of his brain. He could barely hear it over the screaming in his ears and the shouting of the crowd, and—

All of a sudden, the wailing stopped, cut off so abruptly that he swayed on its feet at its unexpected loss. With it went the voice, disappearing deep into the recesses of his mind. The fog that filled his brain began to clear and, breathing heavily, he slowly began to take in what was happening around him once more. Unwin, he suddenly realised, was being pelted with horse manure which, while hardly the reception to the newly instated member of parliament that he had desired, did provide a mildly amusing interlude to the night’s events. As the redcoats rushed to intervene, George pushed himself gingerly away from the post he had been leaning on, his arm trembling from the effort. A glance around confirmed that Unwin’s misfortune had proved to be the opposite for him, as it seemed that everyone had been too distracted by the assault to pay any attention to him swooning up on the stand. He let out a shaky breath, schooling his features back into impavisity. Well, he supposed, ever cloud had a silver lining.

“That rabble!,” Ray Penvenen snarled once they had retreated back inside. “Have they no respect for their betters?! Or for the law?! Someone needs to take them by the scruff of the neck and-and— Mr Warleggan, are you quite well?”

George blinked, caught off-guard by the sudden change of subject. The other man had been working himself into such a rage that he had been sure that he would be more likely to burst from the sheer force of it than notice that his companion was not well at all. He was still feeling rather shaky from his turn outside in the courtyard and would, quite frankly, have greatly preferred to head to his lodgings and lie down for a while as opposed to standing in this draughty room where he was expected to smile meaninglessly, talk business and politics, and in general act as the unfazed, perfect gentleman he had always tried so hard to be. He blinked languidly at the other man, his exhausted brain scrambling for a reply.

“I am quite alright, thank you” he said, more out of habit than any particular desire to be believed. Unsurprisingly, Penvenen was not convinced.

“Nonsense, man,” he scoffed. “You look like you’re about to fall over where you stand.”

 “Perhaps I am feeling a little unwell” George conceded, too tired to argue the point.

“Clearly,” agreed Ray Penvenen, throwing him a scrutinising look. “You should probably take a rest. The main object of the evening is achieved, after all.”

“Yes,” replied George vaguely, glad that someone else had suggested it before he. “Yes, I think I will do that.”

After having made his regrets, he headed back to his lodgings, glad to have escaped the pressure and expectations of the crowd. The slightly musty air of the inn was surprisingly cool as he made his way a little unsteadily up the stairs to his room, the wood of each step creaking softly under his weight. A heavy exhaustion had settled upon him, so that he felt as if he were dragging an invisible ball and chain behind him. Eventually, he reached the door to his chamber at the top of the stairs and pushed it open, walking over to the bed and collapsing on it with a groan of relief.

He slept sporadically for a few hours, drifting in and out of consciousness but never fully waking. Sometimes he thought he heard the wailing sound again, faint and in the distance—so faint in fact that it could indeed have been the wind—though he could never quite tell if he had dreamt it or not, even if he had been aware enough to examine the matter during his fitful rest. Then, in the early hours of the morning, a deadly quiet fell around Bodmin, and George awoke properly for the first time, then, much to his chagrin, discovered that, no matter how much he tried, he could not get back to sleep again.

The silence, he thought as he lay on his back, staring up into the pitch darkness of the room, was worse than the wailing. It was the unnaturalness of it, he supposed—the screaming had at least been something he could identify, even if he was both sceptical of and a little alarmed by its believed cause. This quiet, however, was mystifying to him—Bodmin may not be as loud a place as London, or Bath, but it was never silent. In fact, considering the evening’s events, it was even more unusual. George swallowed, gripping the sheets of the bed tightly in his fists. It was so horribly empty—that silence—and, lying there in the blackness, he felt as if the world might have disappeared around him.

“Stop it” he muttered to himself, trying his hard to ignore how resounding his voice was in the silence of the room. It would do him no good to think these morbid, far-fetched thoughts—not when he had other, more earthly concerns to consider. And yet his mind, for all that he tried to persuade it otherwise, refused to turn away from them. He exhaled sharply, angry with himself for entertaining such notions. He had become as ridiculous as the old hag he so despised, seeing portents of doom in every little thing that occurred around him, and still his treacherous brain refused to discout the notions. Well, he supposed, scowling, there was only one thing he could do. He would have to prove it to himself either way. He would have to return to the moor.

Next chapter: An almost meeting up on the moors and a peculiar dream.