A Death at Fountains Abbey

Chapter One

John Aislabie was in trouble.

‘I believe my life is in danger,’ he wrote, in a letter to the queen dated the 22nd of February. And then, when he received no reply, again on the 6th of March. He reminded her of the great service he had performed on her behalf, the sacrifices he had made to ensure that the royal family’s honour – that the crown itself – had remained intact. He underscored the words honour and crown with a thick line, making the threat explicit. A determined man, to threaten the royal family. Determined and desperate.

The queen responded a week later. ‘We are sending a young gentleman up to Yorkshire to resolve the matter. We do not wish to hear from you again.’

It was a measure of Mr Aislabie’s poor standing at court that I was the young gentleman in question.

‘Mr Hawkins?’ The coachman jumped down from his seat, boots thudding on the cobbles.

I took my hands from my pockets and nodded in greeting. I had arrived in Ripon late the night before, taking a room at the Royal Oak rather than travel the last few miles to Aislabie’s house in the dark. After breakfasting this morning I had sent word of my arrival. The carriage had raced from Studley Hall within the half hour. Clearly my host was anxious to meet me.

I couldn’t return the compliment. I had travelled to Yorkshire at the command of Queen Caroline – a command presented as a gift. It would be pleasant, non, a short trip to the country? A chance to recover from your recent misfortunes? Fresh air and long walks? This from a woman who scarce moved from her sofa. I had declined the offer. The offer was transformed into a threat. So here I was, against my will, preparing to meet one of the most hated men in England.

John Aislabie had been Chancellor of the Exchequer during the great South Sea frenzy eight years before. He’d proposed the scheme in the House of Commons. At his encouragement, thousands had invested heavily in the company’s shares. After all, what could be more secure? Mr Aislabie had put his own money into the scheme. He had invested tens of thousands of pounds of King George’s money.

And for a few giddy months that summer, shares had exploded in value. Overnight, apprentices became as rich as lords. Servants abandoned their masters, owning stock worth more than they could earn in five lifetimes. Thousands more scrambled to join the madness as the price of shares rose hour by hour. In the coffeehouses of Change Alley, trading turned more lunatic by the day. Poets and lawyers, tailors and turnkeys, parsons and brothel women scooped up every last coin they could find and joined in the national madness.

Then the bubble burst, as bubbles do. The lucky few sold out in time, holding on to their fortunes. The rest were ruined, catastrophically so. How many took their own lives in despair, rather than face the consequences of their unimaginable debts? Impossible to say. But the South Sea Scheme had been the Great Plague of investment – and Mr Aislabie had spread the disease.

The nation shouted for justice. Aislabie was found guilty of corruption and thrown in the Tower. When the public mind had turned to other things, he was allowed to slink away to Studley Royal, his country estate. Bankrupt, he insisted. Scarce able to feed his poor family.Sacrificed to spare more noble-blooded men.

No one listened and no one cared.

I had been eighteen at the time, studying divinity at Oxford. I am a gambler to my marrow, but I did not have the funds to dabble in stockjobbing, having invested my father’s allowance in the more traditional markets of whoring and drinking. I had watched in astonishment and frustration as two of my friends built dizzying fortunes in a matter of weeks. One of them had been wise enough to sell his shares before the final subscription, leaving him with a profit of ten thousand pounds. The other, a young fellow named Christopher d’Arfay, lost everything. He joined the army soon after, and I never saw him again. But I thought of him on the road north. One life destroyed, among tens of thousands.

Mr Aislabie’s coachman was a cheerful, robust fellow named Pugh, his cheeks scarred from an ancient attack of smallpox. He must have been near fifty, but he picked up my large portmanteau as if it were empty, and swung it on to the carriage. ‘Expected you yesterday, sir.’

I rolled my shoulders, frowning as my spine cracked. My journey had lasted five lamentable days, bumping and jolting along in a series of worn-out coaches until every bone had been thoroughly rattled in its socket. I felt as if I were recovering from a rheumatic fit, I ached so much. ‘Bad roads,’ I said, though that was not the only reason for the delay.

Pugh grunted in sympathy. ‘I’ve drove Mr Aislabie up and down to London a fair few times. That stretch from Leicester to Nottingham could kill a man, it’s so poor. No better in spring than winter.’

‘Yes. Very poor.’ It is the nature of long, tedious journeys that – on arrival – they must be lived again, in long, tedious conversation. A simple: ‘I travelled. It was dreadful. Here I am,’ will not do, apparently.

Pugh tied a box to the back of the chaise. Books, tobacco, playing cards and dice. A brace of pistols. I had worn them at my belt on the road, in case of attack. I hoped I would not need to take them out again.

‘A young gentleman fell hard on the Nottingham road a few weeks ago,’ Pugh trundled on. ‘Broke his arm and his wrist, poor lad. I trust you didn’t take a fall along the way, sir?’

‘Thank you, no.’

He slotted the last of my boxes into place. ‘Glad to hear that, Mr Hawkins. You’ve suffered enough injury these past weeks, I’d say.’

I raised my hand to my throat on instinct, then dropped it swiftly. A few months ago my neighbour had been stabbed to death in his bed – the day after I had threatened to kill him. At my trial, the jury had judged me not upon the evidence, but upon my character and reputation. I was found guilty, and sentenced to hang. Against all odds I had survived – but only after I had spent ten long, agonising minutes dangling from a rope, suffocating slowly as a hundred thousand spectators cheered me on. Ever since then I had suffered from nightmares: the white hood thrust over my head, the cart pulling away beneath my feet, the rope tightening around my neck. These terrors filled my dreams, and in the day left me with a dull ache in my chest – a feeling of dread that I could not shake.

I was grateful beyond reason to be alive. There were times when the mere fact of my existence could lift me to ecstasy – as if I had knocked back three bowls of punch in one. But I had met with Death that day at the scaffold. I had crossed the border into his kingdom, if only for a few moments. I feared the experience had changed me for ever. I feared, in truth, that Death still kept a hand upon my shoulder.

My hope had been that my story would not have travelled as far as the Yorkshire Dales. In the retelling of that story, I had been transmuted from an idle rogue to a golden hero – a martyr, even. That was what they had been calling me in the London newspapers, when they believed me dead. I didn’t want to be a hero. Heroes were sent on secret missions by the Queen of England, when they would much rather sit in a coffeehouse getting drunk and singing ballads.

My dreams of remaining anonymous had been dashed at breakfast, when a serving maid had asked to touch my throat for luck. I’d shooed her from the room, but it had been a gloomy experience.

If she’d asked to touch your cock, you wouldn’t feel so gloomy. Kitty, in my head.

‘We’re ready to leave?’

‘We are, sir,’ Pugh replied, nodding towards the inn. ‘If you would call your wife.’

My wife. By which he meant Kitty, who was neither my wife, nor within calling distance. For the sake of Kitty’s good name, and to ensure a civil reception at Studley Hall, I had written in advance to Mr Aislabie, explaining that I would be accompanied on my visit by my wife, Mrs Catherine Hawkins. How wondrously respectable that sounded. Unfortunately I had not had the time nor the heart to write again further along the road to explain that my wife and I had quarrelled fearsomely at Newport Pagnell, resulting in Mrs Hawkins’ swift return to London.

‘Fuck off then, Tom,’ she had shouted, in the middle of the inn. ‘Fuck off to Yorkshire, and don’t blame me if you die in some horrific way, stabbed and burned and throttled and mangled. I shall not grieve for you, not for one second. I will jump on your grave and sing I told you so, Thomas Hawkins, you fucking idiot. You may count upon it.’

‘Mrs Hawkins was called home on urgent business.’

‘Sorry to hear that, sir. You’re travelling alone, then?’

Not quite. A dark figure slipped out from behind a rag-filled wagon. He was dressed in an ancient pair of mud-brown woollen breeches and a black coat, cuffs covering his knuckles. My black coat, in fact, which was several inches too big for him. His black curls were tied in a ribbon beneath a battered three-cornered hat.

‘And who’s this?’ Pugh asked, bending towards Sam as if he were a child. I had made the same mistake, the first time I’d met him. A boy of St Giles, raised in the shadows, smaller than he should be.

Sam’s eyes – black and fathomless – fixed upon mine.

‘This is Master Samuel Fleet.’ Son of a gang captain, nephew of an assassin. And at fourteen years of age, on his way to becoming more deadly than either. ‘I’m his guardian.’

Well. Someone had to keep a watch on him.

The town square was packed with stalls for the Thursday market, the air laced with the warm tang of wool and sheepskin. Traders and townsfolk recognised our coach and hurried to clear the way for us: Mr Aislabie’s standing was far greater here in his own county. He had been mayor of Ripon, many years ago, and his son was now the town’s representative in parliament. Such things command a degree of respect, if not love.

We were soon through the town and riding along a country lane banked with thick hedgerows. Our carriage was a fine, open chaise, pulled by four of the best horses I had ever seen. The sun gleamed upon their bay coats as they raced towards Mr Aislabie’s estate of Studley Royal, along a road they knew well and seemed to enjoy. Pugh gave us their names, and the names of their forefathers, and would have continued on if I had not distracted him with a query about the weather. He was the head groom at Studley, and most likely knew the horses’ ancestry better than his own. He was a garrulous fellow, and I learned swiftly that a response was neither required nor particularly welcome. He spoke in the way some men whistle, and it was best to leave him to it.

I settled back, enjoying the sunshine. Insects buzzed in the grass, sparrows pecked at the ground with short beaks, a blackbird sang out from the branches above our heads. All about us, left, right and onwards, the fields rose and dipped, seamed with dry-stone walls and hedges. A pleasant, spring green world, spreading out to the horizon.

Sam perched upon the opposite bench, watching it all with a mistrustful eye, as if the land might rise up and swallow him. I had grown up on the Suffolk coast with its quiet villages and endless skies. Sam was born and raised in London, happy in the stink and bustle of its worst slums. He knew every thieves’ alley, every poisonous gin shop, every abandoned cellar transformed into a makeshift brothel. He was street vermin, street filth, and proud of it.

A fat bumblebee buzzed between us. Sam froze – a boy who would face down a blade without blinking. ‘It won’t harm you,’ I murmured, so as not to embarrass him in front of Pugh. Sam lifted one shoulder, as if he couldn’t care less if it stung him repeatedly in the face, but he looked relieved when it drifted on its way.

Each morning of our journey north, Sam had clambered ahead of me into the carriage and taken the bench closest to the horses, facing backwards. This suited us both well enough: if we had sat side by side we would have rolled into one another at every sharp corner. But it was such a deliberate action that I had begun to suspect a deeper motive; Sam did not do such things upon a whim.

On the day of my hanging, I had been bound in chains and paraded through the streets on an open cart. Condemned prisoners ride backwards to the gallows. The journey had been terrifying: the crowds lining the streets, the mud flung at the cart, the hatred pulsing through the air. My own fear, sharp and solid as a stone in my throat. We must all travel blind to our deaths, but to feel its slow, creeping approach with every turn of the wheel is a horror beyond imagining.

The simple roll and pitch of a carriage could return me to that morning in a heartbeat. Somehow, Sam understood this and took the seat facing backwards in order to spare me. How he had come to guess at such a deep-buried feeling I couldn’t say – and there would be no profit in asking. I was lucky to squeeze ten words out of the boy in fifty miles. But we had travelled together four days in succession with no other company, facing one another as the carriage rumbled along. Perhaps he had simply read the truth in my eyes. It was an unsettling thought, that he had been watching me so carefully.

You can’t trust him, Tom. Kitty’s voice again in my head. You know what he is.

We had travelled no more than a quarter hour when I saw a boundary wall ahead, ten feet high and stretching off into the distance. The horses pulled harder with no need for the whip, eager to be home. ‘Is this Mr Aislabie’s estate?’

Pugh twisted in his seat. ‘One corner of it. It’s Aizelbee, sir.’ I’d pronounced it Ailabee – the French way.

I hunched lower in my coat. It was a bright morning, but there was a sharp wind blowing in from the east. Sam was sitting on his hands to keep them warm. Feeble city folk, the pair of us.

‘Will we pass Fountains Abbey?’ Fellow guests at the Oak had mentioned the ancient monastery at supper. According to the – somewhat biased – landlord, they were the largest and the most splendid ruins in the country. And haunted, naturally.

‘No, sir,’ Pugh replied, and fell silent for once.

We rode through the tiny village of Studley Roger. Sam released his hands and clung to the edge of the carriage, taking in every detail as we passed through the hamlet. The size of the windows, the shape of the chimneys. The doors left open to the fresh air. A couple of muddy lanes. But nothing familiar, not really. And no tavern, I noticed, mournfully. No rowdy coffeehouse, the air clogged with pipe smoke, the latest newspaper laid out upon the table.

‘Second house upon the left. How many geese in the yard?’

Sam blinked. ‘Seven.’

This was a game we had played along the road. At least, I had played it and Sam had humoured me. He’d been raised to remain alert to his surroundings. In the city slums, there were threats and opportunities lurking in every doorway. Information could earn a boy his supper, or save his life. But I suspected Sam had a particular talent for it, something he was born with: a precision of mind far beyond my own or anyone else’s, for that matter.

We arrived at an iron gate, decorated with a coat of arms and flanked by a pair of stone lodges. An old man hurried out from one of them, waving his hat in greeting as he pulled open the gate. We rode through at a brisk pace, on to an oak-lined avenue. Thick branches reached out across the path, forming a tangle of shadows beneath. The sun, filtered through the leaves, cast a soft green light upon our skin.

I smiled at Sam, thinking of the rookery of St Giles, where planks and ladders criss-crossed the rooftops, creating high pathways through the slums. ‘Like home.’

He frowned in disagreement.

‘Mr Aislabie plans to chop all these down,’ Pugh said, waving at the trees. ‘Limes are better for an avenue. They grow straight. Oaks grow gnarly.’ As we crested the hill he slowed the horses. ‘If you’d look behind you, sir.’

I turned to see a magnificent view, the long avenue of oaks leading straight back towards the gate. From here we could see the valley below and then, rising on a twin hill, the town of Ripon. Through some trick of perspective, it appeared as if one could reach out and steal it. The avenue had been laid out so that the cathedral crowned the view precisely.

Pugh was smiling, waiting for a compliment as if he had knitted the entire thing by hand.

‘Wonderful,’ I obliged.

He grinned, and moved the horses on. ‘Best estate in England. Best in Europe when Mr Aislabie’s done with it.’

And how did Mr Aislabie pay for all these improvements, I wondered? Had he not been left bankrupt? Perhaps he’d stumbled across a magic lamp.

We turned right on to a gravelled drive already planted with the preferred lime trees. The path grew steep, the horses pulling hard against the harness. As we crested the hill, I craned my neck to catch the first view of the house.

I was expecting grandeur: a majestic heap in the new Palladian style. The views had promised it. The avenue of limes had proclaimed it. But Studley Hall was an indifferent thing, with very little to recommend it. While the front looked out upon a magnificent deer park, the rest of the house was suffocated by dense woodland. The original building, with its great arched porch and tall windows, must have begun its days as a banqueting hall. It looked to be at least three hundred years old and in a poor state of repair. Over time, additional wings had been tacked on to the original frame, with no thought to proportion or symmetry.

It soon became clear why Mr Aislabie had allowed his home to crumble into such a woeful condition. To the left of the house and some thirty yards in front of it, a score of men toiled over a new building. Carts rumbled back and forth, pulled by great workhorses. A large, sweating man stood in the middle of the foundations, swearing loudly at the workers.

Aislabie must be working upon a new home, more in keeping with his vast estate. It was certainly laid out on a grand scale. I frowned at the building works as we passed. Noise, mud, and a ruined view, barely a hundred feet from where we would be sleeping. The foreman caught my frown and scowled in turn, arms folded across his fat belly.

Pugh slowed the horses and the carriage settled to a halt at the front steps. Sam jumped down at once, landing almost soundlessly on the gravel. The house was no more impressive at close quarters. The window sashes needed a fresh coat of paint after a freezing winter, and the roof was in a sorry condition. I searched for something pleasant to say.

‘Charming.’

Pugh looked at me, then looked at the house, as if we might be seeing two different buildings.

The doors to the great hall swung open and a man of middling age emerged, one shoulder hunched. ‘Good day, sir,’ he called down the steps, clutching the edge of the door for balance. As he shuffled out I saw that his right leg was lost, replaced with a wooden peg. I hurried up to meet him, and only just suppressed a gasp of shock. His face had been ruined by fire. The right side had caught the worst of it, leaving behind a thick web of scars. Old burn marks and further scars spread down his neck, disappearing beneath his cravat. His right eye was blind, the iris a cloudy grey. His right hand too, was badly damaged, twisted in upon itself save for the thumb and forefinger.

I did my best not to stare, but it was impossible. It must have been a terrible accident, to inflict such horrifying injuries. He waited, used to the reaction of strangers. When I was recovered enough to give my name, he dipped his head.

‘Welcome to Studley Hall.’ His voice was damaged, low and rasping. It made him sound villainous, poor fellow.

I followed him into the entrance chamber, an old feasting hall with a patterned ceiling two storeys high above our heads. The latticed windows blocked out the spring sunshine, and the huge stone hearth was unlit. ‘Thank you, Mr…’

‘… Sneaton. If you would follow me? Mr Aislabie is waiting.’ He was a man of the south, and he pronounced the name differently from Pugh: Aizlabee rather than Aizelbee. Well really, if the servants couldn’t agree on how to say their master’s name, what hope did I have?

‘Perhaps we might unpack…’ I gestured towards the carriage, hoping to visit my quarters first.

A sullen-faced fellow of about five and thirty strode past us to the carriage, dressed in a green velvet coat and immaculate white stockings, his wig heavily powdered. The butler, I supposed. Two younger footmen trailed eagerly in his wake, dressed in the same livery, though not so fine. Within moments the three men were hurrying back through the hall, bags and boxes hoisted on their shoulders. That is to say, the two footmen carried my belongings, while the butler strode behind them, imperious, as if he could hear a fanfare blaring in his head as he walked.

‘West wing, Bagby,’ Sneaton called gruffly to this regal creature. ‘The oak apartments.’ Bagby did not condescend a reply. He strode up the staircase, past a large, faded tapestry, and was gone.

Sam had taken advantage of the bustle to enter the room in his preferred way: unnoticed. He stood with his back to us, staring up at the deer antlers and weapons covering the high stone walls, the swords, muskets and pistols.

Sneaton, spying him for the first time, gave a jolt of surprise. Sam had an unsettling ability to fade into the background, and Sneaton was not the first to be startled by it. ‘Your valet?’ he asked, in a disbelieving tone. Was it the mismatched clothes that caused suspicion? The black tangle of curls, defiantly kept free of any wig? Or did Sneaton sense something deeper than such surface trifles?

‘My ward.’

Sam reached up and traced a finger over the firing mechanism of an old musket. Sneaton frowned, clearly vexed by such an obvious lie but not sure how to confront it. While he struggled with this conundrum, I joined Sam at the wall. ‘Find our rooms,’ I murmured. ‘And have a scout around if you can.’

Sam slipped away up the stairs.

I followed Sneaton through an empty drawing room furnished with sagging red velvet couches and gilded tables. A harpsichord stood in one corner, its inner lid decorated with a classical scene of nymphs dancing by a river. The walls were hung with family portraits down through the ages. The finest of all was set above the white marble fireplace: the painting of a young man in a brown velvet coat. He had a confident, vigorous air, and wore an easy smile, as if he were contented with the world and a little pleased with himself. I stopped in front of him, curious.

‘Mr Hawkins,’ Sneaton nudged. He was wheezing a little.

‘Is that Mr Aislabie?’

‘Yes. From thirty years ago.’ His damaged hand hovered at my elbow. ‘Please, sir.He is impatient to meet you.’

I followed him into a narrow corridor. ‘Has something happened, Mr Sneaton?’

He knocked on the door to Aislabie’s study. His face was grave, beneath the tangle of scars. One eye blind, the other bright with anger.

‘Yes, Mr Hawkins, something has happened. Something devilish.’

Chapter Two

I smelled the blood as soon as I entered the room. The air was thick with it. Some months ago I had woken in a prison cell to find a man murdered in the next bed. Aislabie’s study was tainted with the same stink: the unmistakable scent of freshly butchered meat.

‘Mr Hawkins. You’re late, sir. I needed you here this morning.’

Aislabie stood behind a desk covered in bills and estimates – a tall, neat gentleman with an excellent bearing. He was watching through the open window as his men toiled on the new building. I saw in his profile the handsome young man from the portrait next door, grown older – the same lean face and cleft chin. His jawline had softened and his brows were grey, but at six and fifty, time had treated him well.

A trestle table stood in the centre of the room, in front of the desk. Something lay stretched out upon it, covered in bed sheets. The body of an animal, six feet in length. The sheets were streaked with blood. I slid my gaze across its bulk.

Outside there was a shout of alarm, followed by the low rumble of rocks pouring from a cart. ‘You stupid arsehole!’ The words drifted into the room from a hundred feet away. ‘Y’almost killed me you fucking idiot!’

Aislabie breathed heavily through his nose and turned to face me. His eyes were large and dark. With one swift sweep he took me in, from the top of my head to the silver buckle of my shoe. His lips pressed to a thin line. ‘How old are you?’

‘Does it matter?’ Given his own uncivil greeting, I found no reason to be polite in return. I focused my attention on the blood-soaked sheets. A fresh kill. Fresh meat, not yet tainted.

‘Five and twenty at most,’ Aislabie muttered.

Six and twenty, in fact. I had celebrated my birthday upon the road with a few bottles of claret, amazed that I had survived so long. ‘The age you entered parliament, Mr Aislabie.’

I used Sneaton’s pronunciation – Aizlabee - and placed emphasis upon the word Mister, just in spite. Aislabie’s public disgrace had ensured that he would never be granted a title. His jaw tightened, at this, or perhaps at the mention of parliament. Old humiliations, old resentments, still raw under the skin.

I tilted my chin to the trestle table, the bloodied sheets. ‘What’s this?’

His nostrils flared in disgust. ‘An outrage.’

‘It was left on the front steps this morning,’ Sneaton explained. He began to roll back the sheets then paused, scarred hand gripping the cloth. ‘You’re not womanish about blood, Mr Hawkins?’

Womanish. I thought of Kitty, cheering at the edge of a cockpit as the birds slashed each other with silver spurs.

‘It’s not a pretty sight,’ he added. And winced, realising how that must sound coming from one so ravaged.

‘When you’re ready,’ I replied.

Sneaton pulled at the linen to reveal a russet haunch and a dainty black hoof. A deer. I breathed out slowly. I’d been holding my breath without realising it, expecting something much worse. How quickly my mind turned to murder these days.

The blood was much thicker at the animal’s middle, and the sheets had become stuck to the wound. Sneaton put his hand under the cloth and tugged it free.

The doe had been slit open from its throat, down along its belly to its hind legs. Its innards had been scraped out, but something was stuffed inside the carcass.

I put a hand to my mouth. It had been carrying a fawn.

I bent down, forcing myself to examine the thing more closely. The fawn had been cut from its mother’s womb and then placed back inside the cavity, its tiny head poking out in an obscene parody of birth. Another few weeks left in peace and it would have lived, making its first steps on trembling legs. It must have been alive when it was pulled from its mother’s body. Whoever did this must have held it for a moment, warm skin and beating heart. And then wrung its neck.

‘Who found this?’

‘Sally Shutt. Our youngest maid.’

I rubbed a patch of linen between my thumb and fingers. ‘You’ve ruined some good sheets carrying it here.’

He nodded at the deer. ‘She was laid out on ’em when we found her.’

I straightened up. Neither man seemed to appreciate the importance of this fact. I was not sure if Aislabie was even listening. His gaze was riveted upon the dead fawn. ‘May I ask your position here, Mr Sneaton?’

‘I’m his honour’s secretary – and superintendent over the servants. House and gardens.’

I had guessed as much. He could not be head steward, given his broken body. Studley Royal was a huge estate, and one would need to be strong and healthy to walk all its fields and woodlands. But it was plain that Aislabie trusted Sneaton above all others. ‘I suggest you ask the housekeeper to count all the linens and see if any are missing.’

Aislabie snapped from his trance. ‘You suspect one of the servants?’

I shrugged. Anyone could slip a few bed sheets from a linen cupboard: servant, guest, or family member. ‘I’ll need the names of everyone living and working on the estate. Mr Sneaton, if you would be kind enough to draw up a list for me, perhaps we might study it together after dinner.’

‘Mr Sneaton is busy with estate work,’ Aislabie interrupted. ‘You must make your own investigations, sir – that is why I sent for you. If you had arrived when you promised, you would know my servants are honest, decent souls. There are no idle rogues at Studley, I do not permit it.’ He gave me a scrutinising look, as if I had just ruined that perfect tally.

‘Would it not be best, sir, to keep an open mind?’

Aislabie snorted. ‘This is clearly the work of a lunatic.’

‘Perhaps you are right,’ I said, making it clear from my tone that I thought otherwise. ‘If so, we are looking for a lunatic who knows how to field dress a deer. Who can carry the weight of it on his shoulders, or wheel it unnoticed to your door. Who can do all this under the cover of night, crossing through your estate without fear of breaking his neck in a fall.’

For the first time, Aislabie looked at me with approval. ‘The Gills. Yes! That was my first thought, was it not, Sneaton?’

Sneaton shifted on his hip to ease his bad leg. ‘Family of poachers,’ he explained. ‘Jeb and Annie Gill. They’ve a smallhold a few miles from here. And nine children, last I counted.’

‘Every one raised crooked, no doubt,’ Aislabie muttered. He had returned to his desk, searching through his papers for something. ‘My old steward hired Jeb Gill to work on the gardens. When was it, Jack – twelve years past? Never again. Thieves and poachers, the lot of them.’

‘But the sheets,’ I protested. ‘Where would they have found them-?’

‘Here. This’ll prove it to you.’ Aislabie thrust a folded sheaf of papers at my chest. ‘Poachers.’

I opened out the papers to discover four letters, two of them spattered with blood. I began to read the top one, the longest of the four.

‘That was the first,’ Aislabie said, watching me intently.

Dam you Aiselby, it began,

dam your Pride you son of a hoar You are nort but a Theif.

I squinted at the page. The hand was exceedingly poor and the paper was very thin. The writer must have composed the note in anger – it was torn in several places where the quill had pressed too hard against the paper. I could not make much of it without a closer study – the spelling was eccentric, and the meaning hard to follow. But its ending was plain enough.

If we doe nott here from You be sertain you will die and your Body will be bathed in Blood dam you.

‘See this, here,’ Aislabie instructed, poking a long finger at one of the more tortuous lines. ‘They’re demanding free passage on the moors to graze their wretched sheep. Demanding it! Damned bloody impudence.’

I picked my way through the sentence.

Sir we ask only free passidge on the Moors theres coneys plenty for all and Growse and graising for our sheep we aske no more than what our Fathers and Grand Fathers was grantid.

‘They claim an old right of use.’

Aislabie coloured. ‘The land is mine, bought and paid for. I will show you the deeds if you wish it-’

I shook my head vehemently. As a child, during my short visits home from school, my father would often sit me down and force me to read and recite from thick stacks of family deeds covering every parcel of land we had ever bought, every patch of woodland. ‘This is your inheritance, Thomas,’ he would say when I stumbled over some cramped Latin phrase. ‘You must know it all, by heart.’ My God, the hours I had wasted in that stifling, dusty room while the sun blazed brightly and the days of summer dwindled. If I gave it but a little thought, I was sure I could remember every damned word of those deeds even now, down to the last inch of land. Which was somewhat ironic given that – following an unfortunate misunderstanding in an Oxford brothel – I had lost my inheritance to my stepbrother.

I examined the second note, written in the same rough hand.

God who is Allmitey Dam your Soul Aiselby why doe you not anser us you Villain.

You nowe that there is no Law for a pore man but If this is not alterd we will Turn Justiss our self. Tell the world the Kirkby moors are free land or Depend upont you Shall not last a Month longer. You will Die and your Carkase will be fed to your Dogs.

‘Do you have dogs, Mr Aislabie?’

‘Of course I have dogs,’ he snapped. ‘That is scarcely the point, sir.’

I moved on to the third note. This one was shorter still and again, the writing was poor – but different from the last. An accomplice, then, unless the same man was disguising his hand. There was a great deal of blood staining the back of it, but the paper was also much thicker, leaving the message clear.

‘The first two were hammered to the front door,’ Sneaton interjected. ‘That was left upon the steps, a week ago – wrapped about a sheep’s heart.’

Aislabie – your Crimes must be punnished. You have Ruined Good and Honest Familys with your Damn’d Greed. Our mallis is too great to bear we are resolved to burn down your House. We will watch as your flesh and bones burn and melt and your Ashes scatter in the Wind. Nothing will Remain. You have ’scaped Justice too long damn you.

I could not help myself. My eyes flashed to Sneaton, a man so clearly burned by some terrible fire. But it was Aislabie who seemed most affected – and who might blame him? He had lost his wife and daughter in a fire, many years ago. Surely whoever had written those threats had known that, choosing to play upon an old and terrible tragedy. There was something particularly cruel about this note – the gloating tone, devoid of pity, and the determination clear in every word.

‘The latest one was pinned to the deer,’ Aislabie prompted, in a flat voice.

I shifted the papers, pulling out the final note.

Aislabie you Damned Traitor. This is but the beginning of Sorrows.We will burn you and your daughter in your beds. You are not alone by night or day. We will seek Revenge.

Now I understood Aislabie’s urgency this morning and his irritation at my late arrival, even if it was only by a day. His impatience and incivility could be explained by the most natural and tender of causes: the love of a father for his daughter. I considered the doe with fresh eyes, its fawn dragged from the womb and killed. Now its meaning was clear. Your child. We will murder your child. You will die together.

‘Where are your daughters, sir?’

Aislabie sighed, visibly troubled. ‘Jane is at home in Beaconsfield with her husband. Mary is in London visiting her brother.’

‘Then they are safe.’

‘Quite safe,’ he said, distracted.

I glanced at Sneaton, hoping for some explanation. He remained silent, watching his master with a careful eye. I read the note again. ‘Is there…’ I began, then hesitated. How to be delicate? ‘Might there be a third daughter, sir?’

A flash of astonishment crossed Aislabie’s face, as if I had made a great and unexpected deduction. Then he scowled as he took my meaning. ‘A bastard child? No.’

‘A daughter through marriage, then? Or a young ward – someone you might consider a daughter, if not by blood?’ I waved the note. ‘The threat is quite specific.’

Sneaton cleared his throat. ‘Your honour…’

‘In my own time, Sneaton!’ Aislabie poured himself a glass of brandy. His hand was shaking.

I took out my watch. Past noon. I could be sitting down to dinner with Kitty at the Cocked Pistol. Better still, chasing her upstairs to bed. I shoved the watch into my pocket. ‘Mr Aislabie. I have travelled for five days to reach you. I am tired, sore, and to be frank, sir, I’m not sure what you want of me. What is this matter with your daughter? Will you oblige me with an explanation? Or should I summon another carriage and return home to my wife?’

Aislabie turned in surprise. ‘Mrs Hawkins did not accompany you?’

‘She was called back to London. The note, sir?’

He settled his brandy glass. ‘We have a guest staying with us at Studley – a young widow, from Lincolnshire. I had hoped your wife might be company for her. A confidante. You know how ladies are.’

Kitty – a lady? A confidante? I had to bite my lip to stop myself from laughing.

‘Her name is Mrs Fairwood. Mrs Elizabeth Fairwood. I fear she is in great danger.’

‘Indeed? How so?’

Aislabie smiled sadly. ‘Because she is my daughter, sir. My youngest girl, returned to me from the grave.’

I stared at him in dismay. His youngest daughter had died in a fire with her mother. Glancing at Sneaton, I saw he had composed his face in that cautious expression practised by all wise servants – that is to say so neutral one might believe he had stopped thinking altogether.

Aislabie reached out, as if possessed, and put his hand upon the dead fawn’s head. He gave a shudder, and drew his fingers away.

‘Mr Aislabie, forgive me… I understood your youngest daughter died many years ago.’

‘Lizzie?’ Aislabie blinked. ‘Yes. She died in a fire, with my wife.’ For a moment I saw the grief of a young husband, fresh and raw upon his face. Then he pulled the shutters tight across the memory.

‘But you believe this visitor to be…’ What, precisely? Mr Aislabie had a reputation for being haughty and obstinate, not unbalanced.

He sensed my confusion. ‘I’m a straightforward man,’ he said, gruffly. ‘I’ve no time for tales of ghosts and demons. There is this world and – God willing – the next. I do not believe there is a path between these worlds, except in death. And yet…’ He fixed his jaw. ‘Mrs Fairwood ismy daughter. I cannot explain it easily. And yet I am certain of it.’

The thud of horses’ hooves cantering up the avenue took him back to the window. ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed, ‘They are returned.’ And then he smiled in such an unaffected way it quite transformed him. He strode to the door, no doubt expecting me to follow.

Sneaton hurried after his master, his wooden peg putting softly as it hit the oak floorboards. I could see where it had worn a hundred little dents in the wood over the years.

I tucked the letters in my pocket, thinking on a line from the first note – one that neither Sneaton nor Aislabie had chosen to mention.

You robbed England, you rogue.

It was a fair charge. And here he resided at Studley Royal, stranded in splendid exile on his enormous estate. There must be plenty who thought he deserved a harder punishment than that. Could one of them be plotting to burn down his house? Or worse?

To be blunt, it was not my concern, and my interest – in the main – was counterfeit. The queen had not sent me to Yorkshire to protect John Aislabie, or to solve his troubles. He could burn in his bed and she would take the news with exquisite indifference, before reaching for another macaron. My true mission was clear and very simple: Find the green ledger, and bring it to me.

I might begin now, here in Aislabie’s study.

A sharp tap at the window brought me to my senses: Sneaton, beckoning urgently before limping away. I became conscious again of the stink of blood and meat wafting from the deer. If I had arrived yesterday evening as planned, I would have witnessed its discovery this morning. Had this butchery been a warning to me, as much as to Aislabie?

You are not alone by day or night.

I threw the sheets over the deer and its fawn. What a waste. What a damned waste.

Chapter Three

‘How’s your riding, sir?’ Mrs Aislabie asked again.

‘Tolerable,’ I replied, distracted by the sight of her.

‘You are too modest, Mr Hawkins,’ she said, patting the thick-muscled neck of her dark bay stallion. Her gaze snagged upon my hips. ‘I’m sure you have an excellent seat.’

She must be near fifty, I warned myself, though she didn’t look it. We were a small group, gathered upon the gravelled drive: Mr Aislabie, Mr Sneaton leaning upon his walking stick, and the two women on horseback, their faces flushed from their morning ride through the estate. Aislabie had introduced his wife as ‘My Lady Judith, daughter of the Right Honourable Sir Thomas Vernon’. Her Ladyship had winked at me, clearly not as impressed by her title as her husband. Near fifty, I warned myself again. Perhaps older.

Lady Judith was a handsome woman with strong features, as if God had sketched a man’s face then changed His mind, adding wide, full lips that curved up at the sides. The silver collar of her riding coat was turned up in the gentleman’s style, the effect softened with a froth of lace about her neck. She wore a velvet cap over her pale blond hair, pierced with a white feather that fluttered in the breeze.

All most appealing, but this was not the cause of my distraction. What had confounded me was the fact that she was sitting full astride her horse. That is to say: with one leg upon one side of the beast, and the other leg upon the opposing side.

Naturally this extraordinary position would have been impossible in a gown. In its stead, she wore a pair of close-tailored drawers, stitched in a heavy woollen cloth. No doubt this remarkable garment made for a comfortable ride, but it also meant that, from the waist downwards, Mrs Aislabie’s shape was perfectly transparent.

London does not suffer from a lack of women’s legs. In my estimation there must be at least two hundred thousand pairs in and about the city. But I had never in my life seen a pair of them parted wide and clamped tight around a horse’s flanks. It was a diverting spectacle: so much so that I scarce noticed her companion, dressed in grey and perched stiffly on a fat little pony. She was sitting side-saddle, thank God. One pair of legs was distraction enough.

‘You must join me for a tour about the gardens, sir.’ Lady Judith leaned forward in her saddle, the leather creaking beneath her. ‘I will send for a horse. There is nothing so fine as a good ride before dinner, don’t you agree?’ She smiled at me.

I glanced nervously at Aislabie, but he was busy helping the woman in grey from her pony. Lady Judith followed my gaze, and her smile faded. ‘You have seen the letters?’ she murmured. ‘We’ve said nothing of them to the girl, nor this morning’s butchery. She is too fragile.’ Somehow, in her inflection, Mrs Aislabie conveyed that this was her husband’s opinion, and one she did not share.

I watched as the girl stepped away from her mount as if it might kick her. She really was tiny – they had given her a training pony to ride, as if she were a child. She was also exquisitely beautiful. This I relay as an objective fact, for it was acknowledged by everyone who spoke of her at Studley, whether they liked her or not: the gloss of her rich brown hair, the high plane of her cheekbones, the neat little chin, and features so refined and harmoniously balanced that they seemed almost a rebuke. If I am able to achieve such loveliness, cannot the rest of you try a little harder?

The faint lines about her eyes and mouth suggested she was in her late twenties. Aislabie’s London home had burned down in the winter of 1701. If by some miracle his youngest daughter had survived the fire, she would be nearing thirty now.

‘Elizabeth?’ I ventured quietly, to Lady Judith.

Her wide blue eyes gleamed, but she said nothing.

Aislabie led his charge forward as if he were presenting her at court. She moved gracefully, but her expression was curiously blank, as if she had left her character tidied away in her chamber. Aislabie, in contrast, was almost overcome with feeling. He looked on her as one might expect any father would look upon a lost daughter. With wonder at her return, fear that he might lose her again, and with love: ferocious love.

‘Mr Hawkins. May I introduce Mrs Elizabeth Fairwood. My daughter.’

Lady Judith exchanged a glance with Sneaton – frustration and concern, swiftly suppressed.

Aislabie was smiling, tears welling in his eyes. ‘My daughter,’ he said again, in a whisper. But there was something fragile in his smile, a touch of doubt in his words. Was this truly his daughter, lost in a fire so long ago? How could she have escaped? And where had she been, these past twenty-seven years?

Mrs Fairwood lifted her head. Her eyes were as dark and compelling as Aislabie’s. And what a fierce, angry look they bestowed upon me! I’d been thrown such a look before by a woman – but at least I had earned it first. One would think – as an abstract example – I’d promised to marry her, then accidentally slept with her sister.

I stepped into a low bow, pressing my hand to my heart. ‘Madam. I am truly honoured.’

I was mocking her, and she knew it. Her gaze shifted somewhere beyond my right shoulder. ‘So the queen has sent you to discover who threatens us? Extraordinary. Were there no gentlemen available at court?’

Aislabie looked startled. ‘You know of the letters?’

‘The servants talk, Mr Aislabie.’

The sun had gone in as we spoke and the sky was heavy with rain clouds, as if summoned by her ill humour. A few light spots of rain spattered upon my face. Mr Aislabie. Not, Father.

He began to splutter out a reply, but she stopped him with a curt gesture. ‘I believe this morning’s note contained a threat to my own life?’

‘You will come to no harm under my roof, Lizzie,’ Aislabie promised.

I had never seen a woman who looked less like a Lizzie.

We had all been ignoring the rain, but with the next gust of wind it began to pour down with a sudden violence. Lady Judith jumped down from her horse, handing the reins to an approaching groom. ‘Inside!’ she ordered, as if the thought might not have occurred to us. We rushed up the steps into the great hall. Sneaton was the last to arrive, wiping the rain from his coat.

‘Well,’ Lady Judith said. She stood by the window with her hands on her hips, scowling at the weather. Her plans for a ride about the gardens were ruined. A blinding flash lit up the grey stone walls, followed by a deep roll of thunder. Once it was gone, the room seemed darker still. Bursts of rain blew in through the open doorway, splattering on the flagstones. The butler pushed the great arched doors shut with an echoing thud. It felt as if he were shutting us all together inside a tomb.

‘I must change from these wet clothes,’ Lady Judith declared. She strode up the great oak stairs, her long legs taking the steps two at a time. Legs, in woollen drawers. Legs, visible, on stairs. I’m sure I paid them very little attention.

I moved to the window, studying the scene that she had been watching moments before. The sudden storm had turned the whole world grey, rain sweeping across the grounds in great squalls. A herd of deer sheltered beneath a beech tree, barely visible through the downpour. The men working on the new building had clustered beneath large waxed canvases that looked like the black sails of a pirate ship. The water poured off the edges in thin streams.

Mrs Fairwood joined me at the window. ‘You think me a fraud,’ she said, breathing the words on to the glass. ‘You are here to expose me.’

I laughed. ‘No, indeed. I didn’t know of your existence until this morning.’

She frowned, and wiped the mist from the windowpane with a grey gloved hand.

The sky flashed again with lightning. ‘Glad I’m not out there,’ I said, nodding towards the men sheltering under canvas. ‘Hard work in foul weather.’

‘Indeed,’ she murmured, seemingly surprised that I should consider it. ‘And they were not paid last quarter day. Mr Aislabiedisputes the bill.’

‘They’ll be paid.’ Mr Sneaton had limped across the room to join us. ‘Mr Simpson drinks hard and counts poor. One day I’ll catch him sober and we’ll make his bill tally. His men are fed and most are quartered on the estate. They won’t starve.’

The rain had eased off enough for the men to discard the waxed sheets and take up their tools again. The sound of hammers and chisels rose up once more, ringing against stone.

‘They won’t starve,’ Mrs Fairwood echoed. ‘What good fortune they enjoy.’

If Sneaton heard the sarcasm, he chose to ignore it. ‘I’ll make a list of all the servants for you sir,’ he said quietly. ‘Mark those who could visit the laundry and the linen cupboards unseen.’

‘-Sneaton!’ Aislabie was heading towards his study. ‘Mr Hawkins, we shall speak further at dinner. And you must visit Mr Hallow, my head keeper. He knows all the poachers hereabouts. See that you ask him about the Gills.’

Sneaton bowed to us and turned upon his good leg, hobbling after his master.

‘You have your orders, sir,’ Mrs Fairwood said, looking pleased to be rid of me.

‘Yes. I’m afraid I’m excessively poor at following orders. If it is not too much trouble, madam, I should like to hear your story. Dinner must be an hour away, at least.’

She drew back. ‘It would not be seemly to be alone in your company, sir.’

I had spent so long in London, I had quite forgotten the cramped etiquette found in some parts of the country. I assured her I had no designs upon her virtue. She was a fine-looking woman, without question, but hers was a cold beauty, worn like armour. And she lacked that spark I loved, the wit and play that made seduction so enjoyable. I might as well flirt with a marble statue.

‘Well.’ Mrs Fairwood remained reluctant. ‘I still do not see how it is your business.’

In truth, it wasn’t. I had one urgent task at Studley Hall, and it did not involve Mrs Fairwood in the slightest. But that must wait until nightfall. If, in the meantime, I did not investigate the threats made against his family, Mr Aislabie would grow suspicious. And a lost daughter, returned from the grave? I confess – I was intrigued.

I reached into my pocket and drew out the most recent note. Mrs Fairwood read it slowly. ‘You are not alone by day or night.’ She shuddered. ‘How terrible.’

I found it curious that it was this line that disturbed her the most, more than the threat of being burned alive in her bed. ‘It was pinned to a butchered doe. Her fawn had been cut from the womb.’

‘Dreadful,’ she said, in an absent tone.

I plucked the note from her hands. ‘I am under orders from Queen Caroline to investigate these threats. Whoever wrote this letter believes that you are Elizabeth Aislabie, saved from the fire. They would have you burn along with your father. You are the fawn, Mrs Fairwood.’

She considered this for a long moment, her lips caught in a deep pout. ‘Very well,’ she decided. ‘Let us be done with it. The library should be empty, unless Metcalfe has taken up residence.’

I had no idea who this was.

She furrowed her brows. ‘We should be safe. I doubt he’s left his room today.’ She drew away from the window and, in an imperious fashion, beckoned for me to follow. I found it wearisome.

‘Remind me – what’s that fellow’s name?’ I indicated the head footman, inching silently towards the kitchens.

A flicker of anxiety crossed her face, swiftly buried. ‘Bagby.’

‘Mr Bagby!’ I called.

He gave a start. ‘Sir?’

‘Obliged if you’d bring a bottle of claret to the library. Wait!’ I held up my finger. ‘How long is your story, madam?’

She frowned at me. ‘I have never timed it, sir.’

‘Two bottles, Bagby,’ I said. One could never be too careful.

The library lay at the back of the house. Thick volumes of history and natural philosophy lay open on dark mahogany tables. Terracotta busts of great writers and thinkers stared out blindly from the tops of high shelves. The air smelled of leather and old fires. I rubbed my hands together, and blew on them. The library faced north. Its tall terrace doors helped bring in more light, but the room felt colder than my cell in the Marshalsea.

I kept my eyes sharp for the green ledger – the sole reason I had been sent to Studley Hall. It seemed unlikely that Aislabie would leave something so dangerous and valuable out on view, but one should never underestimate the arrogance of the abominably rich. I would return tonight to hunt in earnest, with Sam.

A young maid arrived to light the fire, carrying fresh kindling in her apron. Mrs Fairwood, perceiving some fault in the preparation, began to direct the girl in a low but insistent tone. I was reminded of my stepmother’s meddling in the kitchen, to the despair of our long-suffering cook. This girl was no more than fifteen, but she must have built a thousand fires and surely required no assistance.

I left them to their negotiations, idling my time by examining a handsome desk set in a corner next to the terrace doors. Upon closer inspection, I found it had been somewhat ruined – the green leather top was scratched and torn and spattered with ink stains. A jumble of notes lay abandoned on one side, weighted with a volume of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura. I moved the book aside to examine the papers more closely. A gentleman’s hand, I thought, heavily blotched and growing wilder as it reached the bottom of the page. It put me in mind of the most recent threats to Mr Aislabie, and the paper was of a similar quality. I slipped the top sheet into my coat pocket.

The desk was covered in little curls of spilled tobacco, that had me reaching for my own pouch. The maid had coaxed a few flames into life, so I stole a piece of kindling to light my pipe, then tossed it back.

Mrs Fairwood had left the fire and stationed herself at the terrace doors, frowning through the glass at the scene beyond. I joined her there, trailing tobacco smoke. She glared at my pipe as if it were an instrument of the devil and reached for the latch, opening the closest door with a hard shove. Damp spring air streamed into the room. Behind us, the maid muttered to herself, shielding the fire with her body.

I leaned against the door post, struck once again by the unfavourable position of Mr Aislabie’s house. For a man of his enormous wealth, I would have expected his library to open out on to a tranquil stretch of lawn, or a formal garden with a fountain burbling away at its heart. Instead it looked on to a large and busy yard, servants rushing back and forth to the laundry, the dairy, the water pump. Chickens scratched in the dirt for corn, flapping and squawking as a groom ran through them, heading for the stables. The dogs were barking in their kennels and there were pigs somewhere: I could smell them.

Mrs Fairwood had opened the door to let in the fresh air, but with it had come the warm country stink of sweat and manure, sour milk and wet hay, fresh bread and livestock. These were the smells of my childhood – the happy times when I could escape my father’s lectures and roam about the outhouses. The first time I’d fucked a girl the world had smelled the same – a dairymaid with rough hands and a grin that could stir me now, just at the thought of it. In truth she had fucked me, pushing me to the ground and straddling me… which made me think again of Lady Judith, and her breeches. Who must be fifty. At least fifty.

Our parsonage had remained so close to the outhouses because of my father’s miserly tendencies and loathing of disruption, but such proximity was unusual for such a grand estate. I supposed that once Aislabie’s new building was finished he would tear down Studley Hall, leaving the working parts of it at a greater remove from the house.

Pugh led a grey mare across the yard, her hooves splashing through silvery puddles. My gaze drifted to the dark woodland beyond, the trees pressed together in dense clusters. It would be easy enough to steal through them at night, torches burning. Or was someone scheming from inside the house? Mr Aislabie seemed determined to trust his servants. A noble sentiment – but if he was wrong, I could burn along with him.

I returned to the fire, settling myself in a high-backed armchair. The seat was well padded in green silk, and – after five days of jolting and bumping along terrible roads – I sank into it with a quiet pleasure. If I must burn, let me burn in comfort. Perhaps I could just stay herefor the duration, and let the world come to me? If I might just have a footstool? To my knowledge there was no law stating that a secret and potentially life-threatening mission must be conducted without a footstool.

The maid pushed herself back off her knees. ‘Would you like the candles lit, sir?’

‘No, that won’t be necessary,’ Mrs Fairwood replied. She had been toying with a globe set beneath one of the larger bookshelves, turning it slowly east and west across the wide stretch of the Atlantic.

‘It’s turned dull this afternoon,’ I said. ‘And I think Mr Aislabie can afford it.’ I nodded to the maid, indicating that she should light the candles. She looked quietly thrilled to be acting against Mrs Fairwood’s wishes. I asked for her name.

‘Sally Shutt, sir,’ she replied, in a broad accent. She lit a taper, crossing to each candle in turn. She was a pretty girl, with a plump figure and a fair complexion. A little tired though, about the eyes.

‘Do you light the rooms at daybreak, Sally?’

‘I do, sir.’ She lit the final candle and blew out the taper, tossing it on to the fire.

‘You found the deer this morning,’ I said. She flinched, which was answer enough. ‘Did you see anything? Anyone?’

She shook her head. ‘It were barely dawn. Just me and the crows…’

A memory, long buried, returned to me – ruined corpses lined up in a prison yard, and the sound of crows cawing in excitement. The cloying stench of death. I could taste it again in my mouth.

‘… Must’ve bin a dozen or more, pecking for meat. They made a fine breakfast of it.’

‘Enough chatter, Sally.’ Bagby had arrived with the wine: two bottles as requested upon a silver tray. ‘Cook’s been calling for you.’ His words were for her, but his disapproval was aimed at me. Perhaps we were not meant to converse with the servants. Some households are tediously fastidious about such matters.

Sally curtsied and hurried from the room, but not before flashing me a look that promised there was more to be said, later.I smiled in acknowledgement, earning myself a scowl from Bagby.

Mrs Fairwood had kept her back to the room throughout this exchange, spinning the globe slowly beneath her gloved fingers. But I could tell from the set of her shoulders, the stiff way she held herself, that she had been listening attentively.

She joined me by the hearth. ‘Silly girl never remembers the screen,’ she said, moving it in front of the grate. She perched upon the edge of her chair so that her feet might reach the floor, and stared at me, the wine, the butler, with barely concealed distaste. Her eyes were fringed with thick black lashes, and very dark. Despite her ill-humour, they were quite captivating.

Bagby poured me a glass of claret. I wondered how he kept his gloves and stockings so crisp and white. I suspected by giving all the troublesome jobs to his men. Well, it was his prerogative, I supposed.

Mrs Fairwood held a hand over her own glass, and told him to close the terrace doors. ‘Then leave us.’ Bagby did as he was ordered. ‘Ghastly man,’ she muttered, without explaining why. But then I’d yet to hear her speak well of anyone. We might all be reduced to a two-word insult by Mrs Fairwood. Silly girl. Ghastly man. Frightful rake.

The sounds of the yard were now muffled, and the pungent stink had been locked outside, leaving only a faint whiff on the air. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked quietly. I gulped down most of the wine, and filled the glass again to the brim.

Mrs Fairwood seemed reluctant to begin, so I prompted her. ‘Well then, madam. You believe you are Mr Aislabie’s lost daughter?’

She pulled off her gloves and sighed heavily. ‘Yes, Mr Hawkins, I do. And may God help me to endure it.’

Chapter Four

Mrs Fairwood was raised in a small village on the Lincolnshire coast, the nearest town a day’s ride away. There was money – a good deal of it – and a grand house with servants. She called her childhood ‘quiet’ – I thought it sounded lonely, trailing the empty rooms, filling the silence with books. She had no siblings, but she was close to her father, who recognised her appetite for knowledge, and encouraged it.

‘And your mother?’

‘Devout.’ Her teeth trapped the last letter. She didn’t appreciate the interruption. I drank my wine and settled back, shoulders relaxing in the deep embrace of the armchair. The heat from the fire burned upon my cheek.

‘When I was twenty-one, my father decided we should spend the summer in Lincoln with his sister. There was talk of finding a husband. I had dissuaded him many times before. I was content at home.’ Her eyes flickered to the shelves behind me. ‘My father insisted. He said it was time that I lived in the world, not just in my books.’ Her fingers clenched together in her lap.

‘When was this?’

‘Eight years ago.’

1720. So she was twenty-nine. That would match Elizabeth Aislabie’s age, if she survived the fire.

‘At the last moment my mother took to her bed: a nervous attack. I thought my father would abandon the trip, but we set off the next day without her. My aunt would act as chaperone once we reached Lincoln.’

She poured herself a thimbleful of wine. ‘I do not drink.’

‘Evidently.’

Her dark eyes lifted to mine. ‘How dull I must seem to you. My drab little story.’

I did not find her dull. Petulant, yes, and chilly, but not dull. In truth her story had drawn me in: the earnest timbre of her voice; the measured way she chose her words. I had grown accustomed to Kitty, who would speak a half dozen sentences in one breath, who spoke not only with words but with her hands, her eyes, her whole body. Mrs Fairwood moved no more than was needed, spoke no more than was needed, her voice clipped and precise.

She sipped the wine. ‘Is this a good claret?’

‘The best.’

She rolled the stem of the glass between her fingers. ‘This glass, too. These chairs.’

Yes, it was all very fine – and hers to enjoy for ever if she could persuade the world she was Aislabie’s lost child. This story might be nothing more than a fortune hunter’s yarn. I placed my glass on the table. Mrs Fairwood had a closed countenance, but I had made a great deal of money at the gaming tables, reading truth and lies on my opponents’ faces. I leaned forward, watching closely.

‘To my surprise, I enjoyed my stay in Lincoln,’ she said, returning to her story as if by rote. ‘My aunt’s circle was small but scrupulously well selected. I had the opportunity to speak with a number of learned men upon a diverse range of topics. The great matters of our age. Theology, metaphysics, affairs of state, the very systems of the universe…’

I made a silent note never to visit Lincoln. ‘And this is what you study here, in Mr Aislabie’s library? That is your copy of Lucretius on the desk?’

She frowned at this fresh interruption. ‘It belongs to Metcalfe. You will meet him at dinner, if he can be roused.’ She leaned back and stared at the clock on the mantelpiece with the blank expression of an automaton.

I must wind her up, then. ‘Pray – continue, madam.’

‘Oh.’ She feigned surprise. ‘Forgive me, sir. I thought you must have grown tired of my story. Would you not rather discuss Lucretius? I take it you have read De Rerum Natura.’ Her lips curled into a condescending smile.

‘I think I fell asleep upon a copy once, at Oxford.’ This was not true. I had, in fact, studied the blasted thing at some length as a student. But if Mrs Fairwood wished to cast me as a japing idiot, that suited me perfectly well. Another lesson from the gaming table: better to be thought a fool than a threat. ‘Please.’

She dipped her chin in gracious assent. ‘That summer in Lincoln was a happy time. Home had become oppressive, though I only realised this once I had left. My mother never strayed far from the village, but in her later years she would not even leave the house, save for church. My father too seemed altered by the trip. He laughed more easily. It is a comfort now to think of those last days.’ She looked down. ‘He died. My father died. It came without warning. One moment he was well, and the next…’ A tear slid down her perfect cheek. She trapped it beneath her fingers, brushed it away.

‘I’m sorry.’

Eight years had passed, and still the grief lingered. I could see how naturally it fell upon the contours of her face, how familiar and constant a companion it had become. How, in fact, it had shaped her, and turned her beauty into something austere and remote. I had lost my mother when I was a child and understood that ache, that hollow yearning for a beloved parent. This much of her story, at least, was true.

She took another sip of wine. ‘I could not bear to return home without him. There was a gentleman. James Fairwood. I didn’t love him. He was thirty years my senior and… well. I did not love him. But he was kind, and asked nothing of me. I accepted his proposal.’ There was a short pause, as she wrapped herself in old, private thoughts of her loveless marriage. ‘Mr Fairwood had come recently into a fortune. We bought a large manor house near Horncastle. Five years later my husband fell ill with a fever and died. I was alone.’

I sensed a rich satisfaction in that final sentence. ‘That is young to be widowed. You must have been desolate.’ I chose the word deliberately – it was too rich an emotion for her, and I wanted to hear her denial.

She gave it at once, with some force. ‘Desolate? No indeed! The marriage had been a convenience for both of us.’ And then she froze, realising her mistake.

‘A convenience? How so?’

She was furious with herself. She had been so careful with her story, reciting her monologue with precision. No wonder she hated my questions. Nothing an actress dislikes more than interruptions from the audience. ‘We kept each other company.’

I put my glass to my lips, hardly able to conceal my amusement. Imagined James Fairwood, recently come into a fortune, searching Lincolnshire for the most cheerful companion he could find – and choosing this elegant block of ice. Hogwash. ‘There were no children?’

‘No!’ she declared, before I had even finished the question. And then, recovering, ‘No. We were not blessed with children. It is a great sadness to me,’ she added, without conviction.

My suspicions were confirmed. Mr Fairwood had been past fifty when he came into his fortune. A man of means must take a wife or else face endless gossip. I would bet every coin in my pocket that Fairwood had no interest in women. A swift marriage to a respectable lady, who wanted nothing from him in return, had been a wise step. It had indeed been a marriage of convenience for both of them. She must have been delighted when he died, poor fellow.

‘I sold the house,’ she said, ‘and set up a new home in Lincoln. Time passed, and I found myself to be… content. There were a few suitors, but they were more interested in my fortune than my intellect. Foolish, frivolous boys.’ She offered me a sidelong glance. ‘I preferred my own company. And then my mother grew sick.’

She rose and crossed to the desk by the window, searching through the drawers. ‘I left a letter here,’ she explained. ‘Metcalfe must have taken it to his quarters. He wanted to study it more closely. He believes I am a cuckoo in the nest.’ She closed the final drawer with a smart shove. ‘If only that were true. How I wish I could leave this wretched place and go home. Sit and read my own books in my own library, and be myself again.’

Another truth amidst the lies.

She returned to her chair, fanning her grey gown around her. ‘My mother was dying – I knew it the moment I stepped into her bedchamber. She had been ill for months, but ordered the servants not to speak of it. She only called me back when there was no hope.

‘She had written a letter, she said – but I must promise not to read it until she was dead, because I would hate her for it. Then she wept, and begged me to pray for her. She was so afraid. She was sure she would burn in hell for what she had done – that she deserved no less than eternal punishment. I couldn’t understand her – she’d lived such a cramped and blameless life. I assured her that God was merciful. This calmed her for a while, and she slept. When she woke, she was confused. She didn’t know where she was. She didn’t recognise me. I told her she was at home, that I was her daughter. She said, “No, no – I have no daughter.” And then she died.’

The room fell silent. The air had grown stifling by the fire, and I could feel the sweat upon my back. A father, a husband, a mother – all lost. But only one of them mourned by Mrs Fairwood.

‘What did your mother say in her letter?’

She sighed. ‘It was addressed to Mr Aislabie. She said that I was his daughter. That her real name was Molly Gaining and that she had rescued me from a house fire and smuggled me away.’

I drew back in surprise. ‘She stoleyou from the family? Why would she do such a terrible thing?’

‘She started the fire. Mr Sneaton caught her pocketing coins and jewellery in all the confusion. She couldn’t return me without being caught. And I aided her escape. They were hunting for a young maidservant, alone – not a mother and child.’

‘But that is…’ Wicked? Monstrous? The words didn’t seem adequate.

‘For months, I told myself it was all a nonsense: the ramblings of a sick and frightened woman. I buried my mother, and I told myself I had buried the whole dreadful story with her. But every day I would put on my black crêpe gown and ask myself: was I grieving for my real mother? Or for the woman who had burned down my home and snatched me from my true family? I would lie awake at night, asking myself the same question over and over again, until I feared for my sanity.

‘So I hired a lawyer to make enquiries. And it transpired that Mr Aislabie did lose his wife and daughter in a fire. The servant responsible was indeed called Molly Gaining, just as it said in the letter. She had disappeared that same night with a fortune in jewels and was never found.

‘Even then, I refused to believe it. I wrote to Mr Aislabie asking for an audience. I placed my mother’s letter in his hands with the firm belief that he would dismiss the entire business. But he wept, Mr Hawkins. He broke down at my feet and wept. And I have been trapped here ever since.’

She lowered her gaze, long lashes hiding her eyes.

Now at last I began to understand the anger simmering within her. What a horrifying discovery, if it were true! That the woman she had called Mother all those years had – in fact – ripped her from her real family, leaving her a stranger to her father, her brother, her two sisters. Worse still – Molly Gaining had caused the death of Mrs Fairwood’s true mother. And had the husband been complicit? At the very least he would have known that Mrs Fairwood was not his child. Counterfeit parents, living on a stolen fortune. Comfort bought with an innocent woman’s life. No wonder she wished it were not true. ‘Is it not possible that Mr Aislabie is mistaken? Perhaps in his rush to believe-’

Mrs Fairwood shook her head. ‘There was proof contained within the letter. Mr Aislabie and Molly Gaining had… relations. No one else knew. And there was this.’ She reached into her pocket and pulled out a diamond brooch, shaped like a flower with a ruby at its heart. It was small and exquisite. ‘Mr Aislabie bought this for his first wife.’ She rocked her palm and the diamonds sparkled, catching the light. ‘It was the only jewel Molly kept. She sold the rest. Bought a house near the sea in Lincolnshire. And lied and lied and lied.’

She tucked the brooch back into her pocket and gazed into the hearth. ‘I have always been afraid of fire,’ she murmured. ‘A memory of that night on Red Lion Square, I suppose – though it is all lost to me now. Except in dreams. Sometimes I dream that I am burning.’ She waved the thought away with her hand. ‘Well, sir, what do you say now? Do you still think me a fraud?’

A hodge-podge of lies and truth, that is what you are, madam. ‘I am not here to judge you, Mrs Fairwood.’

‘But you must havean opinion, one way or the other.’

I rubbed my jaw. I could see that she would be happier – and safer – if she were not Aislabie’s daughter. This suggested she was not dissembling. Then again: one should never forget the lure of money. Mr Aislabie had, purportedly, been stripped of his wealth after the South Sea disaster. But, looking about me, he seemed to have recovered in a swift and quite spectacular fashion. ‘I should like to see your mother’s letter.’

‘Then you shall. I welcome your doubt, Mr Hawkins – it is to your credit. I am aware that my story must seem quite fantastical.’

‘Has Mr Aislabie formally recognised you as his daughter?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Has he spoken with his children on the matter?’

‘Not to my knowledge.’

I drained my glass. Poured another. ‘They might stand to lose a portion of their inheritance, if you are proven to be their sister. Your brother William, at least.’ Both Mary and Jane were long married, and settled with fortunes of their own.

‘My brother will not lose a farthing. I have no interest in Mr Aislabie’s wealth.’ She saw my scepticism and laughed, drily. ‘Ask Mr Sneaton. I ordered him to draw up a waiver the day I arrived here. I have renounced all rights to a settlement, or any other gifts, in writing and in front of witnesses. I will not take a single coin from Mr Aislabie. Not an inch of land. I want nothing from him.’ She propped her chin upon her hand. ‘You must know how he came by his fortune.’

‘The South Sea Scheme.’

Her dark eyes flashed. ‘The greatest fraud ever played upon a nation.’

‘Playing with stocks is a gamble. Some won, some lost.’

‘You cannot be so naive! It was corruption at the highest level! The enquiry provedthat Mr Aislabie was bribed with free shares-’

‘-which he denied-’

‘-because he is a liar!’ She dropped back in her chair. ‘Well,’ she relented, ‘I suppose he has convinced himself of his innocence. No man can bear to cast himself as the villain. D’you know, I followed the scandal from the beginning. I read all the pamphlets, and his ridiculous defence in the Lords. I came to Studley Hall expecting to loathe him, but I find that I can’t. He has been very kind to me.’ She picked up her grey gloves. ‘Why are you here, sir? Truly?’

‘You know why, madam. Mr Aislabie asked the queen for help.’

Her brow crinkled. There were faint, permanent lines forming upon her forehead, I saw – and deeper ones about her mouth. She frowned a lot, furrowed her brow a lot. She would mar her good looks with her ill-temper. ‘Strange,’ she observed, ‘that he should still have such influence at court.’

It wasn’t influence; it was blackmail. A slim green ledger, filled with dangerous secrets.

‘Would the queen mind so very much if you failed in your task?’

‘She would – most certainly.’

‘You should leave, even so. Return to London. There is something evil about this place: I felt it the moment I arrived. Something in the atmosphere, an invisible mist that taints the air. One cannot help but breathe it in, like a poison. Can you not sense it?’ She lifted her hand, bending her wrist to show her veins, dark lines vivid against her pale skin. ‘If I cut myself now, I think my blood would run black with it.’

I could think of nothing to say.

And then she whispered, so quietly I could scarce hear the words. ‘It is not safe here. And I am so afraid, sir. So afraid of him.’

I stared at her in alarm. ‘You’re afraid of Mr Aislabie?’

‘No. No.’ She covered her face with her hands. ‘I’m sorry. I do not feel well. The wine.’

She had barely touched her glass. ‘Mrs Fairwood-’

‘Please. I’m not myself. I must retire.’ She rose suddenly, and hurried to the door.

‘Perhaps you should leave, madam,’ I called after her. ‘Why not go home to Lincoln?’

She paused at the door, a gleam of longing in her eyes. She blinked, and it was gone. ‘I can’t leave. Not until I know for certain who I am.’

‘You doubt it?’

‘My head tells me that I am Elizabeth Aislabie. But my heart, Mr Hawkins… my heart still dares to hope that I am not.’

Chapter Five

It was past two o’clock when we sat down for dinner. Mrs Fairwood did not join us. Nor did the mysterious Metcalfe. I discovered this much about him – that he was Mr Aislabie’s nephew, that he was heir to a baronetcy, and that he kept the most peculiar hours. He had scarce left his room for the last three days.

‘Is he unwell?’

‘Yes,’ Lady Judith replied, at the exact moment her husband said, ‘No.’

‘I think the weather will hold,’ Lady Judith said, after an awkward pause. ‘We shall have our ride this afternoon, Mr Hawkins.’

Mr Aislabie frowned, and helped himself to some boiled goose.

There was no servant to attend us, which I preferred. I find the hovering uncomfortable, having not grown up with it. The dining room was in the west wing, behind Mr Aislabie’s study. It was long and narrow, and there was a cold draught about my ankles, but the food was very welcome. I was used to frequenting unpredictable chophouses, and had just spent six long weeks in a freezing Newgate cell. Luxury remained a pleasing novelty.

Sneaton was dining with us: another sign of his trusted position within the family. He was drinking soup from a silver porringer, his claw-like right hand struggling with the dainty handle. I had never seen so much silver tableware. I was quite tempted to steal a fork.

‘Your boy has been causing trouble,’ he said.

‘You’ve brought a servant with you?’ Lady Judith called down the table. A strong wind had chased off the clouds and the sun was pouring through the windows to her right. A beam of burning white light caught the lid of the soup tureen.

I blinked, dazzled. ‘Master Fleet is a gentleman’s son.’ Now there was a lie of extraordinary depth. I could almost hear James Fleet pissing himself with laughter from here. ‘I’m his guardian.’

‘He’s moved you to the east wing,’ Sneaton said, slurping his soup. ‘Insisted.’

‘The east wing?’ Lady Judith looked irritated. ‘It’s half-abandoned! Metcalfe has taken the only decent apartments on that side of the house.’

Sneaton shrugged, acknowledging the truth of it.

I took a piece of gammon and a spoonful of pickles. I should probably add a scattering of salad. Kitty was convinced it was an aid to the stomach. She was full of such questionable fancies. She served up so many leaves at our table it was a wonder I hadn’t transmogrified into a rabbit. Which reminded me of the fricasseed rabbit by Mr Sneaton’s elbow. He pushed it over, at my request.

‘I’ve spoken with Mrs Fairwood,’ I said to Aislabie, tucking my napkin into my cravat. ‘An extraordinary story.’

Aislabie sawed at his goose. ‘It is no story.’

‘A figure of speech. Is it true that she has refused any gifts or settlement?’

‘Hardly a suitable topic for the table,’ he admonished. ‘But yes – Mrs Fairwood asked Mr Sneaton to draw up a contract. She sought to prove that she has no designs upon that score. She will not take a single farthing from me, no matter how I press her.’

‘Your son will inherit Studley, I presume?’

‘Of course he will. Why, do you think because you are disinherited, that this is the common way of things? Yes, Mr Hawkins – I know your history! And were you not the queen’s man, I should not allow you through the door.’ He jabbed his knife at me. ‘I must say that it is vexing to me that you were left alone in my daughter’s company for so long. Pray do not impose upon her again in such an unseemly fashion.’

‘John,’ Lady Judith admonished. ‘I’m sure Mrs Fairwood was quite safe.’

‘Damn it, Judith – why must you call her that?’ Aislabie snapped. ‘Why not call her Elizabeth? Why not call her Lizzie?’ He looked at his secretary, and then his wife. ‘Why do you not believe me? Do you think I am such a fool that I cannot recognise my own daughter?’

Lady Judith sighed. Sneaton lowered his soup.

‘Can you not see?’ Aislabie pressed them. ‘This is God’s work! She is my gift, for all those years of suffering. All the injustice and cruelty I have faced. My daughter has come home! This house should be filled with joy. Why would you deny me this? Do I not deserve to be happy?’

‘Were we not happy before, John?’ Lady Judith asked, softly.

Aislabie did not hear her. He leaned across the table, pointing his knife at Sneaton. ‘Jack, you examined Elizabeth’s accounts – at her request. Fairwood left her three thousand pounds a year. There are no debts attached to the house in Lincoln. She has no need of my wealth, and no interest in it. You know she has offered many times to leave, rather than cause further discord.’

‘Yet here she remains,’ Lady Judith muttered into her glass.

‘My wife, and my most trusted friend,’ Aislabie marvelled, flinging his hands into the air. ‘What faith. What loyalty. And you, Hawkins – you have heard her story, you have gazed upon her countenance. Can you not see that she is an Aislabie?’

It was true that Mrs Fairwood’s eyes were dark brown, and her complexion a pale cream. But this would describe a goodly portion of the country. ‘She is a handsome woman,’ I said.

Aislabie grunted, as if that settled the matter.

‘I believe you have just recently come into a fortune yourself, Mr Hawkins,’ Sneaton said gruffly, with such an obvious urge to change the subject, it was almost comical. I must have looked perplexed, because he added, ‘from your wife?’

Ah, yes. The imaginary Mrs Hawkins. Kitty had inherited a large sum from Samuel Fleet, Sam’s uncle, and my old cellmate from the Marshalsea, along with his print shop, and an extravagantly broad collection of obscene literature. This fortune was in part the reason we had not yet married. Kitty feared I would gamble it all away which, to be fair, was a distinct possibility. She also feared I would grow bored and abandon her, or – God help us both – turn dull and respectable and never leave. In short, she had very little confidence in my better qualities, and far too much knowledge of my worst.

‘John inherited a fortune from me when we married,’ Lady Judith said, pouring another glass of wine. ‘Fifteen years in April.’ She raised her glass, prompting her husband to return the toast.

‘True.’ He winked at her. ‘Fifteen years of quiet, dutiful obedience. On my part.’

Lady Judith snorted with laughter.

I thought of Mrs Fairwood’s admission, that she had expected to loathe John Aislabie, but found she could not. He may have abused his power and robbed the nation, and yet… it was clear that he loved his wife. I worked out the years in my head. Anne had died twenty-seven years ago, leaving him with three young children. It would have been advisable to marry again, and swiftly. Instead he had waited thirteen years, until he met Judith. Which suggested that he had loved his first wife too – very much.

Sneaton had turned the conversation to the building project next to the house. John Simpson, their master stonemason, had submitted a fresh letter of complaint concerning his bill.

Aislabie rolled his eyes. ‘I would have you speak with him again, Sneaton. I will not pay a bill that does not tally. Tell him if he cannot supply us with the proper details, we shall hire Robert Doe to complete the job.’ He snatched at his glass and took a long draught. ‘I’m mightily tired of the whole wretched business. I’m quite tempted to abandon it.’

‘Oh, John – patience!’ Lady Judith scolded. ‘You know you will love the stables when they are done.’

Stables? The conversation continued about me as I puzzled over her meaning. The foundations for the new building suggested it would be twice the size of Studley Hall. But as Sneaton spoke of the stalls, and the grooms’ quarters, I began to realise my mistake. The men labouring outside were not constructing a grand new home for the Aislabies. They were building a grand new home for the Aislabies’ horses.

‘How many do you keep?’ I asked, astonished.

‘Twenty,’ Aislabie replied. ‘Have Simpson send in his bill again, Sneaton. The books must tally before the next quarter-’

‘Twenty horses?’

‘Racehorses,’ Aislabie corrected. ‘The rest will remain in the old stables.’

Twenty racehorses. My God, the cost! ‘I thought it was your new home, sir.’

Aislabie was amused. ‘No, indeed. I shall build a grand palace down by the lake when the gardens are complete. Or else I shall buy Fountains Hall and the abbey, if I can persuade Mr Messenger to part with it.’

‘Mr Messenger is our closest neighbour,’ Lady Judith explained. ‘Ill-tempered, fat little thing. We are not on friendly terms.’

Aislabie muttered something under his breath. I caught the word papist.

The servants were bringing in a fresh course when we heard a commotion at the front of the house, and then a scream – the deep howl of a man in agonising pain. Sneaton rose in alarm, holding on to the table for balance. A moment later Bagby entered the room. There was a distinct lack of concern on his face. ‘An accident, your honour,’ he drawled. ‘One of Simpson’s men.’

‘Another one,’ Aislabie tutted.

‘How bad?’ Sneaton asked.

‘His leg’s broken,’ Bagby replied, flatly.

Sneaton cursed under his breath. ‘Did you see a wound? Was the bone sticking out?’

Bagby looked disgusted. ‘I did not enquire, sir.’

Aislabie waved at the servants to set down the dishes. ‘Send for Mr Gatteker,’ he told Sneaton. ‘I’ll pay the fee.’

Bagby bowed to me. His features were bland, but counterweighted by a startlingly expressive face. At rest, it settled upon purse-lipped disapproval. Now he had ratcheted it to bulge-eyed indignation. ‘Your boy’s put himself in charge, sir. Ordering us all about.’

He led me through the house to the great hall, where a small crowd had gathered around the injured man. He had been carried inside on a stretch of oilcloth. His face was grey with shock, but he was sitting upright, which I took to be a good sign.

Sam had fixed a splint around the broken leg from the ankle to just above the knee, and was binding it with strips of linen. One of Simpson’s men held the splint in place. The linen was blotched with dried bloodstains, and I realised this was the sheeting used to cover the butchered deer. Better to use ruined sheets than waste fresh ones, I supposed, though it looked somewhat ghoulish.

I knelt down by the injured man’s feet and watched Sam work. He must have moved the bone back into alignment before setting the splint. My stomach clenched at the thought. No wonder we’d heard screaming.

Sam had confessed to me once that he should like to be a surgeon one day – not through any particular desire to help the sick, but because of his fascination with the mechanical properties of the body. He would spend hours poring over books of human anatomy, or sketching the connection of bone and muscle, or dissecting rats with a precise flick of his knife. Why Kitty refused to travel with him was a mystery.

‘Excellent work, Sam. Very neat.’

‘Connie.’

It took me a moment to remember Consuela, the old woman with the cloud of white hair who lived with Sam’s family on Phoenix Street. She had brought me back from the brink of death a few weeks ago, after I’d been forced to jump into the freezing Thames. I took from Sam’s reply – two syllables! inarguable progress! – that he had watched Connie make a splint, doubtless on more than one occasion. Sam’s father was a gang captain and perhaps the most dangerous villain in London. How many times had one of his men stumbled into the den with a black eye, or a broken jaw, or a knife wound? Quite an education for a young boy.

Sally, the young maid I had spoken to earlier, arrived with a blanket. She wrapped it about the man’s shoulders, then handed him a bottle of laudanum. ‘Here you are, Fred. Borrowed this from Mr Robinson. You’ll feel sick at first, but it’ll pass.’

He took a long swig, and grimaced. ‘Hurts like bloody murder.’

‘Lucky,’ Sam said. He ran his finger along the injured leg. ‘Fibula. Clean break.’

‘Fortunate indeed.’ Sneaton limped over, wooden peg putt-putting along the stone floor. ‘If the bone breaks through the skin, your only remedy’s amputation. Most men die from the shock.’

Fred began to heave.

‘Or putrefaction,’ Sam added. ‘Nasty.’

‘Deep breaths, Fred,’ Sally said.

Fred opened his mouth, then vomited on the oilcloth.

‘That was your fault,’ Sally scolded Sam.

Sam blinked, not understanding.

Simpson, the master stonemason, strode across the room to join us, leaving a trail of muddy bootprints in his wake. His face was coated in grey stone dust, streaked with sweat. He was shorter than me by several inches but very solid, with a bull’s neck and strong fists, the knuckles grazed and torn from his work. He reminded me of William Acton, the head keeper of the Marshalsea gaol. Not a pleasant thought. ‘This is what happens when you don’t pay the men, Sneaton,’ he snarled.

Sneaton scowled at him, scars puckering. ‘For heaven’s sake, what possible connection-’

‘My men han’t seen a farthing since Christmas! They’re tired and angry, Jack. Working for nowt – it’s bad for the humours. Dangerous bloody way to work.’

Sneaton huffed in exasperation. ‘And do your men know you handed in your quarter bill two weeks late? And God’s truth, to call it a bill would be a jest. A pile of tattered receipts and a scrawl of unreadable names-’

‘I’m owed sixty pounds! I have to pay my men, my suppliers-’

‘Then show me receipts that tally. A clear list of the men you hired and the hours they worked.’

Simpson’s eyes popped in outrage. ‘Do you call me a liar, Jack? A thief?’

‘What is this damned racket?’ Aislabie shouted, marching across the hall like a general – the effect somewhat ruined by the napkin tucked into his cravat.

Simpson pulled off his hat and bowed low. ‘Your honour, sir.’

Aislabie glanced at Fred, and the pool of vomit. He pulled a face. ‘What happened here?’

‘An accident, Mr Aislabie, sir,’ Simpson answered, still in his bow, clutching his hat in his great fists.

‘I can see that. Have you been drinking?’

‘No, sir!’

Aislabie narrowed his eyes. He didn’t believe Simpson, and to be fair I could smell the liquor on the stonemason’s breath from several paces away. The room waited for his honour’s decision. ‘This will be your last warning, Mr Simpson. If you cannot conduct your business in a respectable manner, I shall hire someone who can.’

Simpson dropped into an even deeper bow, head below his arse. ‘Yes, your honour. I’m obliged to you, sir.’

Aislabie gave a sharp nod, concluding business. He leaned towards Sneaton. ‘Clear up this mess. And remove these men from my house. They should never have been brought inside.’

He spun upon his heels and left, footsteps fading down the hall. No one mentioned the napkin.

Simpson rose from his bow and shoved his hat on his head. ‘Tight-fisted bastard. Ten years I’ve slaved for him! D’you remember all the mud we had to cart away just to dig out the lake? Who else could have built his precious cascades? Don’t you dare say Robert Doe, Jack – don’t you dare. What’s that soft-pricked Southerner ever built? Follies. Fucking follies.’

‘His accounts are very neat.’

Simpson opened his mouth to argue, then realised Sneaton was joking. ‘Piss off, Jack.’

Sneaton gestured to Fred, who had sunk heavily against Sally’s shoulder. ‘Bring the cart around and take him to his quarters. Mr Aislabie will pay the doctor’s fees.’

‘Aye. He pays when it suits him,’ Simpson muttered. ‘What’s sixty pounds to him? He earns three thousand a quarter from rents alone, or near as makes no matter.’

‘That’s not true-’

‘Yes it is Jack, you bloody liar. You told me yourself five nights ago.’

Sneaton closed his eyes. ‘Remind me not to drink with you again, John.’

Simpson gave a triumphant smirk. ‘I know all there is to know about you, Jack Sneaton. And Red Lion Square… Maybe you should remember that.’

Sneaton stared at him, shocked into silence.

‘Ahh, ignore us, Jack,’ Simpson sighed. ‘I didn’t mean nowt by it.’ He glanced at me, the only one close enough to have heard the threat. ‘How do. Who are you then?’

Now there was a fair, Yorkshire greeting. ‘Thomas Hawkins. I’m here to-’

‘Half-Hanged Hawkins!’ Simpson barked out a laugh. ‘Heard you was coming. Bloody hell. Hanged at Tyburn. How’s your neck, sir. Still stretched?’

I drew back. ‘I’ve no wish to speak of it.’

‘If wishes were fucks, the world would be full o’ bastards,’ he replied with a shrug.

Sneaton had recovered his tongue. ‘Come over to the cottage tonight, John. We’ll work through your receipts together.’

‘Thanks, Jack,’ Simpson grinned. ‘I’m grateful to you.’ He shoved his hands in his pockets and walked back outside, whistling.

Sally huffed at the fresh trail of muddy footprints.

Fred’s chum, who had helped Sam to bind the splint, rose to his feet and stretched. He was a handsome fellow, about twenty years of age, with a dark complexion from working in the sun. ‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ he addressed Sneaton, ‘is it true that Mr Simpson handed in his bill two weeks late?’

Sneaton considered the younger man. ‘D’you enjoy working at Studley, Master Wattson?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Sneaton drew closer. Annunciated slowly. ‘Then remember who you are.’

Wattson nodded rapidly. ‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.’

Sneaton held Wattson’s gaze for a moment to be sure the message had been received. Then he left, following his master’s path towards the study. My bones ached to watch him, that mangled walk, the twist of a hip to propel him forwards.

Some brief sound made me glance up at the minstrels’ gallery that overlooked the hall like a balcony at the theatre. A gentleman of middling years stood at the balustrade, a pale hand resting upon the rail. Metcalfe Robinson: Mr Aislabie’s nephew. He was dressed in his nightgown, head bare. He was staring directly where I stood, but it was as if I wasn’t there. His grey eyes were dull, his bristled jaw sagging as if he did not have the strength to lift it.

‘Mr Robinson?’ I waved a hand to break him from his trance. ‘May I speak with you? My name is Thomas Hawkins.’

This jolted him so hard he had to snatch at the rail to steady himself. He stared at me in disbelieving horror, as if I were Hamlet’s father come to haunt him. ‘Impossible,’ he said, hoarsely – and backed away, vanishing into the shadows.

Chapter Six

Lady Judith had been too optimistic about the weather. It was raining again, sweeping across the valley as if God were considering a second flood. No tour of the gardens today. A quiet part of me was relieved. There was something unsettling about Mrs Aislabie, something that sent a pulse through me, half attraction and half warning. She was playful, yes – but then cats play with mice sometimes, before they eat them.

I smoked a pipe, and took a solitary stroll about the ground floor. It was something of a maze, especially the connecting rooms directly behind the great hall. These I named the ‘horse rooms’, as the walls were covered in pictures of them, from portraits of individual animals to vast hunting scenes. What other purpose they served, I never discovered. I paused in front of a painting of the Ripon races. The riders were all women, wearing breeches. The plaque upon the frame read: Ladies’ Race, 1723, Ripon. Racing, gambling, and lady jockeys. I would have jumped into the painting if I could.

The east wing lay abandoned on this floor, although I did stumble across a fellow mending the cornices in one room, so perhaps the Aislabies had plans for it. At the back of the house I found the library again, a little-used music room, and a larger room for billiards.

The west wing appeared to be the favoured aspect. There was a snug little withdrawing room, filled with tempting armchairs and more recent family portraits, and then the long dining room. Mr Aislabie’s study sat at the front of the house. He had retired there with Mr Sneaton after dinner, presumably to buy up the rest of the county.

It might appear as though I were drifting aimlessly about the place, and I admit that is one of my preferred occupations. In this case, however, I was drifting with intent. I needed to memorise the rooms while it was still light, so that I could search them more closely in darkness.

Five days ago, I had been tasked by the queen to find a certain green ledger and bring it safely to London. The book had disappeared shortly after the collapse of the South Sea Company. It contained a list of over a hundred illustrious names, and the private details of their stockjobbing – when they had sold their shares and at what price, the exact profit they had made from each transaction. Hundreds of thousands of pounds, all neatly recorded.

No scandal there – except that it proved that many of the shares had been given for free, as bribes. In exchange, every person listed in the ledger had supported the South Sea Scheme as it travelled through Parliament and into law. They had encouraged others to invest, inflating the price. And then, mysteriously, these lucky beneficiaries had sold their shares at the ideal moment, just before the bubble burst and the stock value plummeted.

Either they were the cleverest gamblers in history, or they had been passed privileged information – perhaps by Aislabie himself. Sell now – the entire damned scheme is about to collapse. Dukes and duchesses, bishops and lawyers, ministers of government, the old king and his mistresses. And the Prince and Princess of Wales – as they were in 1720. Now their Exalted Majesties King George II and Queen Caroline of Ansbach. All with their snouts in the trough.

The whole world knew that the scheme had been corrupted. But the whole world couldn’t prove it, not without the slim green accounts book and its list of names. Questions were asked in the Commons. Offices were ransacked. A government enquiry was set up. Aislabie and his staff were interrogated. Aislabie himself was thrown in the Tower, where he languished for months. The ledger was never found. Aislabie testified that he always destroyed his account books once they were balanced. His secretary burned them – it was all quite routine. The Commons, the Lords, the nation raged, but nothing could be done. The evidence was lost for ever.

The queen knew better. Mr Aislabie hadn’t burned the ledger. He’d smuggled it out of London to his country estate, days before his arrest. Aislabie was a politician – and a wily one at that. The book was his security. And now he was using it to demand help from the guilty.

We are all slaves to public opinion, even the King of England. His claim to the throne was tenuous, to say the least. How would his subjects react if they discovered he had helped plunge the nation into catastrophic debt in order to sate his own greed? Violently, I’d wager.

‘Have you ever visited Yorkshire, Mr Hawkins?… We have a friend, in need of assistance.’ That is what Queen Caroline had asked me just five days before in her private quarters. Aislabie was no friend. He was blackmailing her – demanding her help in exchange for his continued silence. This was insufferable. The ledger must be found.

I held my tongue, and waited.

The queen was standing by the fire, shifting her weight from foot to foot. A touch of gout, I thought. ‘How is your little trull, sir? Are you still wretchedly in love with her? Of course you are,’ she replied for me. ‘How charming.’

I lifted the glass of wine to my lips, trying to hide my alarm. The queen had sent for both Kitty and me, but on our arrival at St James’s Palace, Kitty had been ordered to wait in the carriage. She was sitting there on her own, furious, rain pattering down upon the roof of the chaise. I hadn’t understood why the queen would summon Kitty, only to refuse her an audience. Now I began to suspect the truth.

‘Tell me, Mr Hawkins. How does it feel to be in love with a murderess?’

I clutched the glass, and said nothing. Kitty had killed a man. He had been trying to kill me, out on Snows Fields in Southwark. She had shot him in the gut, to save my life. But then she had stood over him, tipped fresh powder into her pistol and shot him again – between the eyes at close range. He would have died from the first shot, eventually. One might even call the second shot an act of mercy. But it wasn’t. Kitty had fired in a cold, deliberate rage. I knew that, and so did the one other witness to the shooting. And slowly, inevitably, the story had reached the queen.

She faced me now, one hand gripping the mantelpiece for support. Her rings glinted in the candlelight. This was real power – to threaten without ever speaking the words. ‘I am sure you will do your very best,’ she said sweetly.

And I had agreed that I would, and returned to Kitty, sulking because she had been summoned by the queen and then abandoned in the carriage. The queen had never intended to see her. Kitty’s role was to be waiting for me now as I left the palace, beautiful and angry and perfect. See what you might lose, if you don’t do as I command. It was the first time she had used Kitty’s secret to get what she wanted. I feared it would not be the last.

I had promised Kitty that I would stop holding secrets – but I couldn’t tell her this. I had lived for weeks under sentence of death and I would not put her through the same torture. I couldn’t bear it. So she had complained all the way from London to Newport Pagnell about our ridiculous mission, and how dare the queen send me back into more trouble when I had only just survived a hanging, and why could we not simply refuse and sail for the Continent, as we’d agreed.

Then we’d pulled into the coaching inn and I had discovered Sam, hiding beneath our luggage like a beetle under a rock. Sam Fleet, raised to be a thief and worse, who could tiptoe through a house and never be heard, who could hide in the shadows and never be seen. Who better to find the ledger? I tried to explain this to Kitty, but she had thought it too risky. You can’t trust him, Tom. You know what he is. You know what he’s done.

I couldn’t admit to her why it was so vital we succeed, why I must bring Sam with us. So we had argued, and she had accused me of lying to her again, after all my promises to change.Chairs were kicked. The next morning she had refused to leave until I sent Sam back to London. More arguments and more delays. When she saw I would not be persuaded, she arranged a seat on the next coach home. ‘I know you love me, Tom – but you love gambling more. This is all another game to you, another chance to test your luck.’

‘That’s not true, Kitty.’

She took my hands and pulled me closer. ‘Then come home with me.’

‘I can’t. I have to go.’

She shoved me away. ‘You don’t have to do anything. Fuck the queen.’

An hour later I was on the road with Sam, heading north with a dark fear in my heart that I had made a terrible mistake. But what choice did I have? I had to find the ledger. I had to save Kitty.

And if by some miracle I succeeded, what then? I stood in the great stone-flagged entrance hall at Studley, my hands in my pockets. I had walked all the way around, only to find myself back at the start. How fitting.

I made my way down to the servants’ rooms on the lower floor, and found Mrs Mason in her kitchen, hanging a brace of rabbits on a hook. Like most cooks she was somewhat round from tasting her own dishes, and her hands had magical properties, having spent years kneading, pummelling, peeling, cleavering and being plunged into boiling water. She also had the most appealing face. Not that she was a great beauty – it was more that her temperament tended naturally towards laughter and generosity. This had settled happily upon her features after forty years. To put it another way, on meeting her I felt myself to be a small boy again, and longed for a warm hug. Sadly decorum prevented me from asking.

She brewed up a pot of coffee and we talked while she prepared herbs for a stock. She asked me about my trial and hanging, rather as I might ask her the best way to dress a salmon. That is to say, I took no offence from her questions, and recognised a kindred, inquisitive spirit.

She confirmed that two bed sheets were missing: she had checked the laundry herself. Mrs Mason appeared to have an informal role as housekeeper, along with her duties in the kitchen. I suspected that – rather like Sneaton – she was considered part of the extended Aislabie family.

‘Must have been a sneaking little devil,’ she said. ‘There’s always someone out in the yard. A woman, I reckon. She could tuck them under her gown.’ She pushed a clove into a shallot, and then another.

‘Who do you think wrote the notes?’

‘The Gills, most likely.’

‘The poachers?’

‘You might call them that. There’s been Gills hunting out on Kirkby moors long as anyone can remember. But his honour bought the moor, so… now they’re poachers.’

‘Bad business with the deer.’

‘Died quickly, by the looks of it,’ she shrugged, unmoved. She was a cook, after all. ‘But now – here’s a thing made me wonder. I can’t see Jeb or Annie Gill wasting good venison like that. Not in their nature.’

This was a very good point. Surely a poacher would never squander such valuable meat, just for dramatic effect. ‘Are they capable of murder, d’you think? Is that in their nature? Would they burn the house down for revenge?’

Mrs Mason dropped her shallot in alarm. ‘Bloody hell, I hope not. Excuse my language, sir.’

I asked Mrs Mason for directions to my quarters. She insisted on calling Bagby, who’d been napping next door in the servants’ hall. He stumbled into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes and grumbling loudly until he saw me sitting at the table, finishing my bowl of coffee. Hiding his scowl behind the thinnest screen of deference, he led me upstairs, back straight, mouth twisted shut. I paused upon the landing to admire the tapestry. In truth it was not a good piece, but it depicted a horse with a splendid mane, rearing up on its hind legs. Horses, I was beginning to understand, were granted an almost divine status at Studley. Even poorly stitched ones.

Bagby made an impatient little noise in the back of his throat. He didn’t like me. Why should he? He was not the first servant who resented his low position. Perhaps if I told him I had been tortured in a debtors’ prison? Beaten and robbed? Hanged at Tyburn? Ah, but above all that, I was a gentleman – nothing luckier than that.

We turned right on the landing and passed into the east wing, floorboards creaking under our feet. The main body of the house was in reasonable order but this side appeared to be listing, with great cracks in the plaster. There was a smell of damp, and the faded wallpaper was blistered and peeling away, as if the walls were suffering from some awkward rash.

We took a step up into a dark and oddly cramped corridor, scarce wide enough to scrape through in single file. The floor here was uneven, sloping sharply to the right. Low beams ran across the ceiling, as if designed to cause injury. A helpful servant would have said, ‘Mind your head, sir.’ Bagby remained silent, walking ahead with near-satirical dignity, as if he were escorting me through the Palace of Versailles.

We had reached the back of the house, though with all the twists and turns we’d performed, I did not realise this yet. My apartment was tucked away on a mezzanino below the attic rooms. Bagby opened the door with a flourish and gestured for me to enter. A glint in his eye made me pause on the threshold, foot hanging in mid-air. There were three steps down into the room. If I hadn’t paused I would have missed them, and stumbled head first to the floor.

I stepped down into the main bedchamber, fighting my disappointment. The bed itself looked inviting, with a scarlet canopy and matching counterpane. But the room had an oppressive feel, even with the fire flickering in the hearth and fresh candles in the sconces. The low ceilings were brought even lower by a series of dark beams, and the mahogany wall panels added to the intense gloom. There was at least a tall double window, but the latticed glass allowed through only a thin light, and was blocked further by a great oak tree growing directly outside.

If Kitty were here… If Kitty were here it would have felt warm and bright enough. She would have complained loudly about the tree, and the dark panelling, and the fusty smell. Then she would have kicked Bagby from the room and pulled me by my breeches to the bed. She would have kissed me, guided my hand under her gown, my fingers trailing up the heavenly silk of her thighs and-

‘Will that be all?’ Bagby asked.

I glanced at my luggage. I could insist that he unpack my belongings, but he was a sour addition to the room. The sooner he left the better. I waved him out, crossing to the window. Raindrops were snaking their way down the glass. I pressed my forehead to the pane. My head was pounding from the wine, and my journey, and something deeper.

Kitty. How could I have lost her, and so soon? If I wrote to her now, would she come?

I sighed my frustration out on to the glass. The letter would take at least three days to reach her. Even if she set out the next day, she was more than a week away. My luggage lay a few feet from where I stood, offering another choice. Call for the carriage and return home. Queen Caroline was clever, and manipulative, and excessively good at getting what she wanted. But she wasn’t wilfully cruel. Surely she was bluffing. Surely she would not send Kitty to her death.

For five days now, the same argument had circled my mind. And in the end, I would always reach the same conclusion. Surely wasn’t good enough. This was one gamble I dared not take.

I lifted my head from the glass. No point arguing with myself and dreaming of home.

I crossed to the fire, shovelling fresh coal upon the flames. There was a dark painting hanging above the fireplace – black clouds gathering over a ruined abbey. It was a large picture with a heavy frame, and looked as though it had been painted with a much grander room in mind. I scraped a smudge of coal soot from the plaque. Storm at Fountains Abbey. A great tower rose into the blackening sky, looming over the crumbling ruins. Roofs and walls had collapsed, pulled down by time and the violence of men. The fallen stones were scattered all around, covered in a tangle of weeds. The artist had painted the stones in shades of grey and black, their colour muted by the storm clouds. The grass was a steel grey.

I’m not sure how long I stood before that painting. Perhaps it was fatigue, or the trials of recent weeks, or merely the painter’s choice of colours – but I felt as though I were not looking at a ruined monastery, but at something more spectral. As if all the souls who had lived and died there were now trapped inside the picture, and were calling for me to join them.

I stepped back, shaking my head to clear it. Fancies and phantasms. I had not come here to indulge in such follies. I must discover the ledger. There was an end to it.

In the meantime I should put the hours of daylight to some use. Mr Aislabie and his family were under threat, and as his guest, my own life could be in peril. It was in my own interest to enquire into the matter more closely.

I perched on the window seat, spreading the four letters out upon the cushion. Who had written them? The more I considered them, the more convinced I became that they were the work of two different men. The first two wavered between bitter resentment and surprising deference, of the kind I’d witnessed from Mr Simpson. Aislabie was addressed several times as ‘Your honour’. There was an appeal to his obligations, to his sense of fairness. The accompanying threats of violence were unpleasant, but were swiftly followed by promises of gratitude and obedience, if only his honour would permit the moors to be opened up as common land once more. I would bet my last crown the same arguments had been put to the estate steward and to Mr Sneaton on numerous occasions, without effect. These were notes written in anger and frustration, but with hope for a peaceful resolution.

In contrast, the next two made no demands, reasoned or otherwise. They were short, and cruel. Reading them again, I felt the hairs rise upon my skin.

Aislabie – your Crimes must be punnished. You have Ruined Good and Honest Familys with your Damn’d Greed. Our mallis is too great to bear we are resolved to burn down your House. We will watch as your flesh and bones burn and melt and your Ashes scatter in the Wind. Nothing will Remain. You have ’scaped Justice too long damn you.

Aislabie you Damned Traitor. This is but the beginning of Sorrows.We will burn you and your daughter in your beds. You are not alone by night or day. We will seek Revenge.

These were not threats, but judgements handed down to the accused. Aislabie was a Damned Traitor. And the punishment for treason was death by fire.

The scrape of a latch in the far corner of the room made me glance up from my reading. The door was set flush to the mahogany panels – I had noticed it upon entering and dismissed it as a closet space. In fact it opened on to a connecting room for a gentleman’s valet. Sam had taken it as his own, occupying it in absolute silence until he had deemed it the proper time to present himself. He stood barefoot in the doorway, his black curls loose about his face.

‘There you are,’ I said, because I knew it would infuriate him. Any statement of the obvious made him seethe with annoyance.

He stepped aside so that I might enter his domain. It was not much more than a closet after all – smaller than my cell at Newgate – with a narrow bed and two dingy portraits on the wall. It would suit Sam – he preferred cramped spaces. His home in St Giles was filled with noise and people at all times of the day and night, and he had become expert at tucking himself away in forgotten corners.

The room was almost bare: he had brought nothing with him from London save for a handful of coins and two vicious blades, the latter of which I had confiscated from him. To compensate for his loss, and to help him pass the time on our journey, I had given him a pencil and a sheaf of paper – he was an excellent draughtsman – and a copy of Gulliver’s Travels. This latter – upon learning it was a fictional voyage – he pronounced ‘a worthless con’, it being ‘made of lies’. But he had placed it neatly on a chair with his sketches, his shoes and stockings tucked under the bed.

‘What do you make of these?’ I handed him the notes.

He read them quickly, unruffled by the content. Then he divided them in half, waving the latest two in his fist. ‘Dangerous.’

I took the papers back. ‘Aislabie believes that Mrs Fairwood is his daughter-’

‘-maid told me.’

‘Whoever wrote this latest note knows about Elizabeth Fairwood’s claim, and the fire on Red Lion Square.’

Sam shrugged. Sometimes I wondered if he were already five steps ahead of me. He was so close-tongued, how could one know for certain?

I flicked the papers. ‘The first two notes were written on old bits of scrap, but this is very fine. I’ll wager the second two match Mr Aislabie’s best paper.’

‘Could’ve been stolen. It’s Aiselby,’ he added.

‘No – the servants call him that. He pronounces it Aizlabee…’ I paused, then sifted back through the notes. The first two had spelled his name Aiselby, capturing the Yorkshire pronunciation. The second two had spelled it Aislabie.

Jack Sneaton was from the south, and had corrected my pronunciation to Aizlabee. Aislabie also trusted him to hire all the servants at Studley Hall. That gave him power, and opportunities…

Could Sneaton have written the second two notes? He wasn’t pleased by Mrs Fairwood’s presence – that much was quite evident. Did he want to frighten her from the estate? It would have been easy enough for him to steal the linen and the fine paper. He knew the movements of the household, and when it would be safe to move through the grounds. With his broken body, he could not have killed the deer himself or dragged it to the front steps, but he might have an accomplice. We will seek Revenge, the note had promised.

I handed the notes to Sam. ‘See if you can find an example of Sneaton’s lettering. He must write with his left hand, I suppose. Could you compare it with the second two letters? Even if the hand is disguised?’

Sam looked offended, as if I’d asked him whether he knew his alphabet. He had been counterfeiting papers for his father for years. He’d been doing all sorts of terrible things for his father for years. The first time we’d met, he’d led me down a darkened alleyway so I might be robbed at knifepoint. I was still waiting for an apology.

I poured myself a glass of sherry from a decanter on the dressing table. ‘Why did you change our quarters?’

Sam grinned. Opened the window, put his foot on the casement frame-

– and jumped.

I swore, more in surprise than concern. I’d grown used to his acrobatics. I kneeled on the window seat and peered out. He’d jumped into the oak tree and was now sitting on a sturdy branch, bare legs dangling. I peered down at the ground three floors below. There was a path for the carriages, which must lead to the current stables at the back of the house. Beyond the path, a dense cluster of trees. The rain pattered through the leaves.

‘An excellent escape route,’ I said, raising my glass of sherry in approval. ‘If one happens to be a monkey.’ Could I leap the distance? Probably, if the need were pressing. If the house were on fire.

Sam crawled along the branch, swung himself on to the window ledge and back into the room. It looked distinctly perilous and much harder than leaping out. ‘Family’s in the west wing. Won’t hear us. Servants,’ he added, hoicking a thumb upstairs. Turned his thumb upside down, indicating the three floors below. ‘Metcalfe, library, kitchens.’ He crossed the room to the connecting door, toe then heel like a dancer, missing every creaking floorboard. ‘View,’ he called over his shoulder.

The window in his cupboard room looked out on to the servants’ courtyard. An older woman hurried from the laundry with a stack of folded sheets up to her chin, shooing chickens away with her boot. I watched for a minute or two as maids and grooms and footmen ran through the yard, and no one looked up at the window. Sam had found us the ideal quarters; quiet, tucked far away from the Aislabies’ rooms, and offering an excellent vantage point from which to spy on the servants.

Mr Pugh, our carriage driver, sat on a mounting block, smoking a pipe and talking with an older fellow.

‘William Hallow,’ Sam said. ‘Game keeper. Thinks you’re an angel.’

I coughed on my sherry.

‘Hanged. Resurrected.’ Sam watched me from the corner of his black eyes. ‘Touched by God.’

The room fell silent – as it must with Sam standing in it. He never spoke if he could avoid it, kept his words deep in his chest like a miser clutching his coins. And what poor, counterfeit coins they were when he did spend them – a grunt for yes, a strangled sigh for no. In the slums of St Giles, a careless word was as dangerous as a sharpened blade. All his life, he had been taught how to hide in the shadows, to watch and listen and remain invisible. But silence was in his nature too. Sam’s father might be the most powerful gang captain in the city, but one could still talk with him over a bowl of punch.

A few months ago I had agreed to take Sam into my household and teach him the manners of a gentleman. To say that I had failed hardly begins to describe the catastrophe that followed. A violent tangle of events had led to murder and my trip to the gallows. Sam had helped save my life. But he had also killed someone in the process.

I had studied Sam closely on our journey from London and could discern no particular change in him – no apparent guilt or remorse for what he had done. His father was a murderer. He was named for his uncle, Samuel Fleet – a highly accomplished assassin, who’d been known in the Marshalsea as the Devil. Such names were not given lightly. I could not ignore the fact that killing was part of the family trade. Nor that – as far as his parents were concerned – Sam had completed his apprenticeship.

For this reason alone, Kitty and I had agreed to dismiss Sam from our home for ever. I’d had no expectation of seeing him again. And yet when I’d helped him down from his hiding place on the carriage, soaked and shivering, I had known at once that I would bring him with me. My damned curiosity again. It’s what Fleet had first noticed in me, when I’d stepped into the prison yard. ‘Curiosity and a wilful belief that the world is on your side. What an intoxicatinglyidiotic combination.’ Indeed.

I stood before the two portraits, studying them closely. Brothers, I thought – dressed in a style from forty years ago, with huge brown wigs cascading over their shoulders. The younger brother was no more than sixteen, with a soft, soulful countenance. The elder was a few years older, somewhat arrogant-

looking. They both reminded me of John Aislabie. They shared the same dark brown eyes and narrow, handsome face. And yet there was something lacking in both portraits. Aislabie was a man of restless vigour. The two brothers seemed languid by comparison, almost lifeless. A failing of the painter, perhaps.

The painting of the younger brother was a little crooked. I reached out and straightened it, noticing a name etched upon the frame. Mallory Aislabie, died 1685. My gaze slid to the older brother. George Aislabie, died 1693. The year Aislabie had inherited the Studley Estate. These were Aislabie’s older brothers, relegated to the east wing while his beloved horses pranced in an endless parade of paintings downstairs.

‘They’re worried about Metcalfe,’ Sam said.

‘The servants?’

‘Everyone.’

‘Why are they worried about him?’

A shrug.

‘Should I be worried about Metcalfe?’

Another shrug.

I remembered the note I’d taken from the library, covered in Metcalfe’s blotched and frantic scrawl. I pulled it from my jacket to compare it more carefully, but I could see at once that it didn’t match. It was too jagged, and he dipped his quill too often, the ink heavy on the page.

‘We should go downstairs,’ I said. ‘The family will be gathering in the drawing room.’

Sam shrank back, as if I’d just threatened him with a blade. Or a bath.

‘I’ve told them you’re my ward. A gentleman’s son, if you can imagine such a thing. I know it seems unlikely, but we must brazen it out. Everyone will be much too polite to question it.’ I pointed at his shoes and stockings. ‘Come along. The best houses don’t allow you to eat barefoot I’m afraid.’

He frowned. Cards, conversation. Cutlery. ‘When do we hunt for the ledger?’

‘Later. Aislabie thinks I’m here to help him. We must dissemble, a little.’

‘But we’ll leave, once we’ve found it? We’ll go home?’

I hesitated. Home was the Cocked Pistol on Russell Street. A collection of rooms above a disreputable print shop. I couldn’t promise him a bed there, not without Kitty’s consent. ‘We’ll go straight back to London.’

Sam’s face crumpled. I had side-stepped the promise, and he knew it.

‘Put your shoes on,’ I said, touching his arm. ‘And tie up your hair. You look positively savage.’

Chapter Seven

My arrival at Studley Hall had caused a stir in the neighbourhood, and Mr Aislabie was forced to entertain several unexpected guests that evening. Everyone was eager to meet the celebrated Half-Hanged Hawkins – save for the elusive Metcalfe, sequestered in his rooms. A woman of middling years clasped my hand and told me – tears spilling down her cheeks – that I was a miracle, a miracle. I am not sure I ever caught her name, only that she was a neighbour of the Aislabies and had just returned from London herself. ‘I’m afraid I missed your hanging. I’d promised to visit my sister in Greenwich and she is most fastidious about her engagements. Can you forgive me?’

‘This once, madam.’

‘London is a vastly wicked place,’ she said, squeezing my hand. ‘I miss it dreadfully.’

The vicar of Kirkby Malzeard had ridden several miles on very bad roads to inform me that God had spared my life as a sign of His mercy, and that I must now dedicate myself to His Glory. By coincidence, the church roof at Kirkby was in urgent need of repair. Was it true that I had recently come into a fortune through marriage? I was rescued by Mr Gatteker, the physician, pulling me away by the elbow. He was eager to learn more about the physical effects of my hanging. ‘I hear there are certain spontaneous bodily eruptions, when the rope tightens.’ He leaned closer, and whispered hotly in my ear. ‘Venereal spasms.’

I drew back a pace. ‘How’s your patient, sir?’

‘Tolerable. Haven’t killed him yet.’ Mr Gatteker had been summoned from Ripon to examine Fred’s broken leg. He was a genial fellow of near forty, his eyes small but very bright behind a pair of round spectacles. Unlike most doctors I’d met he appeared to be in excellent health, if a little stretched about the middle. He stole two glasses of wine from a passing tray. ‘Your brother splinted the leg with commendable proficiency.’

I glanced across the drawing room at Sam, back pressed to the wall as if he might like to sink through it. ‘He’s not my brother.’

‘Is he not? You’d best inform him of that disappointing news, sir. He’s been telling the world that you are.’ Gatteker took a deep, contented swig of claret, watching me over the rim. His expression was mild, but searching. ‘Not brothers. But there’s a bond, I think? If that is not too presumptuous of me.’

‘Who is that gentleman, speaking with Mr Aislabie?’ I asked, gesturing towards a slight, straight-backed man dressed in a sky blue coat, the cuffs and pleats in the latest London style. His left hand and arm hung under the coat sleeve, bandaged and bound tightly in a fine muslin sling.

‘Ah, a swift change of subject! I have offended you with my probings. Mrs Gatteker oft complains-’

I cut him off before the inevitable and unwanted jest. ‘His arm is broken?’

‘Fell from his horse. Francis Forster. Decent fellow. Cat-a-strophically dull. Mind you don’t sit with him at supper.’

Mr Gatteker had a carrying voice. Mr Forster, hearing his name bellowed across the room – though thankfully not the proceeding description – came over and introduced himself with a neat bow. He had the look of a man who had spent long months on the Continent, or aboard ship. The sun had bronzed his skin, and his eyes – a vivid blue – shone out from beneath straight brows, burnished to a white gold. It had been another freezing winter in England, and the rest of the gathering looked pale, one might even say dusty,by comparison.

Forster didn’t ask me how it felt to be hanged by the neck in front of one hundred thousand spectators, which by this point in the evening I took to be the height of good manners. I held my pale hand against his. ‘I seem a corpse next to you, sir. Are you in the navy?’ Aislabie had been Treasurer of the Navy for four years.

‘Heavens, no,’ Forster laughed. ‘Though I have been abroad for some years. I have a great passion for architecture.’ He had spent the last three years on a grand tour of Italy, he explained, with two companions. His friends remained abroad, lost in the magnificent, ruined splendour of it all. He had run out of funds over the winter and so sailed home, eager to put his ideas into practice and presumably to find paid work. He had filled countless sketchbooks with his designs, perhaps I might like to see them? I pretended that I would.

‘Then I beg you to visit me tomorrow sir, at Fountains Hall,’ he beamed. ‘Have you viewed the abbey yet?’

‘There is a painting-’

‘No? Splendid – you must permit me to tour it with you. We must pray for good weather. Now: promise me you will set aside at least three hours, sir! One cannot appreciate all the finer details if one rushes through…’ He then ruined five perfectly decent minutes of my life talking about flying buttresses. Mr Gatteker, the traitor, drifted away. My eyes flickered across Forster’s face, which was more interesting than his conversation. A brilliant white scar crossed one golden brow, and another cut into his lip. The lines at the edges of his eyes suggested a man of at least five and thirty, but they might have been formed from squinting at the Italian sun. In fact he mentioned later that evening that he was born in 1700, ‘the very cusp of the new century’. It had aged him, that bright sunshine.

‘I’m sorry to hear about your arm,’ I said, leaping into a momentary lull in his monologuing.

Forster winced. ‘Broke the wrist too, would you believe. Damned horse stumbled on the Nottingham road.’ The sling kept his arm high upon his chest, his bandaged thumb and fingers pressed to his heart.

‘Must have been painful.’

‘Screamed like a baby,’ he said, laughing at himself in a likeable way – and I forgave him for his lamentable skills in conversation.

But not enough to sit with him at supper.

We were a smaller gathering in the dining room, our party whittled down to eight for a light meal. It was almost nine when we sat down, but the curtains were left open to the black night. It gave a dramatic backdrop to the room, which was bright with candles, flames mirrored in the silverware. Aislabie and Lady Judith sat at either end of the table, our elegant hosts, exchanging affectionate jests at each other’s expense. Elizabeth Fairwood sat next to her would-be father in her grey gown, training her displeasure upon her plate. Francis Forster took the chair opposite, eager to speak with Aislabie. They fell swiftly into a discussion about the new stables, to the point that Aislabie called for Bagby, ordering him to bring in the plans for closer scrutiny. Lady Judith overruled her husband, her clear voice cutting above the rest. ‘Not at supper, dearest. Poor Mrs Fairwood is drooping with boredom.’

I was seated to her left, Mr Gatteker upon her right. She leaned closer, whispered in my ear. ‘Forster is a tedious fellow. I’m glad that you are at my side tonight.’ I felt a slim hand on my knee, followed by a gentle squeeze.

Sneaton, placed between Mr Gatteker and Mrs Fairwood, reached for the salted fish, struggling with his damaged hand.

‘If you will permit me, sir,’ Mrs Fairwood offered, bringing the dish closer.

‘Much obliged, madam,’ Sneaton replied.

The exchange was brief and excruciatingly polite. They clearly loathed one another.

‘How quiet you are, Master Fleet,’ Lady Judith scolded Sam, cocooned in silence to my left. ‘I believe you have not spoken one word since we sat down.’

To my surprise, Mrs Fairwood spoke up in his defence. ‘Is that not refreshing, madam? To speak only when one has something pertinent to say?’

Lady Judith was too subtle to acknowledge the insult. ‘Now there is a noble ambition! Though I fear under such instruction, the dining rooms of England would fall silent at a stroke. Tell me, Master Fleet, do you enjoy your stay at Studley Hall?’

I sensed Sam’s consternation at the question, and his horror at being asked anything at all, to feel the eyes of the table swivel upon him. An honest reply would be no, he was not enjoying his stay at Studley, that – in fact – he hated it and wished more than anything to be gone. I had at least taught him enough manners to know that this was not an acceptable response.

‘Yes,’ he lied.

I trod on his toe.

‘Thank you,’ he added, miserable.

Another press of the toe, as if he were a pipe organ.

‘Madam.’ Half yelped.

‘There is much to commend a quiet gentleman,’ Mrs Fairwood announced to the air, dark ringlets shaking with the force of her feeling. ‘It suggests a thoughtful nature. To speak is a common necessity. To listen – a rare virtue.’

‘Quite so, well said, madam!’ Forster cried. ‘Nothing worse than a fellow who cannot keep his mouth closed. I have always felt…’

Lady Judith gave me a satirical look.

The supper continued. No one mentioned the threatening notes, or the deer. Talk returned to the stables, and the gardener’s extravagant bill for seeds, and then worse: politics. I could sense Sam growing increasingly restless. Eventually, he could bear it no longer.

‘Mr Sneaton. How were you burned?’

There was an appalled silence.

‘Mr Sneaton-’ I began.

He waved away my apology with his damaged hand. He seemed unable to speak. Gatteker poured himself another glass of claret, the wine glugging from the bottle in the silent room.

‘There was a fire in my London home,’ Aislabie answered at last, in a flat voice. ‘Many years ago now. My son William was a baby at the time. I tried to reach him…’ He swallowed hard. ‘I was forced back by the flames. Mr Sneaton ran into the fire and the smoke, and he found my son. I lost my wife, my Anne.’ He grabbed Mrs Fairwood’s hand. ‘But Mr Sneaton saved my son. He almost lost his own life as a consequence. He suffered years of pain. Still suffers now, without complaint. Mr Sneaton is the bravest, most admirable man I have ever met. I owe him everything.’ He glared down the table. ‘Does that answer your question, Master Fleet?’

‘Yes,’ Sam said, reaching for the salt. ‘Thank you.’

The company rose from the table, subdued by Aislabie’s story and his obvious distress. I sent Sam to our rooms, which pleased him very well. He had plans to sketch in his room, using candles he’d tucked beneath his shirt. Sam’s instinct was to steal what he needed, rather than to ask and risk refusal. It would not have occurred to him that he could simply demand what he wanted. Not without a blade in his hand.

I suppose I should have reprimanded him for his behaviour, but why waste my breath? I had tried to explain the subtleties of polite conversation. It was like trying to recommend a complicated gavotte to a soldier striding hard across a battlefield. Sam’s view was that if one must speak, it should be to a purpose – to discover a useful fact, for example, or to offer a plan of action. Sam had wanted to know how Sneaton had been burned, and now he knew. This, to his mind, was a highly satisfactory conversational exchange.

And how could I argue with him? I now knew how Sneaton had come by his injuries, and why he was treated more as a member of the family than as Aislabie’s secretary. After all, servants did not sit down to supper with their masters, in the main. I was certain now that Sneaton had not written the threatening notes. He was loyal, and he was treated with respect – perhaps even affection – by the family. I might not have discovered this if Sam hadn’t ignored the constrants of etiquette.

I needed to think, and to restore my nerves. I needed a pipe. As Lady Judith escorted her guests to the drawing room I slipped away, through the great hall and down the front steps. It was a clear night, the waxing moon a brilliant silver. The front of the house was very still now that the work on the stables had ended for the day. Candles glowed softly in the drawing room and I could hear the sound of the harpsichord through an open window.

I stepped on to the drive, feet crunching on the gravel, then moved further out into the deer park beyond, the grass wet around my ankles. Here the darkness found me, and wrapped me in its quiet embrace. In London, night was day for me: I lived in Covent Garden, surrounded by coffeehouses, gin shops and brothels. I had run headlong into that wild and rowdy city, craving its hectic pace – the perfect tempo for my restless spirit.

But the city had turned on me, in the end. I had suffered many nights of agony and despair these past few months. Chained to a wall in the Marshalsea, with the dead festering beside me and the rats crawling across my body. Sweating with gaol fever as a parson prayed over my fading soul. Those endless nights grieving for Kitty, when I believed her dead. The eve of my hanging and the days after, when I would dream it all again. When I would embellish it in my nightmares: trapped in my coffin as they lowered me into the ground. The patter of soil on wood as I was buried alive.

These were the nights the city had bestowed upon me.

Eyes closed, I breathed in the fresh, cool air. There was no city stink here, but grass and mud, and the faintest whiff of cow dung. I could sense the deer close by, awake and alert to threats in the dark. I thought of the butchered doe and its tiny fawn, killed before it could live. Then I pushed the memory away and enjoyed a moment’s peace, alone in the night.

A moment was enough. I rolled my shoulders, stretched out my back and neck – still aching from my journey. I packed my pipe and struck a spark from my tinderbox, breathing gently on the embers. The flame burst orange, and a gaunt grey face loomed out of the dark, inches from mine.

I gave a shout of alarm and the tinderbox sailed out of my hands, flame sizzling out in the wet earth. The face vanished, the night a velvet black all around me. I could see nothing, except for my breath clouding in front of me. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel the blood thrumming in my ears. So much for the quiet peace of the country.

‘Who’s there?’ I called out. I had no sword. I’d left my dagger and pistols in my room.

‘I watched you die.’

The words drifted through the air, musical and strange.

Metcalfe. I exhaled softly.

Relief turned swiftly to annoyance. What the devil was he doing, creeping about in the dark? I dropped to the ground, hunting for my tinderbox. I watched you die. A fine sort of a greeting. He must have witnessed my hanging. Was I meant to thank him for his attendance? My fingers closed around the tinderbox. I stood up and started for the house.

‘Mr Hawkins?’ he called after me.

I pretended not to hear him, striding back through the grass. He hurried to catch up, breathing hard with the effort.

We had reached the steps, our shoes scuffing on the stone. In the great hall, I plucked a candle free from its sconce and lit my pipe. The first, glorious draw of tobacco sent its soothing message deep into my mind and body. All is safe, all is well. ‘You startled me, sir.’

Metcalfe ran a hand across his bare scalp, fingers rasping against the greying stubble. His nails were black with mud. He was dressed in a once-fine waistcoat, ruined by neglect. His stockings were spattered, his shoes scuffed and coated with grass and mud. If I had not known that he was the heir to a baronetcy, I might have taken him for a poacher – and not a successful one, given his thin frame and hollow cheeks.

He peered at my face, standing closer than was comfortable or civil. ‘Are you alive?’

‘Of course I’m alive,’ I snapped, leaning back.

He gave a curious, strangled sound – an almost-laugh. ‘You will permit me?’ He prodded my chest with a grimy finger, confirming my answer. ‘I saw you hang. They put you in a coffin.’

‘I was revived. Did you not hear the story?’

‘Revived. Of course. Of course.’ He snorted, disgusted by his own foolishness, and sat down heavily on the oak staircase. ‘Forgive me, sir. Sometimes I see things that are not there. At least, there are times when I find it hard to distinguish between truth and fiction.’ His soft grey eyes widened in fear at the thought.

I could see now how he suffered – a disorder of the mind, reflected in the body. The poor devil had watched me die, and now here I was looming out of the night in front of him. It would be enough to frighten any man, never mind one caught in the grip of a violent melancholia. I offered him my pipe.

He took a long draw, and breathed the smoke out with a sigh. ‘Thank you.’

I sat down next to him, stretching out my legs. He was older than I had expected for Aislabie’s nephew. Middling forties, I guessed. He smelled of tobacco and sweat, and his clothes were stained and in need of a wash. Why had he not sent them to be laundered? There were a dozen servants here who could attend him.

He returned my pipe, attempting a smile. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot.

I held out my hand. ‘Thomas Hawkins.’

He gave me a rueful smile. ‘Metcalfe Robinson.’

We shook hands. ‘Do you not remember me from this afternoon, sir? I spied you up there.’ I pointed to the minstrels’ gallery above us.

Metcalfe looked dazed. He reached a hand beneath his shirt, scratching his shoulder. ‘Was that today? What day is it, again?’

I told him it was a Thursday, wondering if he was sure of the month, even the year. He seemed only half awake. Laudanum, I thought, remembering the bottle Sally had borrowed from him.

Metcalfe lit his own pipe. His hands were trembling a little. What a shock I’d given the poor devil. ‘You’ve come to help my uncle, I believe?’

‘If I can.’

‘ “He has done more mischief than any man in the nation.” Lord Townshend said that of him, did you know? Although, He that is without sin among you, etcetera…’ He puffed his pipe, eyes narrowed. He was not himself, he was not well. But he was a shrewd man, beneath it all – from a family of politicians and diplomats. ‘Walpole sent you?’

I shook my head. I had not met the first minister, nor had any wish to do so. ‘The queen.’

‘The queen!’ Metcalfe pulled the pipe from his lips and stared at me, astonished. ‘So he yet has influence at court. That is ill news. He’s always promised he’d return to power one day. I didn’t think it possible.’ He yawned, and stretched. ‘I have been sleeping. But now I am awake.’ He stood up.

Something about those words echoed in my mind. I had heard them before. Not a psalm. A poem, perhaps? ‘You dislike your uncle.’

‘I despise him.’ He gave me his hand, and helped me to my feet. As he pulled me up, he brought his lips to my ear, clutching my hand tightly. ‘Something dreadful is going to happen, Mr Hawkins. Can you feel it?’ His breath was feverish hot in my ear. ‘You were dead. They hanged you and they nailed you in your coffin. And now you are here: the black crow at the window, tapping out its message with its great beak. Death has come. Death is here.’

‘Enough!’ I snapped, breaking from him.

Metcalfe gave a jolt, as if waking from a dream.

His fingers had left smudges on my coat. I brushed them away. ‘I must ask you not to speak of my hanging again, Mr Robinson. It is not a topic I wish to discuss, with anyone.’

Metcalfe wasn’t listening. The light that had burned in his eyes was gone, leaving him listless and dazed. He nodded at the trail of muddy footprints we had left from door to stair. ‘Poor Sally. See what we’ve done to her floor. We shall be in trouble! Well, well. Goodnight, sir.’

I stared after him as he headed up the stairs. It was as if he had been possessed, and now had no memory of it. Indeed it was as if I had met three of him within a few minutes: the shrewd politician, the shattered melancholic, and the rambling prophet. That could not be explained by laudanum alone.

They’re worried about Metcalfe, Sam had said. Now I saw why.

I stood for a long time on my own in the great hall. I was disturbed by how much Metcalfe’s warning had echoed my own fears: that I had become shrouded by death these past few weeks; that it had somehow stalked me back into the living world. And – caught up in such bleak and unhappy thoughts – I missed something important.

Lady Judith had told me that Metcalfe had barely left his room in three days. Now he was wandering through the deer park at night, with mud on his shoes and under his nails. I should have asked myself what he was doing out upon the estate, alone in the dark. I should have asked him.

But as I say – I didn’t think of it at the time.

Chapter Eight

It was late – much later – and the house was quiet.

Someone had entered the room.

With my eyes closed, feigning sleep, I inched my hand beneath my pillow and found my dagger, curling my fingers around the hilt.

It wasn’t Sam. He was downstairs somewhere, hunting for the ledger. And if he wanted to kill me in my bed, I wouldn’t hear him coming.

Footsteps, light upon the oak boards. A slight creak. Definitely not Sam. I opened my eyes into pitch-black, shuttered darkness – the very dead of night. Whoever this was, he had walked through the house without a candle. He knew there were steps down into the room. Bagby? Metcalfe? This was the way my friend and cellmate Samuel Fleet had died: alone in his bed, his throat cut. I pulled the blade free.

The intruder had reached the bottom of the bed. I felt a pressure as he crawled on to the mattress. He was close now, almost close enough…

I reached out in the dark and grabbed an arm. With a quick snap, I’d thrown him face down on to the bed. I jumped up and straddled him, my arm firm across his back, my blade pressed to his throat. ‘Who are you?’ I snarled.

‘Oh for heaven’s sake, Tom!’ a familiar voice cried out, muffled by the pillow.

I dropped the blade to the floor. ‘Kitty?’

‘Get off me!’

I grinned, confused but happy. I pressed my knees against her side. ‘No… I believe I shall stay here.’

She giggled, and flipped on to her back beneath me. I could feel her gown against my legs, smell her scent. I ran my hand up her waist in the dark, found the curve of her breast. I squeezed it, gently. ‘Is it really you?’

She was laughing now, her chest rising and falling beneath my hand. ‘You know it is.’

I leaned down and kissed her neck, her jaw. Where were her lips, confound it? Ah… There. ‘Who brought you here?’ I asked between kisses. ‘How did you reach-’

She stopped my words with her mouth. ‘This first, my love,’ she said, wrapping her legs about my hips. ‘This first.’

Later, I lit a candle and fell back against the pillow, grinning up at the canopy. Kitty shuffled beneath my arm, resting her head upon my chest. ‘I should never have left you,’ she murmured. ‘But I was so angry. I do have a slight temper.’

I didn’t refute this.

‘I thought you would come galloping after me. All the way from Newport Pagnell I thought, he’ll jump on a horse and race back to find me. Only you didn’t.’ She sighed into my chest. ‘And then I began to wonder – because you are not spiteful, Tom, that is one of your better qualities, and you don’t have a temper, at least not a bad one, and you are also impossibly lazy and never do a single thing unless you absolutely must – so I began to wonder, why is Tom determinedto go to Yorkshire, when he hates to go anywhere at all if it does not involve drinking or gambling or perhaps a play if there is drinking and gambling afterwards.’

‘True.’

She propped herself on her elbow to view me the better, sweeping her long red hair from her face. ‘And then I thought, well he has not been himself since he was found guilty of murder and hanged, which is to be expected, I suppose. You know, you have been quite gloomy and mournful and distracted these past few weeks.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I forgive you. And it struck me that perhaps you simply wanted to escape London and all the terrible things that have happened to you. I know you still think of the Marshalsea, Tom, and have nightmares sometimes. And now the hanging as well. And the neighbours calling you a murderer, and speaking out against you at the trial, and then being so fickle and deciding you’re a hero once they thought you were dead. Idiots. I should want to run away from all of that if I were you, and the queen did order you to go to Yorkshire, so perhaps you simply wanted to leave London, but didn’t know how to tell me-’

‘I-’

‘But then I thought, Lord, in which case, why would we not go to Italy, as we’d planned? After all, the queen betrayed you in such a foul and sneaking fashion – she would have let you hang, Tom, you must never forget that – and I couldn’t see why in all the heavens you would travel for days to find her stupid ledger unless she had some power over you.’ She paused, and put a hand upon my heart. ‘She threatened to have me hanged, didn’t she?’

I covered her hand with mine.

Kitty’s large green eyes filled with tears. ‘Why did you not tell me? We made a vow to each other. No more secrets. You promised.’

I slid from the bed, and poured us both a glass of sherry.

‘Walking about naked won’t distract me, Tom.’

I smiled, and handed her a glass.

She sipped the sherry, lips curving about the rim. ‘Well. Perhaps a little.’

I sat down next to her, and nuzzled her neck.

She pushed me away. ‘You broke your promise.’

‘Because I love you.’

‘Oh, you pig!’ She punched my arm. I’d played my ace.

We sat together for a while side by side upon the bed, drinking our sherry.

‘I didn’t even reach London, you know,’ Kitty said, stifling a yawn. ‘I paid the driver to turn around at St Albans. I’ve been chasing you all the way back north.’

‘Who let you in so late?’

‘The butler. Busby?’

‘Bagby. Was he not surprised you travelled alone?’

‘He said he was vastly pleased I’d arrived.’ She mock preened, poking her nose in the air. ‘Are you vastly pleased, Tom?’

‘Beyond measure.’ But how peculiar of Bagby. Why should it matter to him?

Kitty rested her chin upon my shoulder. ‘Let’s leave as soon as it’s light. It’s only a two-day ride to Hull. And then a ship. And then France. And then Italy.’

‘I can’t leave, not yet. I have to find the ledger.’

She sighed, her breath tickling my skin. ‘And what then? Do you think the queen will leave you in peace after that? She will never let you go, Tom. You’re too useful. We’ll be trapped for ever.’

She was right. I had been mulling over the same problem ever since I’d been given my orders – wondering how I might free myself from the queen’s grip. There was one obvious way: a simple if dangerous plan. But I needed Aislabie’s accounts book first.

‘Where’s Sam?’ Kitty asked.

‘Hunting for the ledger.’

‘O-ho!’ She pinched me in the ribs. ‘Taking all the risk while you lie snoring in bed.’

‘I don’t snore.’

Kitty raised an eyebrow at that. ‘He can’t come back to the Pistol with us, Tom. I know he’s a sharp and useful boy, and he owns some rare gifts. But I don’t trust him, not after what he did that night…’ She trailed away, as we both thought about that room on Russell Street, the pillow and the forged note. A voice silenced for ever. Kitty had killed a man, but it had been a sudden, unplanned act: one shot to protect me, another to avenge Samuel Fleet, whom she had loved dearly. And while she could not regret it, I knew it troubled her. Was Sam troubled by what he’d done? Had it caused even a ripple to cross his soul? Impossible to know. But the murder had been measured, bloodless, and cunning. Efficient. Fourteen years old – and he had snuffed out a life as if it meant nothing.

I wrapped my arm about Kitty’s shoulder. ‘I’ve promised him nothing. He’s a born thief – one of the best in London. That’s the only reason he’s here.’

That wasn’t the entire truth. Mr Gatteker had perceived a bond between Sam and me and I felt it too. I couldn’t explain it to Kitty. I couldn’t explain it to myself.

‘I’m freezing,’ she said, rubbing her goosebumped arms. So we slipped back under the covers and spoke of other things.

Sam took a silent step back from the door, and then another. There was a sharp pain, like a blade in his heart, but he ignored it. It wasn’t a real blade and therefore it wasn’t a real pain, and it told him nothing.

‘He’s a born thief. That’s the only reason he’s here.’

How could he fault the logic?

But I am so much more.

The thought escaped against his wishes, too nimble to be held down. With it came a memory of sitting with Mr Hawkins in Newgate, the day before the hanging. Sam always listened and he always remembered, but that half hour in the prison yard he could conjure up in a heartbeat. He recalled the feel of the wooden bench, rough with splinters. The faint sound of hawkers shouting on the other side of the wall. The underlying stink of unwashed bodies and rotten food. If he chose, he could remember the number of cracks in the cobbles at his feet, the precise colour of the weeds poking through the dirt.

Mr Hawkins had asked, ‘If you could do anything in the world, Sam – any occupation you wished. What would you choose?’

And, in that brief moment, Sam had glimpsed another life.

Standing in the damp, sloping corridor of the east wing of Studley Hall, he frowned at his own foolishness. This was what came from dreams and wishes. If he felt disappointed, if he felt betrayed – who could he blame but himself?

As for the pain in his chest, it would pass.

He was a born thief. He would find the ledger. It was a valuable thing, to know a gentleman’s secrets and to have him in your debt. Sam’s father had taught him that.

He moved silently along the corridor, down the stairs and into the kitchens, then out into the courtyard. The dogs didn’t bark as he passed the kennels. He climbed over the courtyard wall and out into the deep wood.

No one saw him. No one heard him. Not a soul. But he saw everything.