A Death at Fountains Abbey

Chapter Sixteen

I woke to shouts of alarm and the sound of people running.

Kitty swung her legs from the bed and hopped to the floor. She always woke faster than I did. I struggled out of the sheets, half asleep, and groped my way through a gap in the bed curtains. The shutters lay open still, and the room was grey in the thin light before dawn.

‘Fire!’ someone called, far away on another floor.

Kitty twisted and tugged at the door handle. ‘Mr Bagby!’ There was no reply. She turned to me, fear in her voice. ‘He left us!’

‘Wake Sam.’ He could pick a lock in moments. I took her place at the door, throwing my shoulder at it. When that didn’t work I thrust on my shoe and kicked hard, the wood splintering and cracking under my heel. Even amidst the danger, this was deeply satisfying. I had been wanting to kick something this hard ever since I’d arrived at this bloody place.

‘He’s not there,’ Kitty said, hurrying back into the room.

There was no time to consider the weight of this discovery. I glanced at the window. It was open as we’d left it.

Kitty followed my gaze. ‘We can’t.’

That wasn’t quite true – she could jump to the branch and wait for rescue. It would not, however, take our combined weight.

Kitty shoved on one of my boots and began to kick the door. We worked together, matching our attack, and at last the wood splintered around the lock. Kitty snatched up my spare coat to throw around her wrapping gown and we hurried down the labyrinth of sloping corridors and creaking steps, abandoning one boot and one shoe along the way.

On the landing above the great hall, we watched as servants spilled up from the lower ground, clutching buckets of water. A footman rushed up the stairs towards us – one of the men who’d guarded Sam the day before. ‘Where’s the fire?’ I called.

‘West wing, sir.’

‘Wait.’ I snatched at his arm. ‘Have you seen Sam – Master Fleet?’

He shook his head and pressed on.

We followed in his wake, passing servants heading the other way with empty buckets. I could smell smoke, growing stronger as we moved up the stairs towards the back of the house.

Two chambermaids squeezed past me in the narrow corridor. They didn’t seem concerned by the fire, and took a singular interest in my shirt, untied and loose across my chest. The bolder of the two smiled at me. ‘No need for panic, sir – it’s out.’

‘Where did it start?’

‘Mrs Fairwood’s rooms, sir.’

Bagby appeared at the bottom of the corridor. Seeing him, the maids hurried to leave. ‘Mistress,’ they said, bobbing a swift curtsey to Kitty as they passed. We heard them giggling to each other on the stairs.

Kitty glanced at my chest, and rolled her eyes.

Bagby approached us, stretching out his arms to block our path. ‘Go back to your chamber, please.’

‘You left us,’ Kitty glared at him. ‘We might have burned to death.’

He had the decency to look ashamed. ‘It was a small fire, madam – you were in no danger.’

Kitty slapped him, hard. ‘We didn’t know that.’

Bagby clutched his cheek, more in shock than pain. ‘I’m very sorry, madam,’ he stammered.

‘No matter,’ Kitty said, her temper violent but brief. ‘We kicked the door down.’

We shoved past him.

Alone for a moment, Kitty stopped me, fingers spread against my chest. ‘Did Sam do this?’

I shook my head.

‘Can you be sure, Tom?’

‘Why would he hurt Mrs Fairwood?’

‘To hurt Aislabie. To force Sneaton to give up the book.’

‘It’s possible,’ I admitted.

This was the same argument that had driven Kitty to abandon me on the London road. Perhaps Sam had started the fire, or perhaps not. He did what he must – with reason, but without scruple.

A small crowd had gathered in the doorway of Mrs Fairwood’s quarters: two footmen acting as guards; Mrs Mason, grey hair hanging loose beneath her cap, peering over their shoulders at the devastation within; Lady Judith just inside the door, dressed in her night robe.

‘The drama is over,’ she said. ‘The wallpaper is ruined.’

‘Mrs Fairwood?’

‘Unharmed.’

Clearly she wished it had been the other way about.

We squeezed past them all. It was one of the finest rooms in the house, or at least it had been – only the best for Mr Aislabie’s maybe-daughter. A grand canopy bed took up much of the space and this was where the fire had started. The silk drapes were burned to blackened rags, pulled to the floor and sodden with water. The bedlinen was also ruined, and the wallpaper behind the bed was scorched. The rest of the room had survived almost intact – Mrs Fairwood’s books stacked upon her desk next to a vase of orange wallflowers.

Mrs Fairwood stood in the far corner, weeping in Mr Aislabie’s arms. He looked up as we entered, his face grim.

It was only then that I saw Sally, collapsed on the floor between the bed and the window, her palms upturned. They were bright red, the top skin burned away and starting to blister.

Kitty gave a cry of dismay and rushed to her aid.

‘What’s this?’ Mrs Mason pushed her way into the room. ‘Bless us, Sally – I never saw you down there. Oh, love – whatever have you done?’

‘She saved my life,’ Mrs Fairwood said, breaking free from Aislabie. ‘I woke and the bed was on fire all around me. She tore down the drapes with her bare hands.’

Sally swayed and leaned heavily against Kitty. Her face was grey, hair stuck to her skin with sweat. ‘It hurts,’ she whispered. ‘It hurts so much.’

Kitty and Mrs Mason helped her to her feet. ‘We must take her to the courtyard pump,’ Kitty said. ‘The cold water will help with the pain.’

‘Wait!’ Aislabie ordered, stepping in front of the three women. ‘Why were you so close to Mrs Fairwood’s room in the middle of the night?’

Sally was breathing so hard with the pain, she could scarce answer. ‘Weren’t middle o’ night for me, your honour. I were up lighting fires.’

Aislabie snatched at her chin. ‘Did you start this one?’

‘No sir!’ Sally cried. ‘I’d never do such a thing!’

‘John!’ Lady Judith gasped.

Kitty, without a word, knocked Aislabie’s wrist away.

‘Did you start the fire, girl?’ he pressed. ‘Answer me!’

‘No, sir,’ Sally sobbed, sagging between Kitty and Mrs Mason. ‘I came to help, I swear it! Oh please sir, my hands.’

‘Father,’ Mrs Fairwood said, softly.

Aislabie turned to her at once.

‘She’s hurt. Please – let her go. For me.’

Aislabie glared at Sally for a moment, trying to read the truth in her face. Then he sighed. ‘Very well. For you, Lizzie. But she must be locked in the cellar once you are done with her, Mrs Mason. I would speak with her again.’

Kitty and Mrs Mason guided Sally from the room. We could hear her sobs all the way down the corridor.

Lady Judith ordered the footmen from the room. ‘For heaven’s sake, John,’ she said, when they were beyond hearing. ‘Sally Shutt has served our family since she was eleven years old. If it weren’t for her, the whole house would be ablaze. What is the matter with you, husband?’

Aislabie rubbed his scalp. He looked older without his wig, and very tired. ‘You suspected the servants from the start, Hawkins. I should have listened to you. I have put too much faith in them. Again.’

‘I don’t think that Sally-’

‘Who else could have started the fire?’

Sam. Sam could have started it. But I could hardly confess that. I looked at Mrs Fairwood with a fresh eye. She was uninjured, and her shock seemed counterfeit to my eyes. Could she have started the fire herself? Was it a coincidence that the wallpaper and bed were burned, but her beloved books lay safe a few feet away? I had no proof, and if I did Aislabie would never believe it. So I held my tongue.

‘Don’t you see, Judith?’ Aislabie said. ‘There is no other answer. Hawkins was locked in his room. Damn it! All those men standing guard outside, and the trouble is here – inside my house. It is all happening again – at the very moment Lizzie is returned to me.’ He covered his face for a moment, then rallied. ‘I want that girl guarded at all times until she’s recovered enough to stand before a magistrate.’

‘John-’

‘Fetch your ward, Hawkins. I will send for Sneaton. We will shake answers from them both.’

I hesitated, and in that moment, Bagby slid into the room.

‘The boy is missing, Mr Aislabie, sir,’ he said.

Aislabie glared at me. ‘Where is he?’

‘He must have followed us out,’ I lied. ‘We thought the house was burning down.’

‘The window was open,’ Bagby said, shoulders back, chin high. ‘He might have escaped at any time last night.’

‘Really, Bagby,’ Lady Judith tsked. ‘They are on the second landing, are they not? In the mezzanino?’

‘There’s an oak tree next to the window, your ladyship,’ Bagby replied, throwing me a triumphant look. ‘Easy enough for a boy to clamber out, as he pleased.’

‘Nonsense,’ I said. ‘We opened the window when we heard there was a fire.’ I turned to Lady Judith. ‘Your butler left us locked up in our chamber. We had to kick the door down.’

‘So the boy is missing,’ Aislabie said, glaring at me. He gestured about the room. ‘He could have done this!’

‘No, sir.’

He prodded a finger at me. ‘On your orders!’

‘No,’ I said, with more vehemence.

Lady Judith heard the difference and understood it, even if her husband did not. ‘I think we should send out a search party for Master Fleet.’

Aislabie nodded, his eyes on me. ‘Aye. I think we should.’

‘I believe it best I return to Lincoln,’ Mrs Fairwood said, quietly. ‘Would you not agree, sir?’

Here was one good reason to start a fire. If she wanted to leave Studley without anyone questioning such a hasty departure…

Aislabie reached for her hand, pressing it to his chest. ‘No, my dear. You shall stay here. This will all be resolved within the hour, you shall see. We’ll find this boy and squeeze the truth from him.’

Mrs Fairwood looked stricken. ‘But I must leave. Please, Father-’

He smiled at her fondly, eyes shining with love. ‘You are safest here, with your family.’

‘Please. I must go home.’

His smile faded. ‘This is your home. And I will not part with you again. No – I am decided. You will wait in my wife’s apartment until this matter is settled. I’ll send men to guard the door. Do not look so frightened, Lizzie! You are quite safe, my dear.’

‘Well, Mrs Fairwood.’ Lady Judith arched an eyebrow. ‘We shall be prisoners together.’ She put a hand on Mrs Fairwood’s narrow shoulder and led her away.

‘My books…’

‘I have a fascinating volume on horse breeding somewhere,’ Lady Judith said, pushing her out of the room. ‘You will be most diverted, I promise you.’

I stifled a smile.

‘Let’s find this boy of yours, Hawkins,’ Aislabie said.

Simpson was in the kitchen with a handful of his men, drinking beer and breakfasting after their night’s vigil watching the house. A wasted night as it transpired. They had seen nothing, heard nothing.

‘Save for Mr Robinson,’ Simpson shrugged, as if Metcalfe’s comings and goings were of no consequence.

‘What time did he return?’ I asked.

‘He took a walk after supper and another in the dead of night. Four o’clock, I’d say.’ He glanced around the table at his men, who nodded in agreement. ‘Came back half an hour ago.’

‘Did you ask what he was about?’

Simpson slurped his ale. ‘Not my place to question a gentleman.’

‘Quite right,’ Aislabie murmured. ‘Thank you, Simpson, for your help tonight. I fear I am in need of your assistance once more. Mr Hawkins’ ward has run off somewhere. He’s a troublesome boy but we must bring him back safely. I would have you send a few of your men out on to the estate to search for him. Mr Pugh and Mr Hallow will help them. Where would he be hiding, Hawkins, most likely?’

‘Somewhere warm and dry,’ I said, feeling traitorous. But I was beginning to worry about Sam – and I agreed with Aislabie that it was time to put an end to this business. In this, I shared some sympathy with Mrs Fairwood: I wished to go home.

I returned to my apartment and dressed quickly, pulling on an old pair of boots. I’d hoped to find Sam there, having used the fire as a distraction, but his chamber was empty, the bed untouched. My instincts whispered that something was wrong, but I pushed such thoughts from my mind. Sam’s great trick was to vanish when he was in trouble. No doubt he would emerge when he wished to be found, and not before. Either that or one of Aislabie’s men would winkle him out. Meanwhile, I would pay a visit on Mr Sneaton.

I reached under the bed, and pulled out my pistols.

Sneaton’s cottage lay on the edge of the deer park, a short walk from Studley Hall. It was very neat, with a vegetable patch and a few chickens still locked in their coop. It was also deserted. There was one room upstairs, and two down. The room upstairs was bare, save for stacks of old accounts books for the estate. That puzzled me, until I recalled Sneaton’s wooden leg. Stairs would be troublesome, and dangerous for a man with his injuries, living alone.

I took a moment to search through the books in the hope of finding the green ledger, but I soon realised that they were stored by order of date, the earliest beginning with the quarterly accounts for Michaelmas, 1723 – a good three years after the South Sea crisis.

I came back down the stairs, bowing my head to avoid smacking it upon a low beam. A sudden melancholia seized me as I explored the ground floor. The furniture was of a good quality, the floorboards swept clean, and the windows polished. But I sensed a solitary life, where surely Sneaton must have once hoped for more. I wondered why he had never married. Even with his disfigurements, his position as Aislabie’s trusted secretary would have made him a respectable proposition.

I searched the rooms, the chimney, even the chicken coop, but found nothing. Frustrated, I sat down in his chair by the empty hearth and lit a pipe, wondering to myself. Where the devil was he? Had he taken Aislabie at his word, and left before dawn? If so, he’d abandoned all his belongings. And he would have let the chickens out first, I was sure. He was that sort of a man.

‘Sam,’ I murmured, as if invoking his spirit. A shiver of dread passed through me. Sam had crept out last night, and now both he and Sneaton were missing. I knew that he was capable of murder – more than capable. I put my head in my hands, praying that I was mistaken. If Sam had killed Sneaton, the murder would be upon my head. I had brought Sam with me, refusing to hear Kitty’s warning. If a man is shot, one does not blame the pistol. One blames the fellow who carried it.

A tap at the window made me jump, but it was only Wattson. He peered through the glass, hand cupping his eyes. ‘Mr Hawkins?’ he called, his voice muffled.

The chair I had settled in sat low to the floor. I had to use one hand to push myself up, which had me wondering how Sneaton ever struggled to his feet. Then I spied his walking stick lying between the chair and the hearth. He must lever himself up with it.

I’d never seen Sneaton without his stick.

I picked it up just as Wattson entered the room. He paused at the threshold, alarmed. I must have looked quite the devil, with a brace of pistols at my belt, and a heavy stick in my hand.

I bid him a good morning, and asked why he had come to the cottage.

Wattson looked about the room. The first of the sun’s rays gleamed on the polished furniture. ‘I’ve a message for Mr Sneaton, sir.’

That struck me as odd. Wattson was Simpson’s man. He worked on the estate, not at the hall. ‘He’s not here.’

Wattson ducked his head as he inspected the other room. ‘You’ve looked upstairs?’

‘Naturally.’

He stood in the centre of the room, his head almost touching the beams. ‘But he must be here. The chickens are free.’

‘I let them out.’

‘Then he’s in trouble.’ He nodded at the stick in my hands. ‘He’d never leave the cottage without his cane.’ He pushed past me, heading for the door.

I grabbed his arm. ‘Wattson, speak truly – why are you here?’

He hesitated before replying. ‘I come at dawn every morning. I help Mr Sneaton over to the house, and then back again at night.’

I thought of the walk I had taken so easily, then imagined Sneaton, struggling to drag his ruined body over the fields. ‘You carry him?’

Another pause. ‘If the ground’s bad. He’s not as strong as he pretends. Please sir – you won’t tell the family? Mr Sneaton wouldn’t want his honour to know.’

‘You’re fond of him.’

‘He’s been kind to me. Helped me with my letters. He says I can tally better than Mr Simpson.’

‘You brought him home last night?’

Wattson shook his head, miserable. ‘Mr Aislabie dismissed him before I’d finished for the day. Must have been hard for him, walking back on his own.’

Hard on his body and his spirit, I thought, resting Sneaton’s walking stick against the hearth. The sun was streaming through the windows now: the start of a glorious spring morning. And what had been hidden in the shadows was now picked out in golden light.

There was a dark stain on the rough mat by the fireside, no more than a step away from the chair where I had been sitting. In fact I had walked through it, my boot smearing marks across the floor. I kneeled down for a closer study.

‘What is it?’ Wattson asked, in a strained voice. But he knew. We both knew.

Blood.

We walked back towards Studley House in silence, lost in our separate fears. And I wondered – Where was Sam?

I thought the work on the stables would have been abandoned for the day, given that the men had spent the night on watch – and that half were out now searching for Sam. But Simpson was already ranging across the site, shouting orders. Wattson hesitated as we drew closer, and we both stopped for a moment, staring out across the park. The deer were scattered way off in the distance, almost out of view.

A dun-coloured stallion was racing along the east drive, half-obscured by the line of oaks. I shielded my eyes, trying to identify the rider. His feather-trimmed hat, and then his head, crested the hill. Francis Forster, his cloak streaming out behind him, showing flashes of purple lining. A few moments later he had galloped up to meet us. I would not have ridden so fast, with one arm bound.

‘Hawkins!’ he shouted. ‘Is it true? There was a fire?’

‘A small one, in Mrs Fairwood’s chamber. She is unharmed. One of the maids was-’

‘Mrs Fairwood!’ he exclaimed, jumping down from the saddle and pulling at the silver clasp on his cloak. ‘I must go to her.’ He threw the reins at Wattson and rushed towards the house. ‘Take him to the stables,’ he shouted over his shoulder.

Wattson bit back a scowl. ‘Mr Sneaton is missing,’ he called.

Forster bronzed paused upon the steps. ‘Sneaton?’ He chuckled. ‘Well, I don’t suppose he’s got very far.’

‘Did you see him, sir?’ Wattson asked, fiercely. His hands were bunched into fists. ‘On your ride from Fountains?’

Forster’s face puckered with annoyance. ‘This your servant, Hawkins?’

‘I’m no one’s servant,’ Wattson said. His voice was quiet, but there was a boldness to him that surprised me.

Forster glared at him. ‘How dare you speak to me in such an insolent fashion! I shall speak to your master of this. What is your name? Well?’

Wattson reddened, and said nothing.

‘You did not see Mr Sneaton upon the road?’ I said, stepping in swiftly.

Forster tore his gaze from Wattson. ‘Was he not dismissed from service yesterday?’

‘We found bloodstains upon the floor of his cottage. I fear he may have been attacked.’

‘Heavens! That is troubling. Forgive me for speaking lightly before. I pray you find him well. If you would excuse me.’ He bowed and bounded up the steps.

Wattson pivoted sharply on his boot heel and led Forster’s horse to the stables. I couldn’t see his face, but I could tell from the set of his shoulders that he was angry.

I followed him to the courtyard where I found Kitty, sitting on the mounting block with her face turned to the sunshine. She waved and jumped down as we approached.

I asked after Sally.

Wattson halted. ‘She’s been hurt?’

‘She burned her hands, saving Mrs Fairwood,’ Kitty explained. ‘They’ll take weeks to heal, poor girl. Aislabie has her locked in the cellar. He thinks she started the fire.’

Wattson bit his lip, furious.

I touched Kitty’s arm. ‘Mr Sneaton is missing. We found blood in his cottage.’

‘Sam is not returned.’

We looked at one another – afraid for Sam, and afraid for what he might have done. ‘We’d best find him.’

‘Let me join you sir,’ Wattson said. ‘I know the land better than most. And we might look for Mr Sneaton, too.’

There were only two horses left in the stables, so I borrowed Forster’s stallion, hoping it was not the one that had thrown him off its back. Wattson led Kitty and me to the edge of the water gardens. We paused at the base of the lake, where it narrowed again into a river. There was a wooden footbridge here over a smaller cascade, and a stone sphinx guarding either side of the bank. They stared at each other across the river, front paws stretched towards the water. The one upon this side of the bridge had the face of a woman of middling age. Her hair streamed across her lion’s back, and a string of pearls rested on her plump bosom. I leaned down, peering into her face. The expression was cool and commanding, as if she ruled over the waters below.

‘When did the search party set out?’ Wattson asked.

I sat up straight in the saddle. ‘Almost an hour ago.’

‘Then he’s not here.’ Wattson indicated the party of men picking their way through the gardens, hunting under the tangle of bushes and tree roots. He gathered the reins, turning his horse about. ‘They’d’ve found him by now.’

I wasn’t sure if he was speaking of Sneaton or Sam. ‘Where do you propose we look?’

‘Wherever’s left.’ Wattson rode away from the cascade, following the river downstream.

I urged my horse forward, and followed.

Aislabie had shaped the River Skell into straight canals and moon ponds, mirror lakes and cascades. But as we left the water gardens behind, the river was released back to its natural flow, winding down a steep valley bristling with Scots pines. We had to ford our way across several times, drifting further and further from the water gardens and from the house.

There was no one out here.

‘We’ve gone too far,’ I called out, as we reached another bend in the river.

Kitty drew up next to me. ‘Let us see what lies up ahead,’ she said, lifting her voice over the rush of water.

We had said that at the last turn, and the one before that. We could follow the river to its end, tantalised by the hope of discovery. There was something eerie about this valley, with its narrow banks and silent woods. Some antique memory, some ancestor’s ghost whispered through my blood: This would be the ideal place for an ambush.

But there was no ambush waiting for us at the next bend, only a wide and sunlit riverbank, dotted with dandelions and daisies. Tiny white butterflies drifted in the air. Red damselflies hovered by the water.

A small, dark figure lay upon the grass.

‘Sam!’ I heard myself cry out. ‘It’s Sam!’

The sun beat down upon our heads. The wind pushed wisps of cloud across the sky. The river rushed on down the valley.

Sam didn’t move. He lay perfectly still.

Chapter Seventeen

He was death cold.

‘Blankets. Fetch blankets!’ Kitty, pushing open the great doors of Studley and shouting at the nearest footman.

‘Bring him down to the kitchen.’ Wattson was waiting for us in the great hall. He’d galloped ahead to prepare the servants. The boy was found, lying frozen on the river path below Gillet Hill, the back of his skull all bloody. Mrs Mason had stoked the fire and called for blankets long before we arrived. Rumours spread through the house. The boy’s dead. The boy’s alive.

The boy was dying. He hadn’t stirred, not when I carried him in my arms from the riverbank, as I hefted him up on to the saddle. I’d held him in front of me on that frantic ride back from the river, clutching him to my chest and praying that my own heat could warm him. How long had he lain there, all alone? I could feel my heart pounding hard against his back, life thrumming through my veins. Why did he not stir?

The back of his head was sticky with blood. I thought of the blood in Sneaton’s cottage and rode on, fury burning through me like a forest fire. When I found who did this… God help them.

We stripped off his damp coat and breeches and cocooned him in blankets by the fire. Kitty laid her head to his chest and found a heartbeat, very slow. His face was swollen from yesterday’s beating, but it was the blow to his head that worried me, and the fact we could not rouse him. There was a lump at the base of his skull, and blood in his ear. Kitty washed the wound clean, rinsing it with hot water and a few drops of brandy.

I sat down behind Sam on the kitchen floor just as I had sat with him on the ride back, propping his head against my chest. He was so cold. Kitty tucked the blankets around him and settled down with us by the fire.

I closed my eyes, bone weary. I had been prepared to think the very worst of him. Whereas in fact, he had stolen out into the night, risking his life to help me. Someone had attacked him, and abandoned him by the river to die alone. I thought of the deer, slaughtered and carried through the estate. It was the same person, I was sure of it – treating Sam as if he were an animal.

Kitty reached out and cupped a hand to my face. Saying, without words: This is not your fault.

I looked away into the fire. Of course it was my fault.

Mr Gatteker was called from Ripon. He flapped his arms against his side, declared it an outrage, and accepted a plate of fresh bread and jam from Mrs Mason. He sat at the table and asked about the night’s events. He had not seen Sneaton on the estate, in town, nor upon the road.

‘I tested Metcalfe’s laudanum on the cat,’ he said, sucking jam from his fingers. ‘I believe someone may have tampered with the mixture – more opium and less sherry. Can’t prove it, but the effects on Marigold were unfortunate.’ He added a dollop of cream to his bread and took a large bite.

‘Tom!’ Kitty inched closer, and took Sam’s hand. ‘His eyes fluttered.’ She put her fingers to his wrist, then frowned.

‘Rest and warmth,’ Gatteker pronounced.

‘And prayer,’ Mrs Mason added.

Gatteker shrugged, munching away. ‘Worth a try. Didn’t work for Marigold, I’m afraid.’

I carried Sam to our chamber and tucked him into our bed, small and vulnerable beneath the blankets. We had fashioned a bandage for his head, his black curls spilling over the top on to the pillow. I sat upon the bed and watched for each breath.

Kitty lit a fire before joining me, sitting upon the opposite side of the mattress. We watched him for a long time. I began to worry that if I turned away even for one second, he would slip away. Lady Judith paid a visit. Bagby brought a pot of coffee, some bread and cheese, and a slice of apple pie. ‘In case he’s hungry, when he wakes,’ he stumbled, then bowed and left the room.

Some time later Sam’s eyes opened a fraction. I took his hand, and told him he was safe, that he must rest. He couldn’t seem to focus, and his hand was a dead weight in mine. His eyes closed again.

Kitty looked at me with tears in her eyes. ‘Tom-’

‘Don’t say it, Kitty. Please.’

I put my head in my hands and I prayed with a force and a fear I had not felt in a long time. I’d prayed for myself that terrible night in the Marshalsea, chained in the corpse room. I’d prayed on the eve of my trial for murder, and on the cart to my hanging. But I had prayed knowing all my sins, knowing in my heart and soul what I had done right and wrong.

Now I prayed for a boy whose soul lay within the Devil’s grasp. Fourteen years old and already he had killed someone, without once expressing pity or remorse. I couldn’t let him die in such a perilous state. Death for Sam would lead only to damnation. So I begged God: Let him live. Give him time.

There was a tap at the door and Mrs Fairwood entered, escorted by one of the footmen. She’d brought the vase of orange wallflowers from her chamber. She stood at the end of the bed, remote and unreadable. ‘How does he fare? Has he spoken?’

I didn’t have the strength to answer.

‘Will he live?’ she pressed.

Kitty rose, and ushered her from the room. She was gone for a while. When she returned she stood behind me, wrapping her arms about my chest. ‘Sneaton is still missing.’ She kissed the back of my neck, and fell silent.

It was not like Kitty to be so quiet. I turned and saw that there were tears streaming down her freckled cheeks. ‘Sweetheart.’

‘This is my fault.’

‘No – by God! What makes you say such a thing?’

She brushed her cheek with the back of her hand. ‘You only came here to protect me. Because of what I did… He’s just a boy, Tom. For all he’s done, he’s only a boy. I will never forgive myself.’

I rose, and held her close. Sam slept on, never stirring, his secrets trapped inside his broken body.

I grow restless in confined spaces. Eventually, when I had paced the room a thousand times, Kitty ordered me outside. Sam was no better and no worse, and there was no sense in us both staying with him – not when his attacker remained uncaught. I walked down to the great hall and out on to the steps, building myself a pipe. The sound of hammer and chisel on stone echoed from the stable works. I counted a half-dozen carts rolling up to the foundations, filled with rocks and pulled by great workhorses. The day was mild for mid-April, the heat closer to summer than spring. Looking out across the deer park, I had to shield my eyes to protect them from the sun. The deer were still far down in the south-west corner of the park, a long way from the house. I frowned, and took a long draw from my pipe.

I heard the crunch of gravel from my left. Mr Hallow, Aislabie’s gamekeeper, was walking up the avenue. He hurried to join me, snatching off his hat and performing a low bow. His thin red hair was tied at the nape of his neck, the top of his head near bald and freckled by the sun. ‘Beg leave to ask after your young friend, sir? I’m told he was attacked.’

‘Yes, some time in the night.’

‘Found by Gillet’s hill? There’s an old poacher’s track down there, sir. Steep path, hidden from view…’

‘It wasn’t the Gills,’ I said, before he could suggest it.

I waited for the inevitable ‘never trust a Gill’, but to my surprise, Hallow nodded his agreement. ‘Yes, sir. I have news.’ He ventured closer, lowering his voice though there was no one else about to hear. ‘Spoke with Mr Messenger’s keeper last night, sir. He says he’s not made a full count of his deer these past few days. Some of the does head into the upper woods to foal. Bugger to find them, pardon my language, your honour. But the stags – he says they’re all accounted for. Sir, I showed him one o’ the heads. He swears blind it weren’t a Fountains stag.’

I frowned. The stags had been butchered on the boundary between Fountains Hall and Studley Royal. If they did not belong to either estate, where the devil had they come from?

But Hallow grinned. ‘So I rode further afield this morning, sir. Only a handful of deer parks close to Studley, and I had a notion… The stags came from Baldersby. The Robinson’s estate.’

I pulled the pipe from my lips. Metcalfe.

‘I spoke with the keeper, sir. He said Mr Robinson sent an order for three young stags – a gift for his uncle. Not for meat – to join the herd.’

‘A strange request.’

‘Oh aye, sir. But – begging your pardon – it’s not the keeper’s place to question a gentleman’s order. And Mr Robinson’s known to be a little odd, sir.’

‘So the keeper sent three stags over to Studley?’

‘No, sir. The fellow what brought the message came with a cart. Rode them back the same day, bound and tethered.’

‘And this fellow – what did he look like?’

Hallow, who had until this point been mightily pleased with himself, faltered. ‘I- I didn’t think to ask, sir.’ He slapped a pale hand to his head. ‘Oh William Hallow, you almighty fool. I shall ride back and ask, sir.’

‘Could you go at once?’

Hallow grimaced. ‘Wish I could, sir – but I can’t find leave until this evening. I’ve spent too long abroad today already. Might someone go in my place, Mr Hawkins? It’s no more than an hour’s ride…’

I held out my hand. ‘Not to worry.’ I could ride there myself, if needed.

‘I’m very sorry, sir.’

‘Not at all. I’m obliged to you, Mr Hallow.’ I put my hand upon his shoulder. ‘I would ask that you keep this to yourself – at least for now.’

‘Of course, your honour.’

‘I’m really not an honour, you know.’ Barely a sir, given my reputation.

‘You are God’s anointed, my lord,’ Hallow declared, elevating me to the peerage and potential sainthood in one breath. ‘Restored from the dead to reveal the mercy of the resurrected Christ our redeemer praise Him.’ This said in a second breath, without pause.

I honestly could not think how to address that grave misapprehension. So I thanked him, and took the last draw on my pipe.

‘Now, what are those deer about?’ Hallow muttered, squinting at the herd grazing way off in the distance.

‘I wondered the same. Do they not spend most of the day nearer the house, by the beech tree?’

‘Well they wander about as they please. But it’s a warm day, sir – best of the season. I’d expect them to stay close to the water trough in this heat.’

A dry day, and yet the deer were grazing a good quarter mile from the water trough. ‘Mr Hallow.’ I paused, as a thought sent a shiver down my spine. ‘Would you walk with me, for a moment?’

I walked through the park towards the beech tree, the sun warm upon my neck. My legs felt heavy. I seemed to see myself as if from above, with Mr Hallow at my side. As if I were watching myself from a high window in the house. Let me be wrong.

We had reached the beech tree, its branches spread out as if in welcome. Come and see. Come and see what lies here. The stone water trough stood on a higher patch of ground, raised enough that I could not look inside without approaching the rim. It was a heavy, roughly hewn thing, made to sustain the bitter Yorkshire winters. Lichen clung to the sides.

It looked like a stone coffin.

Hallow had caught my darkening mood. He stopped at my side, and waited.

I took a deep breath. In this final moment, there was still a chance I was mistaken – that I would peer over the edge and see nothing but water. I’d been seeing death everywhere these past few days.

But the deer had crossed to the other side of the park in the heat of the day. I saw the great stag in the distance, its head raised, watching.

I stepped up to the trough and looked down. Put a hand to my mouth.

Jack Sneaton’s body lay at the bottom of the trough. His mottled face was grey white, both eyes now staring blind through the water. There was a deep gash running across his temple, and the water was dark and clogged with blood. Floating all around him were the ruined pages of an accounts book.

‘Oh no,’ Hallow whispered. ‘Oh no.’

I turned and walked away, back towards the house. I watched my feet taking one step and then another. I moved but felt nothing, not until I reached the front door and leaned my head against the wood. Here was the death I had brought with me from London. Here it was, spreading its cloak across the estate. And I knew, as I pushed open the door, that it was not done with me yet.

Chapter Eighteen

I had not cared much for Jack Sneaton in life. In death, I discovered him anew through the grief of others. He had been loved at Studley Hall, by the family and by the servants. I’ve heard it said that the spirits of the dead linger for a time before passing on to heaven or hell – especially when a life is taken in violence. If Sneaton’s ghost drifted through the estate, it might have drawn comfort from the affection and sorrow it witnessed.

Here was Mrs Mason, inconsolable in the kitchen, weeping in Mr Hallow’s arms. Sally Shutt, silent in her shock, sliding down the dank wall of her storeroom prison, legs collapsed beneath her. Up the backstairs to the great hall, where a footman bowed his head in prayer for the man who had granted him his first position. Through the empty drawing room to Mr Aislabie’s study, the door closed. I had brought him the news first. He had covered his face and asked if I would leave the room. Now he sat alone, thinking about the man who had saved his son’s life.

Up in her apartment, Lady Judith took my message with equal dignity. There had been one deep gasp of shock, breathed out slowly; a shiver as she crossed to the window, arms wrapped about her chest. She put her hands to the window and lowered her head, graceful in her grief. When she turned back she was a queen, cool and determined.

‘You will help us find the killer.’

‘I’ll find him.’ This was the man who had left Sam to die. I would find him.

Lady Judith heard the anger in my voice. ‘And we will have justice,’ she said, carefully.

Let her seek justice. I would have revenge.

Mrs Fairwood was sitting alone in the adjoining room, a pot of tea at her side. Her dainty feet did not touch the ground she was so tiny – so she rested them upon an ottoman. Her shoes were grey, like her dress, with dark red soles. I remembered Sneaton’s face, grey-white in the water. The jagged red wound on his brow. The floor tilted beneath my feet.

‘What is it that you want here, madam?’ I asked.

She coloured at the abrupt question, but, glancing at Lady Judith, saw that something was amiss. She lowered her feet to the floor, watching me carefully. ‘Nothing. All I want, sir, is to go home.’

‘You are most anxious to leave Studley.’

She stood up. She held herself rigid, her dark eyes heavy with resentment. ‘Of course I am anxious to leave. Someone set fire to my chamber this morning.’

‘And yet you are still here.’

She gestured towards the adjacent room, where two footmen stood guard at the door. ‘I have no choice in the matter.’

‘Mrs Fairwood: you are not a mouse. If you truly wished to leave, you would be gone.’

‘Do not presume to tell me what I would or would not do, sir. You know nothing of me.’

‘None of us do,’ Lady Judith murmured.

Mrs Fairwood, sensing she was outnumbered, softened her voice. ‘I shall forgive your rough manner, sir. You must be concerned about Master Fleet. Does he rally? Has he named his attackers?’

‘No. He is grievously ill.’

I thought I detected a flicker of relief in her eye. ‘I am sorry to hear that.’

‘What makes you certain there was more than one man?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You said: attackers.’

Her cheeks coloured. ‘I have no idea,’ she said, taking a moment to recover. ‘What – is my every word to be questioned? This is insufferable! I shall not be treated in this fashion.’

I let her fluster.

‘Where is my father?’ she snapped. ‘He would never permit this interrogation.’

‘Enough!’ Lady Judith cried. ‘You are not his daughter, you wicked girl. You may have bewitched him, but I know what you are. You want a slice of his fortune-’

‘I want nothing from him! Do you think I would touch a fortune so tainted? What must I do, to prove it to you? Must I sign another waiver? Send for Mr Sneaton – I will sign a thousand of them.’

‘Mr Sneaton is dead,’ I said, not bothering to soften my words.

She stared at me, the blood draining from her face.

‘He was murdered.’

She clutched her chair with a gloved hand. ‘No.’

Nothing else. Just that one word: no, spoken in a hollow voice. Everyone else had asked questions. Where was he found? How was he killed? Was I sure he was dead? Mrs Fairwood asked nothing. She didn’t speak and she didn’t move, her hand wrapped tightly around her chair.

‘Be assured, madam,’ Lady Judith said, cool as an ice house. ‘We shall discover his attackers. Meanwhile, I am sure you understand that we must ask allour guests to remain here at Studley.’

Mrs Fairwood opened her mouth to protest, then stopped herself. Her shoulders sagged. ‘As you wish,’ she mumbled, defeated.

Lady Judith followed me from the room, closing the connecting door with a soft click. She motioned for me to join her in the corridor outside her chambers, where we might speak without being overheard. It was a narrow space, and we were forced to stand very close to one another.

‘Damn her,’ Lady Judith cursed. She banged her fist against the wall in frustration. ‘I should have stopped this nonsense the moment she arrived. But I was afraid. It is the one chamber of his heart he keeps closed from me, you understand? He spent so many years alone there, lost in his grief for Anne, and for Lizzie.’ Tears welled in her eyes. ‘That wicked, wicked girl. The damage she inflicts, just by her presence! She is like a climbing plant – like those horrid wallflowers she keeps in her room. She has spread her tendrils over him, she has wrapped them about his heart. What would happen now, if I tore her from him? Now that she has weakened him? I fear he would die,’ she said, her voice breaking. ‘Oh, God. I fear it would kill him.’

I put a hand upon her shoulder. ‘Your husband is a strong man.’

She shook her head. ‘In all but this. It is so cruel…’

I hesitated, not wishing to cause more distress. ‘You are quite sure she is not his daughter?’

She laughed in disbelief, brushing the tears from her cheek. ‘You cannot think her story credible?’

‘There are some proofs, are there not? The ruby brooch? Molly Gaining’s letter?’

She waved this away. ‘The day she arrived, Mr Sneaton spoke to me privately. Her story was impossible. Impossible. He wouldn’t explain why. He told me it would break John’s heart. It had broken his.’ She paused, upset. ‘We came to an understanding. He would offer his proof only if John decided to acknowledge Mrs Fairwood in law, or introduce her to the children. We were sure he would come to his senses before then.’ She sighed. ‘I should have known better. How could he resist bringing his daughter back from the dead? In the very face of reason – show me a father who could.’

‘What was this evidence, do you think?’

‘I have no idea. And now it is lost, along with the ledger.’

‘No – that has been destroyed. Whoever murdered Mr Sneaton ripped up the pages and threw them in the water trough with his body.’

I should have been more delicate. Lady Judith gave a cry of horror, flinging her hands in front of her face as if to defend herself from the image. ‘Oh, God – poor Jack. Oh! You did not see the best of him, Mr Hawkins. I cannot bear to think of him dying alone and afraid. I shall never forget his face, when John dismissed him. So hurt, so proud.’

She began to weep again. I pulled her against my shoulder and did my best to comfort her. It was an honest grief and deeper than I had realised. Beyond the constraints of position and the niceties of society, lay a simple truth. Jack Sneaton had been her friend.

She broke away, rubbing her cheeks and offering me a rueful half smile. ‘So the ledger is destroyed. John will be furious.’

And the queen would be delighted. Here was an unexpected consequence of Sneaton’s death – I had accomplished my mission, without lifting a finger. The ledger was destroyed. John Aislabie could never again blackmail the royal family with its scandalous contents. The trouble was, I had planned to use the ledger to strike a bargain with the queen myself. Now my dreams of freedom lay sodden and ruined, floating in an old water trough. Sneaton’s last vow had come to pass. The queen will never get her claws on that book.

‘I fear I must go,’ I said. ‘I’ve been too long from Sam.’

Lady Judith rubbed my arm. ‘You must let me know if you need anything. I confess I have grown rather fond of Master Fleet. Unaccountably so.’

We smiled at each other – affection born from a shared purpose, and a shared enemy.

We did not realise that we were being watched. Bagby was an experienced servant, trained to be discreet. We didn’t hear him pause at the far end of the corridor, just as Lady Judith touched my arm. We didn’t know that he saw our shared smile – an innocent moment that became something altogether more sinful in his eye.

It is from such small, silly misunderstandings that tragedies are born.

Kitty had already heard the news of Sneaton’s murder from one of the servants. She knew very little of him, save that he had broken Sam’s nose, and prevented us from leaving. She was shocked, then, and sorry to a degree – but she was not about to don a mourning gown.

Sam lay tucked under layers of blankets, just as I had left him an hour before. Kitty said he had stirred once or twice, and muttered something she couldn’t catch. He was not sleeping, it seemed, nor was he awake, but caught somewhere in between.

I waited at his bedside, thinking about the stags ordered by Metcalfe from his family estate. I thought of his reaction upon finding them on the front steps, laid out to form the Robinson coat of arms. Had this all been a ruse, to throw suspicion elsewhere? Could he have attacked Sam, and Sneaton? Could he have sent those notes to his uncle, disguising his hand so well? None of it seemed possible. But then again – how well did I know Metcalfe Robinson? I must have met at least three or four versions of him in the last twenty-four hours.

Sam shifted under the blankets, and moaned quietly.

I took his hand. ‘Sam. Can you hear me? You’re safe.’

His lips moved, silently.

‘Thirsty,’ Kitty said.

I reached for the pitcher of small beer standing close by and poured him a cup. He managed a few sips before collapsing against the pillow. His eyes were half open, twin pools of black beneath thick lashes.

‘Brother,’ he whispered.

I squeezed his hand. ‘Who did this to you? Can you remember?’

He winced, and swallowed. ‘Picture.’

His eyes fluttered, then closed.

I glanced at the picture directly in front of him, over the hearth. ‘The abbey?’

He frowned, and swallowed. ‘Picture. Brother.’

Kitty had left the bedside, slipping into Sam’s cupboard room. When she came back, she was clutching a piece of paper. It was the portrait Sam had sketched of me on the journey from London, dark charcoal shadows dense about my shoulders. ‘I think he wanted this, Tom,’ she said. She placed it on the table by the bed, then leaned down and brushed her lips to Sam’s forehead. ‘Rest, now,’ she whispered.

It seemed to me, walking through the east wing’s dank corridors, that one person sat at the heart of all this violence and confusion. I knocked hard upon his door.

‘Metcalfe!’

There was no reply. I tried the handle and the door swung free. A gust of stale air assaulted me: the stink of sweat and dirty sheets. I stood alone in the chamber, observing the chaos of his room. It told me nothing.

And so I left, brooding, silently and with a wrong turning found myself upon the minstrels’ gallery, looking down upon the great hall. Aislabie had gathered the household together, and the room was packed tight with people. The servants were there, and the family, and the estate workers from the gardens and the stables. John Simpson stood with his arms folded, surrounded by his men. Mrs Mason was leaning on Mr Gatteker. Francis Forster was there in the crowd too, holding his feather-trimmed hat to his chest.

Mr Aislabie was addressing them all from the landing, standing in front of the faded horse tapestry with Lady Judith at his side. For a moment, I didn’t recognise the gentleman standing with them in his black suit, hands clasped behind his back. And then my lips parted in astonishment. Metcalfe Robinson: looking every inch the baronet’s son and heir, from the black ribbon of his pigtail wig, to the diamond-studded buckle of his shoe. He stood with his chin high, gazing down his nose at the crowd below, his expression grave.

‘Jack Sneaton was the best, most Christianlike of men,’ Aislabie said, his voice fractured by grief. ‘We may all take comfort, knowing that he is now at peace. But I promise you, I will not rest until I have found the murderous cowards who took his life. I will see them hanged for what they have done – you may count upon that. And I would ask that if anyone has information, that they come forward in good conscience and speak of it. My nephew has offered to conduct enquiries on behalf of the family. He will speak with many of you, and I would have you give him all the help he needs. May God protect us all.’

He was about to walk up the stairs when Lady Judith put a hand upon his arm, and whispered in his ear. Aislabie frowned, then addressed the room again. ‘Some of you may have heard that our guest, young Master Fleet, was also attacked last night. I’m sorry to say that he is in a most grievous condition. I would ask you to pray for his recovery.’

‘I won’t pray for that devious little shit!’ someone shouted, invisible in the crowd.

‘Who said that?’ Aislabie snapped.

The servants and estate men began to mutter to each other, rumours spreading through the hall.

Simpson shoved himself forward. ‘That boy’s been creeping about the estate ever since he arrived. Jack caught him and gave him a bloody nose – now he’s dead.’ He gestured towards the east wing. ‘There’s your killer, Mr Aislabie – breathing his last up there if we’re lucky. May the Devil take his soul.’

‘Begging permission, your honour,’ Bagby said, growing confident now that Simpson had spoken his mind. His voice rose clear above the room. ‘I believe his guardian should take the blame.’ His eyes flickered towards Lady Judith. ‘He’s not to be trusted.’

Aislabie frowned at him. ‘Mr Hawkins was locked in his room all night.’

‘As you well know, Bagby,’ Lady Judith scolded. ‘You guarded his door. Now let that be an end to rumours-’

‘Why was he locked up?’ Simpson bellowed. ‘Is he dangerous?’

‘He’s bad luck,’ one of the gardeners called out. ‘He died on the scaffold, then came back to life. It’s not natural.’

‘Mr Hawkins was saved by God!’ Mr Hallow shouted.

‘Or the Devil,’ Bagby retaliated.

People began to shout over each other with their opposing theories – on Sneaton’s murder and the state of my soul, and whether I might be a killer after all. My heart began to pound hard against my chest. Lies, rumours and accusations. I had heard all this before, when I was arrested for murder. I knew how swiftly a crowd could turn into a mob.

I pulled a pistol from my belt, cocking it beneath my hand to stifle the sound.

‘Enough!’ A voice cut through the din. Metcalfe raised his hands up over the crowd. ‘Enough. Jack Sneaton was a good man and he will have justice. But spreading gossip and accusing men without evidence will not serve our purpose. Mr Sneaton deserves better from us all. Now please, good people – return to your work.’

Aislabie nodded his thanks to his nephew, then put a hand upon his wife’s shoulder and guided her up the stairs towards their chambers. Metcalfe remained on the landing, watching the crowd drift away. I lowered my pistol, the sweat trickling down my back. If he had not spoken for me, I might have been facing down a riot. The question was, why had he done so?

He’d known I was watching from the minstrels’ gallery. His eyes had searched for mine as he spoke. I could see no malice in them, but there was no warmth either.

The hall was empty now save for Francis Forster, who had waited behind. The two men shook hands, caught in a shaft of sunlight spilling through the window: Forster lean and trim in his fashionable suit, Metcalfe gaunt beneath his fresh clothes. Metcalfe glanced up one more time to where I stood before placing a hand on Forster’s shoulder and leading him away towards the drawing room and out of hearing.

I leaned forward, resting on the rail of the balcony. Metcalfe’s transformation into a serious-minded inquisitor was unsettling. Just as I’d begun to suspect him, he had seized control of the enquiries into Sneaton’s murder. Where was yesterday’s shambling, unpredictable, muddle-headed fellow?

The men who’d guarded the house last night had seen him walk out into the deer park, returning just before the fire in Mrs Fairwood’s room. He claimed that he despised his uncle – and yet he’d spent the past two or three weeks under his roof. He had ordered three stags from his father’s estate, but had seemed shocked by the display of their mutilated corpses upon the steps of the house. His behaviour had been erratic, even wild – causing concern among the servants long before my arrival at Studley. Now, in the face of a brutal murder, he showed restraint and authority.

Whoever killed Sneaton wanted to destroyAislabie’s life – public and private. With the ledger ruined, Aislabie had no bargaining power with Walpole or the queen. He would never return to government. This was something Metcalfe wanted desperately.

He could have started the fire in Mrs Fairwood’s chamber, but I had no proof.

He could have killed Sneaton, but I had no proof.

He could be working with Elizabeth Fairwood, but…

Damn it.

One thing I did know – if Sneaton’s killer were not discovered soon, the accusations against myself and Sam would only grow stronger. We were strangers from London, and Sneaton had stood between us and the ledger. In the absence of proof, those two facts could be enough to bury us both.

Beneath me, Metcalfe and Forster had returned to the great hall. They shook hands again. Forster, glancing up to the gallery, offered a hesitant nod and hurried away.

This left Metcalfe alone. He rocked back upon his heels to see me the better.

‘You wish to speak with me,’ I suggested.

A slight bow. ‘I would be obliged to you, sir.’

When I reached the hall, he gestured to the brace of pistols belted at my hips. I unbuckled them and dropped them upon a table nearby.

His eyes flickered to my sword.

I hesitated.

‘I am unarmed, sir,’ Metcalfe said. ‘This is not a duel.’

Oh, but it was. I placed the sword next to my pistols. We smiled at each other, polite and full of distrust. It was a shame. I liked Metcalfe, truly. But if I found he had hurt Sam… He might be unarmed, but I still had a dagger, hidden in my coat. One should always be prepared.

We stepped out together into the spring sunshine.

Chapter Nineteen

Metcalfe said that walking helped him to think, and so we strode towards the water gardens. I smoked a pipe, affecting nonchalance. The weather was golden, and I was sorry that Sneaton had not lived to see this morning. Metcalfe walked with his hands in his pockets, and said nothing until we reached the lake, a silver mirror in the sunshine. There were men planting nearby, so we crossed the wooden bridge over the lower cascade, where the roar of the water would cover our voices.

The stone sphinxes confronted one another from opposing banks, locked in an eternal gaze. The one on this side of the bridge was a younger version of her companion, with the same pearl necklace, the same neat blanket of hair spread across her lion’s back. As I studied her imperious expression in the bright sunshine, I realised that this was a statue of Queen Caroline as a young princess. She was staring across the cascade at her older self – water rushing between them like the passing of time.

‘Is it a fair likeness?’ Metcalfe asked.

The queen as a sphinx? A lioness? Yes – I supposed it was.

‘My uncle claims they were made in her honour, but there’s spite in them, don’t you think? The older woman forced to stare for ever at her lost youth and beauty?’

It was true that the queen had grown fat from years of childbirth and a love of sugared confections. But she was still a handsome woman, with one of the sharpest minds in the kingdom. The sculptor had captured this – by chance? – in the sphinxes’ determined expression, steady and unchanging from youth to middling age.

‘The ledger is destroyed,’ Metcalfe observed, running a hand down the sphinx’s back, the arrow tip of her tail. ‘She will be pleased with you.’

Not pleased enough to release me from her service, I’d wager. ‘Mr Gatteker tested your laudanum. He thought the dose of opium might be higher than usual. But you seem quite recovered from it.’

He stopped stroking the sphinx. In profile, I could see the resemblance to his uncle, though his cheeks were hollowed by weeks of poor living. ‘Do I?’

‘You couldn’t possibly recover from such a powerful opiate in one night. You would be shaking and sweating in your coat.’

He shrugged. ‘How is Master Fleet? Will he live?’

‘You’ve been playing Hamlet, have you not?’ I persisted. ‘Pretending madness. Pretending laudanum sickness.’

He gave a half smile, but his soft grey eyes offered no answers. ‘Tell me, did you order him to kill Sneaton?’

My heart stopped, just for a beat. Then I punched him hard in the mouth.

It was a perfect strike. Metcalfe flew off his feet, landing with a soft thump at the base of the sphinx. It was only luck that stopped him from dashing his head against the plinth. He lay on his back in a daze, all the breath knocked out of him. A garden boy dropped his rake and rushed over to help. ‘I’m well,’ Metcalfe said, staggering to his feet. ‘Thank you.’

He wasn’t well: there was a cut on his lip and he’d grazed his hands in the fall, but if a gentleman refused help, so be it. The boy dipped his head and returned to his work, glaring at me over his shoulder.

I leaned out and washed my bleeding knuckles in the cascade, the cuts stinging in the cold water. My hands were already scratched and bruised from my ride through the hawthorn bushes the day before. They did not look like the hands of an innocent man.

Metcalfe spat the blood from his mouth, then untied his cravat and pressed it to his lip. ‘That was uncivil, sir.’

‘You accused me of murder.’

‘I accused you of plottingmurder,’ he corrected, ‘with Sam Fleet. A boy you insist on calling your ward.’He sighed at the notion. ‘I know what he is, sir.’

I frowned at him. Impossible. He couldn’t know that Sam was a killer. No one knew. I stared at him in defiance, heart thudding against my chest.

Metcalfe blinked first. ‘I knew his uncle. Samuel Fleet.’

My jaw dropped. Sam’s uncle, Kitty’s guardian, my cellmate – rising up from his grave. What a long shadow he cast, for such a short man. ‘How-’

‘Our paths crossed when I was a young man. He was a friend to me.’ Metcalfe’s eyes hardened. ‘And then he wasn’t.’

Well, that certainly sounded like Fleet. And now I remembered a phrase Metcalfe had used the first night we spoke, sitting on the marble steps of the great hall. I was sleeping. But now I am awake. I’d thought it was from a play, or a psalm, but in fact it was something Samuel Fleet had said to me in the Marshalsea, rousing himself from his melancholy and into action.

‘It didn’t strike me until this morning,’ Metcalfe said. ‘But then I learned the boy’s Christian name. Sam Fleet. Black eyes. Murder.’ He laughed, without humour. ‘How could it be coincidence? A broken nose would not go unpunished in that family.’

‘So, because he is a Fleet, he must have killed Mr Sneaton? And then – what? – carried him to the water trough? Dragged himself halfway through the estate for no good reason, with a broken skull?’ I stretched out my arm, pointing downriver towards the distant valley where I’d found Sam this morning. ‘It is plain nonsense.’

The truth of this silenced him for a moment. ‘Then you must have-’

‘Don’t you dare!’ I warned, clenching both my fists. ‘I was locked up all night. Sam was attacked because he knew who killed the deer.’ I glared at him.

Metcalfe drew back, astonished to be turned from interrogator to suspect. ‘Me?’ He began to laugh.

‘Do you deny you left the house last night?’

‘For a walk. I came here to the cascades, as I do every night. I find them soothing. The rush of water stills my thoughts. I become… nothing.’ He looked wistful.

‘There was no one in the park, save for you and Sam.’

This snapped him from his reverie. ‘That is not true, sir! The house was guarded by twenty men or more. Any one of them could have left his post without being seen in the dark.’

‘Long enough to reach Sneaton’s cottage, and kill him? Long enough to carry his body out to the water trough? All this and return without being missed? With no blood upon his clothes?’

‘This is madness,’ he groaned. ‘What of the stags laid out upon the steps? They-’

‘-came from your father’s estate.’

Metcalfe froze.

‘Mr Hallow rode to Baldersby yesterday. The keeper swears he sent them at your request.’

It took him a moment to find his voice. ‘He spoke with Malone?’

‘If that’s the name of your father’s gamekeeper – yes.’

Metcalfe swayed upon the spot. ‘I think…’ He swallowed. ‘I think I must sit down.’ His legs folded beneath him.

‘Do you deny-’

‘Grant me a moment, I beg you.’ He bunched his fists into the grass as if he were gripping the mane of a runaway horse. He took a deep breath, and blew out slowly. ‘I swear to you, sir, upon my soul: I sent no such request to Baldersby. I admit most willingly that I am a lamentable figure of a man. But I would never kill anyone. I abhor violence.’ He touched his split lip with a reproachful air. ‘Mr Hawkins, might I make a tentative observation? If I suspect you of murder, and you suspect me… it rather suggests we both consider ourselves innocent? In which case… well, I wonder if we might both be wrong in our suppositions.’ He lifted his grey eyes to mine, brows raised.

He was right – assuming I believed him. I didn’t want to. I wanted to grab him by the scruff of the neck, march him back to Studley, and proclaim him the villain. He had every reason to hate his uncle, every opportunity to commit the murder. But looking into his eyes, I knew that this was no act. He was innocent.

I sat down next to him on the riverbank, despondent. The damp seeped into the back of my breeches. A wagtail thrummed into the cascade and out again, ruffling tiny drops of water from its feathers.

‘I am sorry that I punched you…’ I said.

Metcalfe tested his jaw.

‘… but you did accuse me of murder. And you must admit that your behaviour has been confounding in the extreme. This business with the laudanum. Wandering about the estate at all hours of the night. You have been dissembling, have you not? I mean – what are you about, Metcalfe?’

He gave a deep, exhausted sigh. ‘Lady Judith wrote to me about Mrs Fairwood – asked if I would spend some time here and see what I made of her. In secret, you understand. She knew my uncle would be furious, if he found out. I agreed to a short visit. Rash of me. I was not well, in truth. Not myself.’ He paused, fingers working through the mud of the riverbank. So this was how his nails came to be so filthy. ‘Seeing you hang… it affected me more than I can say. Afraid I rather lost my senses over the matter. That he should die and I should live...’

‘But we were strangers.’

He threw his hands up in a weary gesture, unable to explain the vagaries of his malady. ‘I came to Studley to distract myself. Thought I’d spend a few days in pleasant conversation with a beautiful woman before revealing her as a fraud and booting her from the door. Metcalfe the Hero. For once.’

‘But why would you help your uncle?’

‘Oh, he’s dreadful in a hundred ways, I know. It would be disastrous if he ever returned to politics… But he’s not entirely rotten. And he lost his wife and daughter,’ he added, his face softening in sympathy. ‘I remember Lizzie as a baby. Tiny, merry little thing. Held her in my arms. Can you imagine such a loss? What could be more dreadful? Mrs Fairwood has played upon that grief all these weeks. She has raised his child from the dead. What a wicked, wicked thing to do to a man. What a cruel woman.’

‘Perhaps she too has been deceived.’

He frowned. ‘How so?’

‘Is it not possible that Molly Gaining was indeed Elizabeth Fairwood’s mother? She stole enough from your uncle to begin a new life, far away where no one would know her. Perhaps she married and had a daughter of her own. Could she not have grown confused in her final days? Think of the guilt that must have lain upon her all those years. She killed a young woman and her baby daughter. Would it be so strange if her mind shrank from such a terrible truth – most especially upon her deathbed? Perhaps she took solace in a fantastical tale, one where she saw not her own daughter at her bedside, but Lizzie Aislabie, all grown up. Saved from the fire she started.’

Metcalfe rubbed his temple. ‘Possible. It would make Mrs Fairwood quite blameless. She certainly has no interest in my uncle’s money.’

‘No. She’s repulsed by the very notion of being his daughter. I can’t understand why she has remained at Studley for so long.’

‘Ah – I believe I can answer that mystery at least. She is in love with Francis Forster. Do not look so astonished, sir!’ he laughed.

‘But he is the dullest man on the planet!’

‘True enough!’ Metcalfe was still laughing. ‘My first night at Studley, he sat next to me at supper and never drew breath. Do you know, I felt my brain go numb. A most peculiar feeling.’ He lifted his wig and rubbed his scalp. ‘The more time I spent in his company, the more I became convinced he must be an impostor. I wrote to all the coaching inns along the Nottingham road, seeking proof about his accident.’

I sat up. ‘Did you receive news back?’

‘No, but I’m afraid I had become somewhat erratic by that point. My letters may not have been entirely sensible. Or legible. I am susceptible to dark thoughts, you see. Suspicions. Things become… disproportionate.’

‘I understand.’

‘Do you?’ he wondered. ‘I saw Forster with Mrs Fairwood on several occasions, walking around the gardens, deep in conversation. Day and night. Heads bowed close, you know. And instead of thinking, “Aha! Here are two lovers, struck with cupid’s arrows”, I decided they were conspiring to destroy my uncle. Then that terrible note came, wrapped around a sheep’s heart.’ He shuddered. ‘I fell into the abyss, after that. Began to see plots and betrayals everywhere. Couldn’t trust anyone…’ He glanced about him, and lowered his voice. ‘I’ve been trying for years to find evidence of my uncle’s South Sea dealings. The depths of his corruption. I thought perhaps he’d learned of my enquiries and invited me here, through my aunt, in order to drive me into madness. Set the entire estate against me.’ His eyes had taken on a haunted look.

‘That would be… elaborate.’

He blinked. ‘Yes… yes, I suppose you’re right. I walk a narrow path between truth and fancy. I’m afraid I stumbled into the woods and lost myself for a while.’

‘How long?’

‘Oh, who counts the days?’ he said, vaguely. ‘I kept to my room, in the main. Wandered out at night sometimes. I’d sit here by the cascade and try to drown out my thoughts in the roar of the water. Or I’d count the stars. Anything to stop my mind turning about in endless circles. And in the end, I found my path again.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. So why pretend you were still…’

‘… Mad as a lupin?’ He sighed. ‘It was a useful conceit. I might come and go as I pleased without arousing suspicion. And I knew my uncle would send me away once I was fit enough to travel. It frightens him, you know. His brother suffered from melancholic fits. Hanged himself when he was seventeen.’

‘Mr Gatteker told me.’ I thought of the portrait, banished to Sam’s cupboard room – the young man with the soulful eyes.

‘Then you arrived. And the deer was left on the steps, with its fawn. I feared things were reaching a climax. But I could hardly spring up the next morning as if nothing had happened. I thought if I told you I’d been poisoned, it would explain my somewhat erratic behaviour…’ He cleared his throat. ‘I asked Mr Gatteker to lie about the laudanum. He knew I was pretending to be sick. He was the only one I confided in.’

‘Oh! Then Marigold is alive after all? Mr Gatteker’s cat,’ I prompted.

Metcalfe brightened. ‘I suppose she is! If indeed he has a cat. Let’s say that he does. We deserve some happy news this morning.’

‘Marigold is alive. And Mrs Fairwood is in love with Mr Forster.’ I shook my head in wonderment.

‘Engaged! Forster confessed all to me just this morning. Begged me not to tell my uncle. He’s determined to secure a position at Studley first, upon his own merit. Poor fellow has no capital to speak of.’

‘What a curious match.’

‘Indeed! But then love is a curious business, is it not?’ He sounded wistful.

I gazed out across the lake. The ducks were gathered close to the bank, dabbing at the water and tipping up to feed with their white tails in the air. The drakes looked proud and handsome, with their glossy green heads and neat white collars. The pheasants pecking at the grass were the same – the hens a dull speckled brown, while the brighter cocks strutted about, trailing their long tails. I thought of Mrs Fairwood in her drab grey gown, and Forster in his bright waistcoat and feather-trimmed hat. I thought of the deep cuffs on his coat, the fashionable pleats and gold wire buttons. And I understood at last.

A curious match, a curious couple, no doubt – but working with a common purpose.

We will seek Revenge.

Chapter Twenty

I leaped up from the riverbank and ran across the footbridge towards the house. Metcalfe caught up with me on the path, panting hard. ‘Mr Hawkins?’

I seized a shoulder, thin and bony beneath his coat. ‘Find William Hallow. Order him to ride at once to Baldersby. I must know who came to fetch the stags. A clear description, mind – age, bearing, clothes. Every detail.’

‘I don’t understand…’

‘Forster and Mrs Fairwood. They plotted this together, with an accomplice. We must find him.’

Metcalfe gave a sharp nod. ‘I will ride over to Baldersby myself. Dear God. My poor uncle…’

I squeezed his shoulder. Then I turned and raced back towards Studley Hall.

I was almost too late. Aislabie’s carriage waited upon the drive, heavy with luggage. Bagby stood sentinel at the carriage steps, sweating in green velvet. Pugh sat above the horses, reins in hand. The grand front doors swung open and Mrs Fairwood hurried out, tiny and determined in a grey riding hood. She looked like a nun, running home to sanctuary. I left the path and took a short-cut across the deer park, boots sucking into the mud. ‘Wait!’ I cried, as Aislabie and Lady Judith appeared in the doorway.

‘Wait!’ I cried again, waving my hands in the air. I must have seemed quite wild.

It was enough for Aislabie to hurry down the steps towards Mrs Fairwood. ‘What is this?’ he snapped, as I reached them.

‘She cannot leave,’ I said, gathering my breath.

Aislabie bristled. ‘I have made my decision. Elizabeth is not safe here – not until we find the killer.’

Mrs Fairwood dipped her head towards him in gratitude.

‘If you send her away now, you will never see her again,’ I said.

Aislabie ignored me. He led Mrs Fairwood towards the carriage, never once taking his eyes from her face. What a wicked spell she had cast upon him.

I stepped in front of them, blocking the way. ‘Madam – I cannot let you leave.’

She scowled at me.

Lady Judith joined us on the drive. ‘I do think it best if Mrs Fairwood returns to Lincoln,’ she said, and then, more quietly to me, ‘for all our sakes.’

‘I have pressing news about Mr Sneaton’s murder. It concerns Mrs Fairwood directly. Please. We must speak privately.’

The Aislabies exchanged startled glances. ‘Very well,’ Aislabie said, after a pause.

Mrs Fairwood was defiant. ‘I will not be held against my will,’ she declared, mounting the carriage steps. ‘You have no power to keep me here.’

I stretched my arm across the carriage door.

She leaned towards me. Her hood shielded her face from the Aislabies. ‘Please,’ she whispered, her dark eyes searching mine. ‘Please let me go.’

I held firm.

Her expression hardened. ‘Damn you,’ she hissed. She dropped back to the gravel and stalked into the house, shoulders high, cloak billowing in the wind. I followed close behind.

Bagby glared at me as I passed, hands clenched at his side.

The library seemed the most suitable room for an interrogation, the place where Mrs Fairwood felt most at ease. She stepped stiff-backed to the hearth, disdainful and proud, and rested a slim hand upon the mantelpiece.

No one had entered the room this morning. The curtains were drawn, the hearth cold, the candles unlit. Sally was responsible for keeping the rooms in good order, and she was still locked up in the cellar.

Lady Judith drew back the curtains. The library faced north, but at least this allowed some light in from the yard. She stood by the terrace windows, watching Pugh free the carriage horses from their harness and lead them back to the stables. Mrs Fairwood had her books, Lady Judith her horses.

‘Well, Hawkins?’ Aislabie folded his arms. ‘What is this news of yours?’

‘Francis Forster.’

‘What of him? Has he discovered something?’

‘He murdered Jack Sneaton.’

He laughed, incredulous. ‘Francis Forster? He can barely lift his own cutlery.’

But I had kept my eye upon Mrs Fairwood at the fireplace. She had flinched at Forster’s name. Now she groped for the nearest chair.

Lady Judith tore her gaze from the horses. ‘Why do you suspect Mr Forster?’

‘Oh, several reasons. His coat sleeves, for example.’

‘What piffle,’ Aislabie muttered, pouring himself a glass of brandy.

I held out my arm, tugging at the cuff of my coat. ‘I’m fond of this coat, but the beaux of London would consider it a travesty. They have begun to wear deeper cuffs, ending above the elbow. Mr Forster owns at least two coats in the new style. He wore one last night at supper, do you recall? Sky-blue with gold wire buttons.’

‘And this makes him a killer, in your eye? Because his coat sleeves are more fashionable than yours?’

‘How can he afford to dress in such a modish way? He makes an inordinate fuss of being poor. That suit must have cost him fifteen pounds at least. More than that – he claims he has been touring Italy these past three years, where the fashions are quite different. He must have been in England for several months at least – and with money in his pocket.’

Aislabie frowned, and sipped his brandy. ‘Ridiculous. The fellow’s burned brown as a conker. Do you think a winter in England could scorch him to that shade?’

‘His complexion is not the work of one season. I believe Mr Forster has been away from England for much longer than that.’ I had continued to study Mrs Fairwood closely as we spoke. She was struggling to keep her composure, her eyes set upon her shoes. But she had lifted them once, when I mentioned Italy, her gaze drawn to the globe standing in the corner of the library. I remembered how she had toyed with it two days before, pretending very hard not to listen to my conversation with Sally.

People give themselves away at such moments. I have seen men at the gaming table concentrate so closely upon their opponents’ game that they let their own wrists drop, revealing their hand. Mrs Fairwood had been turning the globe upon its stand, her fingers spanning the Atlantic. Back and forth between England and the colonies.

Had Forster truly spent three years on a Grand Tour? Or had it been seven years on a plantation somewhere, labouring under the burning sun? That would give any man a dark complexion. It would make even a short, small-boned gentleman strong enough to carry a stag upon his shoulders for two miles – if it did not kill him first.

‘You are speaking in riddles, sir,’ Aislabie complained, but he sounded less confident.

‘Forster knows the pathways between Studley and Fountains Hall. He has explored and sketched the water gardens. He knows the workings of the house and the estate and may come and go as he wishes. He knows when the servants retire, and when Mr Hallow is ordered up on the moors to hunt for poachers, away from the deer park. And last night, when we retired to our chambers, he rode out into the estate, untroubled by your patrols. What time did he leave, would you say? Past eleven, was it not?’

Aislabie nodded, thinking hard now.

‘The ride to Fountains Hall would take no more than a quarter hour, even in the dark. I’ll wager my life he didn’t return to Fountains until much later. My guess is that he attacked Sam first and left him to die by the river. Then he went to Mr Sneaton’s cottage and forced him to give up the ledger.’

‘But why would he do such a monstrous thing? I offered him patronage not two days ago. He will be working with Mr Doe on the follies this summer.’

Mrs Fairwood twisted in her seat, her face flooded with dismay. ‘Is that true?’ she breathed.

‘Of course. He’s a talented young man.’

Tears sprang in her eyes. She looked away, hurriedly, to the empty grate.

‘No, you have it all wrong, Hawkins,’ Aislabie said, emphatically. ‘Forster’s entire future rests upon my goodwill.’

‘I don’t believe he is thinking very much of the future,’ I replied. ‘More of the past. He does not want or need your money or your patronage. All he wants, sir, is revenge.’

Aislabie sighed heavily. Even now, he did not want to believe it. ‘Then why kill poor Jack?’

‘Because last night he learned that the South Sea ledger was in Mr Sneaton’s possession. He also knew that Sam could betray his identity at any moment. He forced Sneaton to give him the ledger, and then he killed him. It was the book he wanted, not the man. By destroying the ledger, he destroyed your great dream of returning to power. You are the focus of a burning hatred, Mr Aislabie. He wants to see you suffer. He wants you to lose everything that is precious to you.’ I glanced at Mrs Fairwood.

Aislabie shook his head, mystified. ‘But he is such a gentle soul.’

‘An act, I am sure. I believe something terrible happened to him – something connected to the South Sea Scheme. Perhaps his family was ruined.’

‘This is not just!’ Mrs Fairwood cried. ‘You accuse an honest gentleman of murder, without giving him the chance to defend himself. Where is your proof, Mr Hawkins? Burned skin and gold buttons? Fie.’

‘Quite so,’ Aislabie agreed. ‘There are too many “perhapses” and “I’ll wagers” to this story for my liking. And how could Forster carry those stags through the park? His arm’s broken, for heaven’s sake.’

I had grave doubts upon that score. And what a convenient injury, that had left his right hand free for sketching, and every other bone in his body unbroken and unbruised. I had watched him galloping down the drive this morning. Surely he would be more cautious if his wrist and arm were broken? My guess was that he had bound up his arm to make himself appear weak, just as he had hidden his true character behind his dull conversation. Which suggested he had always planned to commit violence, long before he arrived at Fountains Hall.

But I couldn’t prove this, and such speculation would only irritate Aislabie further. ‘We don’t need proof. The three stags came from Baldersby Park. Mr Hallow investigated the matter on my behalf. I have not been entirely indolent,’ I said, noting Aislabie’s surprise. ‘Forster’s accomplice collected the stags from the keeper at Baldersby. Metcalfe is riding there now to secure a decent description. Once we have the fellow, we can persuade him to confess. A pistol to the head should do it.’

‘Good,’ Aislabie nodded, pleased with this at least.

‘I’m sure you will be proved wrong,’ Mrs Fairwood said, rising from her chair. ‘But either way, I cannot see why this should delay my departure any longer. This has nothing to do with me.’

‘I must congratulate you, madam,’ I said.

This surprised her enough to make her turn, rustling in her grey silk gown. ‘What do you mean?’

‘On your engagement to Mr Forster.’

It took her a moment to suppress her shock. Then she clapped her hands together, as if it were a tremendous joke. ‘Preposterous!’

‘What is this?’ Aislabie demanded. ‘You are engaged to the fellow?’

‘Of course not. I have no intention of marrying anyone. Where on earth did you hear such foolish nonsense?’

‘From Mr Forster himself.’

She fluttered a hand to her chest. ‘Then he has lost all reason. The very notion is repulsive.’

‘A strong word for an honest gentleman,’ Lady Judith observed, drily. ‘Though I grant you he is not the most entertaining of supper guests…’

‘We are not engaged,’ Mrs Fairwood snapped. Had she been a child, she would have stamped her foot. ‘Oh, this is not to be endured.’ She closed her gloved hands about her throat as if she were suffocating. ‘This place will kill me, do you not understand?’

I had placed myself at the door. Lady Judith remained at the terrace windows. ‘You are in no danger here,’ I said, ‘not if you confess your part in this. You were coerced, were you not? You love him – but you are frightened of him, too.’ She had told me the same, here in this room two days ago. I am so afraid of him. Love and fear – how often they were found together in one heart.

‘Lizzie,’ Aislabie exclaimed in concern. ‘My poor child. Come here.’

She drew back. ‘Leave me be. I am not yours to command. I will not be dictated to, and trapped. I will not.’ She was breathing heavily in great gulps, chest rising and falling hard. ‘I must leave. Why will you not let me leave?’

‘Do you like wallflowers, Mrs Fairwood?’ I asked.

She laughed frantically, and covered her face with her hands. ‘Do you like wallflowers,’ she mimicked. ‘Heaven spare me.’

‘I notice that you keep a vase in your room.’

She dropped her hands. ‘Yes, Mr Hawkins. I keep a vase of wallflowers in my room. I suppose you would see me hanged for it?’

‘Did you pick them yourself?’

Her brow crinkled as she sensed a trap. ‘I suppose I must have done.’

‘Where did you find them?’

A long, careful pause. ‘Somewhere out in the gardens.’ She began to pace the room, fingers brushing along the spines of the books, groping for comfort.

Lady Judith glanced at her husband, and then at me. ‘There are no wallflowers at Studley,’ she said, quietly.

Aislabie put down his glass of brandy. ‘They were your mother’s favourite flowers, Lizzie. Perhaps that’s why you are so fond of them. I cannot bear to plant them in the gardens. They remind me of her too much, even now.’

I hadn’t realised this was the reason, but I hadnoticed that there were no wallflowers on the estate. I had only seen them once, since my arrival from Ripon – great patches of them, sprouting from the crumbling walls of a ruined monastery. ‘They came from Fountains Abbey, did they not?’

Mrs Fairwood plucked a book from a shelf and began to flick through its pages. ‘Oh, very well,’ she said, as if it were of no consequence. ‘Mr Forster gave them to me as a gift. They grow high upon the walls of my own garden, the same golden orange. I suppose I must have mentioned it to him in passing, and he was kind enough to bring some on his next visit. Is this your grave accusation, sir? Have I ruined my reputation by accepting flowers from a gentleman? Must I marry him now, or be shunned for ever by society?’ She slotted the book back on to the shelf. ‘Do you lecture me on dishonour, Mr Hawkins?’

‘And when did he bring you the flowers?’ I asked, mildly.

Mrs Fairwood opened her mouth, then closed it again, teeth biting her lip. Caught.

I turned to the Aislabies. ‘Did you see Mr Forster bringing flowers to your home in the past few days? Did he mention them to you? If we asked the servants, would they remember him riding up to the house with a bunch of bright orange wallflowers in his fist?’ I mimed one arm, caught in its sling, the other proffering a bunch of flowers.

Mrs Fairwood continued her tour of the library, the way an animal might test the bars of its cage. Her face was almost as grey as her gown. ‘Wallflowers,’ she muttered.

One can be undone by such small things.

‘I have some sympathy for you, madam,’ I said, following her with my eyes as she paced the room. ‘You are trapped, and you are afraid. But Mr Sneaton has been murdered, and Sam…’ I paused, unable to finish that thought. ‘You must be honest with me. This must stop. You cannot protect him any longer.’

‘Hold!’ Aislabie exclaimed. ‘Hold! What is this? You accuse them of conspiring together against me? Francis Forster and my own daughter?’

‘You were seen,’ I said, addressing my words to Mrs Fairwood. ‘Meeting in secret, at night.’

‘Impossible!’ she cried, then gasped at her mistake. ‘We never met,’ she added hurriedly.

‘Metcalfe saw you.’

She leaned her back against the shelves. She looked as if she would like to fling every book in the library at me. ‘Metcalfe is mad. And you are a scoundrel. I have nothing more to say.’

‘Very well.’ I turned to Mr Aislabie. ‘I would ask that you and your wife stay here with Mrs Fairwood until Metcalfe returns. If we release her, she might run and warn her lover.’

Mrs Fairwood curled her lip, disgusted.

‘I will not stand guard over my daughter as if she were some low villain!’ Aislabie protested. But for all his indignation, I saw uncertainty in his eyes. He was standing upon the precipice and refusing to look down. All his dreams, all his hopes, were about to be destroyed.

Which had been the plan all along, of course.

‘Metcalfe will return soon,’ I said. ‘I ask only that you all wait here, together – and speak with no one else. Now – I must visit my ward. Pray excuse me.’ I bowed.

‘Of course,’ Lady Judith said, crossing the room to take my hand. ‘We are grateful to you, sir.’ She gave her husband a sharp glance.

‘I refuse to think ill of Forster,’ Aislabie grumbled. ‘You may have convinced my wife, but you have not convinced me.’

I had reached the door of the library when Mrs Fairwood called out to me. ‘Mr Hawkins. I would speak with you a moment. In private.’

‘As you wish.’

We stood in the narrow passageway and considered each other for a moment without speaking.

‘How clever you are,’ she said, with some venom. ‘I should never have guessed.’

‘What hold does Forster have upon you, madam? Are you truly in love with him?’

Her nostrils flared at such an abhorrent notion.

‘You demanded this audience,’ I said, gesturing about the empty corridor. ‘What do you wish to say to me?’

She gave a bitter smile. ‘I was on my way home. Do you understand? I was on my way home and you prevented me from leaving. So remember this.’ She raised herself on tiptoes so she might reach my ear. ‘You have killed me, Mr Hawkins. You have killed me.’

Chapter Twenty-one

‘Tom no, I’m sorry, it is an interesting thought, but really you are quite wrong, there is no engagement. Come with me.’

I had almost collided with Kitty in the tattered corridors of the east wing. She had been in a desperate hurry to find me – bare-legged, no cap – snatching my hand and pulling me towards our chamber at a terrific pace. I had tried to explain about Forster and Mrs Fairwood – their secret love and plans for marriage – and received the critique relayed above. I should add that when Kitty said she found something interesting, she meant ridiculous, in the main.

There was no time to tell her about the rest of my ideas: about Forster’s clothes, his years away from England, not even that Metcalfe had set out for Baldersby. We were at the ruined door of our chamber before I’d even finished complaining about being called muddleheaded.

Sam lay under a pile of blankets. His eyes were bruised and swollen from his beating the day before. Strange to think that the man who’d beaten him now lay dead. I feared Sam might soon join him.

‘Forster is responsible for this, Kitty. I am sure of it.’

‘As am I.’ She had her back to me, shuffling through a sheaf of papers on the desk. The portraits of Mr Aislabie’s lost brothers lay propped against the wall on either side of the hearth – George the debauched rake, and Mallory, the doomed melancholic.

‘You agree? Then why am I muddleheaded? He confessed to Metcalfe that he was engaged.’

‘Of course. Better that than admit the truth. I mean really, does Mrs Fairwood strike you as a woman swept away by passion?’

‘She said the idea was repulsive.’

‘So.’ Kitty clapped her hands. ‘May I tell you what I have discovered? All upon my own here, abandoned for hours?’

I sat down upon the bed. ‘I’m not convinced it has been hours, Kitty…’

‘I suppose not.’ She was standing by the casement window, sunlight filtering through the branches of the oak tree. Little strands of her hair glowed bright as hot metal. ‘And in truth, Sam helped.’

‘He woke again?’

‘Briefly. I’m not sure he knew where he was. He kept whispering “brother” – over and over. I thought at first that he was calling for you. But then I thought, Sam isn’t prone to bouts of sentiment, is he? So I tried to rouse him again, but he had drifted away. He is very ill, Tom. I fear… Even if he recovers, I am not sure he will be the same.’

I touched Sam’s hand, refusing to understand the meaning behind her words. He would wake, and he would be Sam again.

‘Do you remember what he said earlier, about a picture? Well, then I had a perfectly devious idea about those portraits of Aislabie’s brothers.’ She gestured to the paintings by the hearth. ‘I stared at them for ages, trying to solve the mystery.’ She snatched up one of the paintings. ‘Could poor Mallory have feigned his death all those years ago, only to return to claim his inheritance?’ She lifted the second painting of the indolent, rakish George. ‘What if wicked brother George sired a bastard son, now grown and seeking a terrible revenge upon the family? Or a bastard daughter, in the shape of Mrs Fairwood? I even tore off the backing paper to see if anything was hidden beneath.’

‘And was there?’

‘No.’ She rested the paintings back against the wall and crossed to the bed, settling upon the other side of Sam. ‘So I confess I was a trifle frustrated after that, and really Tom, I don’t want to make a fuss about it, but I was a little cross with you for wandering off again, when I thought we had agreed that we are much better together, especially where thinking is concerned?’

I smiled at her, because she wasn’t truly cross, and she was also right. We were much better together. I waved at Sam’s sketches, strewn across the bed. ‘Sam meant his own pictures.’

‘He did! And if you consider how much Sam hates talking, and how we spend half our lives filling in the missing words for ourselves, then brother picture is practically an essay.’ She sifted through the pictures, handing one to me. The borders were decorated with detailed sketches of pistols and swords from the great hall. A magnificent pair of antlers stretched along the bottom of the page, points sharp as daggers. The images intertwined like the margins of an illuminated manuscript: a dense thicket of deathly instruments, rendered with precision.

In the centre of the page lay charcoal studies of Mrs Fairwood and Mr Forster side by side. Forster was open-mouthed as if about to speak, his eyes bright with enthusiasm. Sam had caught Mrs Fairwood’s imperious beauty with great skill: the frank disdain with which she viewed the world beyond her books.

I studied them both, shifting from face to face. And then the spell broke and I saw it at last: their great secret. I saw it in the shape of the eyes, and the bridge of the nose. The fullness of the top lip, the straight brow. They differed in their colouring, even beyond Forster’s bronzed skin. But these subtleties were invisible in a charcoal sketch, allowing the similarities to leap to the fore. Sam, always watching, always noticing what others missed, had captured it with a careful hand.

Francis Forster was Mrs Fairwood’s brother.

As an apology for abandoning her, I promised Kitty that she could announce her discovery to the Aislabies. ‘But it must be gently done,’ I warned. ‘Aislabie still believes Mrs Fairwood is his daughter.’

‘Why should we care?’ she pouted. ‘All those mean-spirited things he said to you. He locked us up in here.’

‘I know.’ I thought of Lady Judith’s description of a climbing plant wrapped tightly around her husband’s heart. I feared that if we did not remove it carefully, the shock might injure, if not kill him. Aislabie was in many ways an infuriating man, but I did not want his death upon my conscience.

Kitty saw the reason to this. She slipped her blade beneath her stomacher, the jewelled hilt forming a brooch at her breast. ‘One must be prepared,’ she said, tapping it into place.

Leaving Kitty to put on her stockings and shoes, I hurried down to the kitchens and asked Mrs Mason if she would sit with Sam for a while. She gestured to the meat turning upon the spit, the stew pans simmering on their trivets. She offered to send up one of the footmen, but I wasn’t sure I could trust them – not until Metcalfe arrived from Baldersby with a decent description of Forster’s accomplice.

‘Is Mr Gatteker still here?’

‘You’ve just missed him. He sat with Mr Sneaton until the coroner came. Poor Jack. Who would do such a wicked thing?’ She gave me a shrewd look. ‘I think you have a notion, don’t you sir?’

I hesitated. If Forster knew he was suspected, he might flee the county before we could arrest him. But what if he should come to the house? Better if at least one of the servants were alert to the danger, and Mrs Mason was a trustworthy, sensible woman. I told her some of what I’d learned – enough at least for her to understand that Forster was dangerous.

‘Heaven help us,’ she whispered. ‘Mr Forster? He’s as thin as a barley stalk.’

‘And tough as old mutton. Not your mutton, Mrs Mason,’ I added hastily. ‘Might Sally sit with Sam? How does she fare?’

Her lips puckered, tightening the deep lines around her mouth. ‘She’s still locked in the cellar. It’s not like his honour. He’s not been himself since the grey widow came to Studley.’

‘Well it can’t be good for her to be locked away, with those burns. Shall we say that I insisted you freed her?’ I raised an eyebrow. ‘Perhaps I told you that Mr Aislabie ordered it…’

Mrs Mason smiled. ‘Perhaps you did, sir.’

Sally was so relieved to be released from her storeroom prison that she wept upon Mrs Mason’s shoulder, holding her bandaged hands up to protect them. I smuggled her through the east wing, carrying a small tray of food for her, and a pot of hot chocolate. It was almost one o’clock, and she had eaten nothing all day, poor girl. Her face was red and blotchy from crying, and she looked even younger than her fifteen years.

She settled herself on a chair by Sam’s bed. We had forgotten to tidy away his charcoal drawings, and, as she sifted through them, she found the portraits of herself, four upon the page. ‘He saw me,’ she smiled, eyes brightening.

Kitty squeezed her shoulder. ‘Send word if he wakes.’

We walked down to the library together, taking a route through one of the horse rooms. There were no servants about, and our footsteps echoed on the boards. I could see a line of dents where Mr Sneaton had taken the same short cut to conserve his strength.

As we reached the back of the house we heard a commotion, and then the library door burst open. Mrs Fairwood ran from the room and out into the corridor. She stumbled in alarm upon seeing us, then jostled her way past us.

We ran after her. As we burst out into the horse room, Kitty leaped upon Mrs Fairwood’s back, crashing them both to the ground. Mrs Fairwood took the force of the fall, crying out in pain as she landed upon her wrists. They wrestled for a moment, a little grey figure struggling beneath a girl ten years younger, used to brawling.

‘How dare you!’ Mrs Fairwood yelled. ‘Help! Someone help me!’

Kitty drew the blade from beneath her stomacher and placed it against Mrs Fairwood’s throat. ‘We know you’re his sister.’

Mrs Fairwood went limp. Kitty sat up, pressing a knee into her back to hold her down.

At the same moment Bagby rushed into the room from the great hall, while the Aislabies emerged from the library. Kitty slid her blade quietly back into her dress and got to her feet, pulling Mrs Fairwood by her arm.

‘Mr Bagby!’ Mrs Fairwood cried, fighting against Kitty’s grip. She had lost her pinner in the fight, dark locks tumbling around her face. ‘Mr Bagby, you must help me. I am being held against my will. Please, sir!’

Kitty swung her about. Lady Judith seized the other arm, and together they bundled their tiny prisoner back towards the library, while she dragged her feet and shouted to be set free.

Aislabie watched them, as if transfixed. ‘I must protest…’ he began, unsteadily. The last remnants of his dream were dissolving in front of him. ‘She ran from us,’ he murmured, as if to himself. ‘The first moment she could.’ He glanced at Bagby, standing open-mouthed across the room. ‘Leave us.’

‘Your honour-’

‘I said leave us, damn you!’

Bagby flinched, then gave a deep bow. As he raised his head, he threw me a look of such unambiguous hatred, I drew back a pace.

Aislabie prowled the room in a troubled silence. He came to rest at a painting of a solid, piebald pony. ‘Best Galloway I ever owned,’ he said, touching the frame. ‘Called him Magpie, for his markings. I could name every one of his descendants. Half of them are dragging quarry stones to the new building today. I could name them all,’ he repeated. ‘I could look at any horse on my estate and tell you its line – back a hundred years or more.’ He turned to look at me. ‘Do you think I could not recognise my own child?’

I couldn’t answer him.

‘Is she my daughter? No, wait. Wait.’ He covered his face with his hands. ‘A moment.’ His shoulders began to shake.

A storm of grief was gathering about him. He was losing his daughter for the second time, here in front of me. A girl brought to life only so she might die again. He dropped his hands, desolate. ‘Who is she, if she is not my daughter?’ he asked, quietly. ‘Why did she come here?’

To break your heart, Mr Aislabie.

I put my hand upon his shoulder and led him back towards the library.

Chapter Twenty-two

Mrs Fairwood sat by the unlit hearth, seething in silence. She had injured her wrist in the fall, and was holding it with a reproachful air. Lady Judith stood with her back to the room, watching a group of men clustered in the yard. Kitty kept guard at the door. The space between the three women simmered with unspoken tension. Or, knowing Kitty, already spoken, at some length.

‘They’re taking Jack away,’ Lady Judith said, in a quiet voice.

Aislabie joined her at the window, and watched his men lift Sneaton’s body on to the coroner’s cart. ‘God rest his soul.’ He bowed his head. ‘He was a fine man.’

‘He was a liar.’

The Aislabies turned as one, horrified.

Mrs Fairwood directed her words to me, standing over her at the mantelpiece. ‘He swore that he had burned the ledger. He lied on oath.’

‘On my behalf,’ Aislabie said. ‘To protect me and my family.’

‘And himself,’ she replied primly, still refusing to look at the man she had called Father. ‘He must have known about the bribes.’

‘They were not bribes. They were legal transactions-’

‘Oh, fie. If the ledger was harmless, how did you blackmail the Queen of England?’

Aislabie fell silent. He had crossed to the middle of the room and was gazing earnestly upon Mrs Fairwood’s profile. Even now, a small part of him clung to the fantasy that she was his daughter. He would not ask her who she was, not directly. While he did not ask, there was still the faintest chance it could be true.

It was time to end this cruel game. I glanced at Lady Judith, who gave a discreet nod. I took Sam’s sketch of Forster and Mrs Fairwood from my pocket and handed it to Aislabie.

‘What is this?’ he frowned.

‘They are brother and sister,’ Kitty said, from the door.

Aislabie looked at the drawings for a long time without speaking. I heard the catch in his breath, when he saw the truth. I watched the hope drain from his face.

‘She is gone,’ he said softly. ‘My little girl. She is lost to me again.’ He took one last look at the picture, then handed it back to me without a word.

At the fireplace, Mrs Fairwood smiled in unashamed triumph.

I poured two glasses of brandy, and passed one to Mr Aislabie. His hand trembled as he brought the glass to his lips.

‘Well, madam,’ I said quietly. ‘You have your victory.’

‘Not victory, Mr Hawkins. Justice. If you knew what that man did to my family, you would understand.’

‘I will not listen to this,’ Aislabie muttered. ‘I have been injured enough.’

‘You will listen, sir!’ Mrs Fairwood cried, springing from her chair. ‘I shall not sit here in silence while you play the martyr. Lord knows I have held my tongue long enough – it is a wonder it is not bit through. Oh!’ She threw her hands above her head. ‘You dare say that I have injured you? When you destroyed my family?’

Aislabie drew back, silenced by her fury.

Lady Judith turned the handle on the terrace door and opened it with a gentle shove. A fresh breeze spilled into the library, billowing the gold damask curtains.

Her husband sank wearily into the chair by the desk, prodding at Metcalfe’s papers. ‘What a damned mess,’ he muttered, sinking his head in his hands. But it was so much worse than that. Sneaton was dead, and Sam might follow him before the day was through.

Lady Judith stretched against the door frame, casting a wistful glance towards the stables. She was not built for waiting, not in body or mind. Like her husband, she preferred to be doing. All of these troubles, all this grief, would be better dealt with on horseback. ‘When will Metcalfe return?’

I glanced at the clock upon the mantelpiece. ‘Past two, I should think.’

‘Well, Mrs Fairwood. We have time to spare. No doubt you wish to tell your story, and I should like to hear it. John?’

Aislabie looked as though he would like nothing less. But Mrs Fairwood’s revelations had stripped him of his usual self-assurance. He sighed, and nodded to his wife.

‘Very well,’ Mrs Fairwood replied, infuriatingly regal. She had been turning her anger upon the fireplace, flinging kindling and coal into the hearth in a haphazard pile. Now she sat down by the fire she’d made – a feeble thing that belched grey smoke into the room. I sat down opposite her, clutching my brandy.

‘Much of what I told you is true,’ she began. ‘My name is Elizabeth Fairwood, and I was brought up on the Lincolnshire coast…’

‘Would that you had stayed there,’ Aislabie muttered from the desk.

‘My father was a gentleman – you might have met him at some gathering, or at Court. Sir George Ellory. Do you remember?’ Her voice had a yearning note to it.

‘I have no memory of him,’ Aislabie replied, staring rigidly at the wall. ‘But if he was a gentleman, as you say, then you have sullied his name.’

‘I shall meet him in Heaven with a clear conscience.’

Kitty – still guarding the door – snorted back a laugh.

‘Francis was born two years after me. We shared a tutor until he was sent away to school. After that, my father continued my education himself. My mother blamed him later, when I confessed my desire never to marry. But I have always preferred books to people.’ She glanced about her, and allowed herself a brief twist of a smile. ‘My brother did not share my preference. When he was nineteen, he fell in love with a girl from a neighbouring family. Maria Castleton. It was an excellent match. Her father had promised a settlement of five hundred pounds a year. But Maria was not yet sixteen. The families agreed it would be prudent to wait a year.

‘But Francis was impatient to marry, as you can imagine. He became convinced the delay implied some doubt on the Castletons’ side – though in truth they were very fond of him. He was such easy company, so cheerful and generous. I wish you could have known him as he was then.’ She smiled at me. ‘I believe you might have been friends.’

‘Indeed? Was he not interested in architecture at this point?’

‘Oh, it was always his great passion,’ Mrs Fairwood replied, oblivious. ‘He wanted to rebuild the house in Lincolnshire in the new style. He became quite obsessed with the idea.’ She looked down at her hands. ‘It is our passions that destroy us, is it not? We lose all sense, all perspective. Francis was convinced that the Castletons would respect him if he could show them some great accomplishment, something he had created for himself. He was determined to begin work on the house that summer. He spent every moment on his designs, barely eating, barely sleeping. The servants in our London home would find him slumped over his desk, half-delirious with exhaustion.

‘He completed his plans as he had promised, and they were magnificent. The trouble was, he had not considered the cost. Francis was never sensible when it came to money. My father had encouraged him at first, but when he saw the designs, he was horrified. They were too elaborate, too ambitious: even with Maria’s fortune, the cost was too great. Perhaps in ten or fifteen years, with a simpler design, it might be possible. Francis was furious. He said he would find another way to pay for it, without my father’s help.’

‘The South Sea Scheme,’ I said.

‘Yes.’ She frowned. ‘He was was one of the first to buy shares. He’d stayed in London when we all returned to Lincolnshire. We couldn’t understand what kept him in town, when Maria waited for him at home. And then the letters began to arrive. He had invested in the South Sea Company, and had made a vast fortune overnight. And no, we must not fuss, because there was no risk! The Chancellor of the Exchequer himself had said so.’

She glanced over her shoulder. Aislabie kept his gaze upon the wall in front of him, his nails pressed deep into the green leather of the desk.

She turned back, lifting her eyes to mine. ‘All through that summer, Francis wrote such feverish letters about his shares and how much he was now worth. It was all he could speak of. My father wrote back begging him to sell out before it was too late. Francis said the world had changed and that cautious old fools should keep their own counsel. And on paper he had amassed an extraordinary fortune. In one summer, he had earned enough to build a palace.’

‘Then the bubble burst,’ I said.

‘Then the bubble burst,’ she mimicked. ‘Such a passive phrase, so free of blame. Let us not be delicate, Mr Hawkins. Let us not use metaphors. The South Sea Scheme was a fraud played upon the nation, and the men who promoted it are black-hearted thieves.’

Aislabie could endure it no longer. ‘Not true!?’ he cried, thumping the desk.

‘Worse than thieves!’ Mrs Fairwood shouted, rising to her feet. ‘At least a highwayman has the common decency to admit what he is. You stood upon the floor of the House of Commons and you swore that we could trust the company’s directors. You encouraged people to invest, even at the very end when you must have known the misery that lay ahead. Do not deny it, sir!’

‘What should I have done, madam?’ Aislabie snarled, defiant. ‘How easily you judge me, when you understand so little. I promise you, Mrs Fairwood – if indeed that is your name – if I had even hinted of my concerns, there would have been a universal panic. It would have been a catastrophe, a hundred times worse than the one we suffered.’

‘We suffered?’ Mrs Fairwood laughed, incredulous.

‘I had a duty to maintain order, to search for a safer path.’

‘You had a duty to speak the truth.’

‘And who would have listened? The world had turned mad. Do you know what the king said to me, when I advised him not to invest in more shares? He called me a timorous fool. The king! I might as well have shouted into the wind.’

‘What specious logic is this?’ Mrs Fairwood cried. ‘You say you held your tongue to prevent panic – but claim that if you had indeed spoken out, no one would have listened?’

Mr Aislabie began to argue his case again, but I held up my hand to stop him. We might spend the rest of our lives in this room, debating the rights and wrongs of the matter – he would never admit to any fault, and Mrs Fairwood would never grant him any mercy. ‘What happened to your brother, madam?’

‘He was ruined,’ she said, still glowering at Aislabie. ‘He’d bought his shares on speculation. When the price collapsed he was left owing thousands of pounds. Thousands. My father had to sell most of our estate to pay the debts. Land we had owned for generations.’

‘I am sorry,’ Aislabie said, though he didn’t sound it. ‘But how does that give you the right to torment me and my family? Are you insensible to my own trials, madam? Is it not telling that John Aislabie – a commoner – was sacrificed to the fury of public opinion, while my noble colleagues were protected and promoted? I was thrown in the Tower! Stripped of office. Suffered every possible abuse to my reputation-’

‘Oh!??’ Mrs Fairwood groaned, collapsing back into her chair.

I understood her frustration. Aislabie’s insistence on casting himself as the victim in all of this was excessively tedious. Also – unforgivably – he had referred to himself in the third person. I thought it best to nudge the story along. ‘Mrs Fairwood: why was your brother transported?’

She blanched. ‘How… how did you know?’

It had been eight years since the South Sea calamity. Long enough for a man to be transported and serve his seven years of enforced labour, before returning to England. Seven years, slaving beneath a burning sun.

Mrs Fairwood’s hand upon the globe, spanning the Atlantic, had offered me the first clue. After all, if Francis Forster sought revenge upon Aislabie, why wait for so long? But it was the puzzle of his broken arm that had convinced me – the bandage wrapped about his wrist and hand. ‘He was branded, was he not?’ I touched my left thumb, between the knuckles. ‘They mark them here, with a letter. T for theft. M for murder.’

‘Dear God,’ Lady Judith breathed.

‘The bandage was ingenious,’ I said. ‘Hid the brand and his strength at the same time.’

‘Is this true?’ Lady Judith snapped. ‘Madam! Did you let a murderer into my home?’

Angry tears sprang beneath Mrs Fairwood’s lashes. ‘You refuse to hear me. I told you, Francis was a gentle, generous boy. That was his undoing. He’d amassed such a great fortune over that summer, but he couldn’t persuade my father or Mr Castleton to invest. He decided to buy some shares in Mr Castleton’s name. He never intended to keep them. He was going to present the profits to his father-in-law as a gift, at the wedding. Then the whole scheme collapsedand he couldn’t sell them. His broker wrote to Mr Castleton, demanding payment.’

‘How much was the debt?’ I asked.

‘Two hundred pounds. He bought them at the height of the summer.’

‘And Mr Castleton had him charged for theft?’ That seemed cruel. It was a huge debt, but the families could have come to an agreement without involving the courts.

‘No…’ Aislabie said, clicking his fingers ‘… I remember this story. I read about it, or heard it somewhere…’

Mrs Fairwood twisted in her chair, so she might seem him the better. ‘You remember? Francis Ellory?’ She glared at him until he lowered his gaze.

‘I don’t recall the name,’ he muttered.

‘Mr Castleton waived the debt, but it made no difference. Francis had bought shares in another man’s name, signed legal documents. He was arrested for forgery and fraud. A hanging offence.’ She paused. Took a deep breath, and continued. ‘My mother collapsed when she heard the news. She was too ill to travel, so I accompanied my father to London. We must not despair, everyone said so. But the law… once a thing is set in motion, it can be hard to stop. You know this,’ she said to me. ‘The trial was set for November. My father wrote countless letters, tried every connection. Everyone offered the same advice – we must find someone in the government to support our case. So he wrote to you, Mr Aislabie.’

Aislabie covered his mouth. ‘I don’t recall…’ But he did. I’d seen it in his eyes – a flash of guilt, swiftly hidden.

‘You were still in office at that time. Imagine – the man who had ruined the country, still in power. My father begged you to intercede. You could explain to the judge the hectic madness of that summer. There was a good deal of talk about town, blaming the crash upon foolish young investors. But you knew that wasn’t true. You knew who was to blame. Not the investors. Not poor Francis. But men like you, Mr Aislabie. Men like you.’

Aislabie’s lips tightened. Of course he had received the letter, and of course he had not answered. To do so would have been to admit his own culpability.

‘Two dozen men stood up in court to defend my brother’s character, including Mr Castleton. It made no difference. He was found guilty.’ She shook her head, tears in her eyes.

‘But he didn’t hang,’ I said.

‘No. How lucky we were. Seven years and a branding upon his thumb: an F for Felon.’ She drew a deep breath, that turned into a shudder. ‘I was there when they burned it into him. My little brother. I will never forget his screams. The smell of his flesh, burning… Then they put him in chains and took him away.’

Chapter Twenty-three

Mrs Fairwood insisted on a walk about the yard, to compose herself. She would not continue her story otherwise.

‘You may accompany me to the stables,’ Lady Judith said, icily polite. ‘I wish to see how Athena fares.’

‘You care of nothing but your precious horses,’ Mrs Fairwood sneered. But she rose and drifted from the room, grey and silent as the shadow that trailed at her feet. Kitty gathered up her skirts and followed at a close distance. If Mrs Fairwood had plans to run, she would find herself stopped with a boot, or a bucket, or whatever else might be lying about the yard.

‘How can I have been so deceived?’ Aislabie said, watching from the terrace door. ‘I never knew a woman could be so wicked.’

I took a sip of brandy. ‘She told me she was afraid, the first time we spoke. Afraid of him.’

‘You think she was coerced?’

‘I believe so. More than her pride allows her to confess.’

‘Hmm.’ He looked at me for a moment, from the corner of his eye. ‘You are not entirely without value.’

I clapped my hand to my chest, accepting the compliment.

He laughed, but it soon faded. ‘Have you ever lost someone you loved, Hawkins?’

‘My mother. A long time ago now.’

‘Do you remember her?’

I turned the brandy glass between my fingers. Nodded.

‘My children can’t remember their mother. They were so young when she died. We never speak of her.’ He sighed. ‘I thought it best in the beginning. Now they have no memory of a time before the fire, not even Mary, my eldest. Sometimes I think I am the only one who remembers Anne, and Lizzie. Those brief days. When you lose a child, Hawkins…’ He paused, and swallowed. ‘… it leaves a wound that never heals. The world forgot her, but I never did. I think of them both, every day.’

‘Metcalfe remembers Lizzie.’

‘He does?’

‘He said she was a merry little girl.’

Aislabie’s dark eyes lit up. ‘She was. She was.’

Mrs Fairwood left the stables, heading back through the yard.

‘Look at her,’ Aislabie muttered. ‘To think how many hours I wasted, studying the contours of that woman’s face.’ He returned to the desk, taking the bottle of brandy with him.

Mrs Fairwood arrived at the terrace doors, the bottom of her gown flecked with hay from the stables. She glided past me to the fire and brushed her skirts clean with a fastidious hand, dropping the hay into the flames. Her wrist, when not being observed, seemed to work perfectly well.

Kitty and Lady Judith had also stepped back into the library. The air had grown stifling, so Kitty and I swapped places – she stood by the fire while I guarded the door. Lady Judith was talking with her husband. ‘Do you wish to rest for a time?’ she murmured, stroking his back. He leaned into her for a moment, then shook his head.

I nodded to Mrs Fairwood to continue. She had left the fireside, drawn to a study of Byzantine coins left open on a table. She traced her fingers down the page. ‘We could not stay in London after the trial. My father brought me up to Lincoln in the hope of arranging a favourable marriage, as if I were some piece of livestock at a country fair. He wanted to secure my future, but I was terrified. Surely no decent gentleman would marry me, not now.

‘The months passed and we fell deeper into debt. My father was in despair. My mother had not recovered from her nervous collapse: she lay in her bed at home unable to speak. A living ghost.’ She shivered at the memory.

‘And then Mr Fairwood proposed.’

‘Mr Fairwood.’ She turned a page on to a new display of coins. Grimaced. ‘An old friend of my father. I will say this in his favour. He was very rich, and he never once touched me. We married on the third of October, 1721.’ She slammed the book closed. ‘The next day, my father hanged himself.’

Mr Aislabie turned in his seat, and looked at her. She stood with her knuckles pressed into the table, breathing heavily. Then she pushed back upon her fists, standing straight again. ‘My father blamed himself for the family’s ruin. He believed he should have ordered Francis back from London and forced him to sell his shares. He took his life out of shame. I pray for him every day. But I know that he is beyond the reach of mercy.’

‘No one knows that, Mrs Fairwood,’ I said.

She took a deep breath. ‘For seven years I lived for one purpose: to see my brother come home. My mother could not travel, so we mourned and suffered alone. Her great wish was to live long enough to see Francis again, but she died two months before he landed at Portsmouth. Perhaps it was for the best.’ She hesitated. ‘The truth is, my brother never came home. He died the day they branded him. He died on the ship to Virginia. He died in the tobacco fields, when they whipped him like an animal. The man who returned, who wears those fine clothes you admire – he is a stranger to me. The brother I loved is dead, like my parents.’ She lifted her dark eyes to Aislabie. ‘Because of you.’

‘You are afraid of him,’ I said, pulling out my pipe. ‘This stranger.’

She clutched her arms. ‘Yes.’

‘But you agreed to help him.’

She looked down, her black lashes masking her eyes. ‘Yes.’

I fixed my pipe, waiting for her to continue.

‘Do you believe in Fate, sir?’ she asked, at last.

I did not, but said nothing, breathing out a long trail of smoke.

‘My brother sailed home last November. On the second day, he met a lady travelling alone. She wore this at her throat.’ She touched the diamond and ruby brooch pinned to her gown. And then, pulling off her gloves, she unfastened it, and placed it upon the table. ‘They fell into close conversation, the way strangers sometimes do on a long voyage. She told him that she had fled England when she was a young woman. Now she was dying. She had decided to come home and settle certain matters. She said she had done something terrible, many years ago, to a man named John Aislabie. She wanted to see him one more time, and beg his forgiveness.’

‘Molly Gaining.’ Aislabie’s voice cracked as he spoke the name – for the first time in years, most likely.

Lady Judith reached across and plucked the brooch from the table. She handed it to her husband.

‘I knew,’ he said, long fingers tracing the diamond petals. ‘I knew this was Anne’s brooch.’

Mrs Fairwood watched him, unmoved. ‘Molly died the night before the ship reached England. Francis believed that God had brought them together for a divine purpose: so that he might serve justice upon John Aislabie. The man who had destroyed our family.’

‘You dare call this God’s work,’ Lady Judith breathed.

‘Your brother forged Molly’s confession?’ I asked.

Mrs Fairwood hesitated, then nodded. ‘He took some of her papers so he might copy her hand. By the time he reached London he had formed a plan: that I should pretend to be Elizabeth Aislabie, saved from the fire. I refused at first. I could not imagine doing something so bold. Francis swore he would never find peace otherwise. He spoke of nothing else, day after day: I thought I should go mad. In the end he said that if I did not help him, he would disappear and I would never see him again.’ She pressed her hands to her chest at the thought.

‘I insisted upon one thing: that he would first visit Studley Hall and effect some meeting with the family. I wanted him to be sure of the path he was taking. He did as I asked. He secured an invitation to Fountains Hall and he rode up from London. He saw the grand designs for your stables, and the scores of men working on your estate. He sat at your dining table while you spoke of your cruel treatment, and your determination to return to public office. He saw how you closed off the moors and pursued the men who had farmed there for generations. He saw all this, and then he wrote to me. And Mr Aislabie, after I received his letter, I decided that my brother was right. You deserved to be punished.’

Aislabie rose from his chair. ‘Enough. I will listen no longer.’

Mrs Fairwood gave a thin smile. ‘The truth is a bitter medicine.’

‘Insufferable,’ Lady Judith muttered.

Aislabie beckoned me to the terrace door. ‘I shall ride to Ripon, bring the magistrate and his sergeants back to arrest Forster. Wait here for Metcalfe.’ He gripped my arm. ‘I want that woman guarded at all times, Hawkins.’ He strode off towards the stable, boots stamping on the cobbles.

‘Oh, what a relief!’ Mrs Fairwood sighed, stretching out her arms. ‘To be myself again.’

‘You have no heart, madam,’ Lady Judith said, softly.

Mrs Fairwood tweaked a dark, perfect brow. ‘I pity you, Mrs Aislabie. It must be exhausting, defending your indefensible husband. But wives must be loyal, I suppose.’ She crossed to the hearth. ‘You are very quiet, Mrs Hawkins.’

She was – unnaturally so. Kitty was sitting in a green silk armchair by the fire, her chin propped in her hand. She had not spoken one word since Mrs Fairwood had returned to her confession.

Mrs Fairwood frowned at her. ‘D’you know, I am sure I sprained my wrist in my fall.’

Lady Judith had no patience left. Leaving us to stand guard over Mrs Fairwood, she returned to the stables. Perhaps, like Gulliver, she expected to find more reasoned conversation among the horses.

And still, Kitty said nothing. Having finished my pipe, I had nothing to do but pace the room. There were still elements of Mrs Fairwood’s tale that did not quite make sense to me. The fire, the threatening notes. I poured myself a fresh glass of brandy.

‘Another glass,’ Mrs Fairwood observed. ‘Are you ever sober, Mr Hawkins?’ She sat down opposite Kitty. ‘Well, madam? What do you think of my story? Has it not stirred your sympathy?’

Kitty lifted her chin from her hand. ‘Oh, no. I have just been wondering to myself how you will die.’

Mrs Fairwood gave a little start.

‘There’s a good chance you will hang, of course. Accessory to murder, that’s the phrase is it not? Then there’s theft,’ Kitty counted this off on a second finger, ‘as the deer were stolen. Or would that be termed poaching? The notes threatening murder, well, they are a hanging offence upon their own. And arson, of course,’ she held up a fourth finger. ‘You would have let poor Sally take the blame for that.’

‘The chambermaid?’ Mrs Fairwood shrugged.

Kitty glared at her. ‘Sally Shutt. Fifteen years old, with no fortune and no family. You would have ruined her to save yourself. Doesn’t that stir your sympathies, Mrs Fairwood? No, of course not – because your tragedy is the only one that matters. As if no one else has ever suffered as you have. I could tell you stories…’

‘I-’

‘What – you would have me weep for your brother? An arrogant prick who gambled away his family’s fortune? And you. I should feel sorry for poor little you?You’ve preyed upon a father’s grief for weeks! Oh! I could stamp on your head I’m so cross.’

Mrs Fairwood was confounded into silence. I doubt she’d been spoken to in such a raging fashion in all her life.

‘Why did you start the fire?’ I asked, once she had recovered. ‘As a distraction?’

‘Francis wanted Aislabie to know that he could not protect me – not even here in the house. He wanted to torment him. And he had promised a fire.’

‘So you obliged him? You take your sisterly duty a little too seriously, I think.’

‘You refuse to understand,’ she muttered bitterly. ‘Francis has kept me a prisoner here for weeks. He said that if I left Studley, he would tell the world what we had done. He would be hanged and I would be transported. He told me about the ships – how the guards would use my body. He described the vilestthings. When I begged him to stop, he laughed at me. He said, begging does not make them stop, sister…’ She clamped a hand to her mouth, rocking silently in her chair.

‘He has lost his reason,’ I said.

She nodded. ‘I didn’t realise at first. Before we came here, he would talk of the future. He said he would come home with me to Lincoln and build me a new house. He talked of Palladio, and Lord Burlington… But it was all a pose, a deception. He wanted me to believe he was still the brother I had loved, so that I would help him. But how could he be? The man you have met isn’t real. The clothes he wears are a costume. The real Francis is cruel. The light is gone from him – and he cannot bear to see it in others. Worse – he takes pleasure in their suffering. It’s the only pleasure he has, now. He feeds upon fear.’

‘You’re afraid of him.’

‘Yes, very afraid. He was fascinated with how swiftly Mr Aislabie accepted me as his daughter. The boundless love of a father. He said, “Imagine if he found you dead. He would be sent mad with grief to lose you again in such a way. Think if I laid your corpse out on the coffin lawn, marked with flaming torches. How I should love to watch him discover you like that.” ’ She gave a shudder. ‘Youtook away my only chance to escape him, sir.’

‘Don’t you dare blame Tom,’ Kitty snapped, still furious. ‘You chose to come here and play the part of a dead girl. If you had stayed in Lincoln, we would be safe at home in London, and Mr Sneaton would still be alive. Sam would not be lying upstairs with a broken skull.’ She rose and stood over Mrs Fairwood. ‘You knew what he planned to do last night, didn’t you? You argued with him, while we were playing cards.’

Mrs Fairwood shrank back in her chair. ‘I begged him to leave before Sam gave up his name. He refused. He was so angry about the ledger. He said he would take it from Mr Sneaton, and then he would visit everyone on the list. Everyone who had cheated and escaped punishment. I didn’t know what to do… I stayed up all night, praying to God.’

‘Why not speak to us? We might have protected Sam if we’d known.’

‘I thought he was safe with you! You were locked in your chambers.’

‘And Mr Sneaton?’ I asked.

She tilted her head, defiant. ‘He should have told the truth about the ledger, instead of keeping it secret all these years. I’m sure I am sorry that he’s dead, but I could not risk warning him. Francis could have killed me.’ She drew herself up, discovering again her regal pose. ‘I believe that God will understand my actions, and forgive me.’

Kitty raised an eyebrow. ‘He might surprise you, Mrs Fairwood.’

There was a tap at the door. Two footmen entered the library, sent by Lady Judith. They looked excited and uncomfortable in equal measure. ‘Begging your pardon, madam,’ one of them addressed Mrs Fairwood. ‘Her ladyship has ordered us to escort you to the cellar. For your protection,’ he added.

‘I see.’ Mrs Fairwood gathered herself. ‘I should like to take one last walk about the yard, if I may? Under escort, of course.’ She gestured to Kitty and me.

In the courtyard, Mrs Fairwood clasped her hands together as if in prayer, walking slowly across the cobbles. Kitty and I followed close behind.

‘She imagines she is Anne Boleyn, bravely facing death,’ I muttered.

Kitty snorted. ‘And we are her ladies-in-waiting.’

‘Mrs Fairwood!’ I called out.

She paused, graciously.

‘Who aids your brother? He has an accomplice, does he not?’

Her gaze flickered to the back of the house. ‘He told me it was one of Aislabie’s men, but he wouldn’t say which one. If I didn’t know, I could never be certain when I was being watched. A footman, a groom… I must play my part to perfection, at every moment. I cannot express to you the intolerable strain of being spied upon. Of suspecting everyone.’ She continued her parade of the yard, chickens squawking at her neat little feet. ‘Of course, he might be watching us even now.’

‘And all he would see is a woman strolling through a yard.’

‘Yes…’ She smiled, faintly. ‘But if I am locked away in a cellar… He might decide to warn my brother.’

‘Oh!’ Kitty grinned without humour at this piece of cunning. ‘Bravo. So we should let you wander about the gardens instead, should we?’

Mrs Fairwood put a hand to her chest. ‘I am only trying to help. If Francis escapes, he will take his revenge upon us all, for ruining his plans. You most of all, Mr Hawkins.’

It was impossible to judge. There had been so much deceit, we couldn’t know for certain whether she was now telling the truth. Metcalfe would return from Baldersby soon. Could I risk waiting? Now I thought of it, all the servants would know that I had prevented Mrs Fairwood from leaving this morning, and had sat with her in the library in close conference with the Aislabies for over an hour.

If Forster received any warning of this, he would leave Fountains Hall at once. We might never see him again. Or worse, he might disappear for a short while and then hunt us all down in revenge. No – he must be secured as soon as possible.

I called to one of the grooms to bring me a horse, and he waved in understanding. It struck me that he could be Forster’s accomplice. It might be any one of these men in the yard. Of course, that assumed Forster had told his sister the truth: that the man was indeed a servant. It might be someone at Fountains Hall. It might be anyone. I began to see how unnerving it must have been for Mrs Fairwood all these weeks, always wondering if she were being watched.

‘Let me come with you,’ Kitty said.

I shook my head. ‘One of us must stand guard over her, until we know which servant colludes with her brother.’

‘I won’t run,’ Mrs Fairwood said. ‘Where would I go? It makes no difference now.’

The groom approached with Athena, apparently recovered from our adventures. We eyed each other warily for a moment, and then I swung up into the saddle. ‘Mrs Fairwood,’ I called down, once the groom had left us. ‘Your brother’s man. You must have your suspicions. Who is it, do you think?’

‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t want to accuse someone unfairly…’

I frowned down at her, and waited for a better reply.

She sighed. ‘Bagby. I believe it’s Bagby.’

Chapter Twenty-four

I galloped hard to Fountains Hall, reaching Mr Messenger’s home within a few minutes. Abandoning Athena on the carriageway, I asked the butler to bring me direct to his master as a matter of urgency. God knows my expression, but he led me at once to a room at the back of the house, where Messenger sat with his leg raised on an ottoman, nursing his gout. Mr Gatteker sat with him, drinking a glass of claret.

I was relieved to see that Forster wasn’t with them. It gave me the chance to explain myself, and ask for their help.

Messenger greeted me with some surprise, but politely enough through his pain. Gatteker had come to attend him, and to bring the news of Sneaton’s death.

‘God rest his soul,’ Messenger rumbled.

Gatteker raised his glass in memory, then drained it.

‘That is why I’m here, sir. Is Mr Forster at home?’

‘Forster?’ Messenger furrowed his brows. ‘I believe he’s down at the abbey, sketching again. Not in trouble, is he? I should be very sorry of it. Grown vastly fond of the fellow.’

I took a deep breath, and began.

‘Dear God,’ Messenger said when I was done. His fingers twirled a furtive cross against his chest. ‘Dear God and all the saints.’

Both men looked shocked, but neither had questioned the truth of my accusations. It was as if – once I had given them permission to consider Forster afresh – their instincts confirmed his true nature. There had always been something off about the man.

‘We shared breakfast together this morning!’ Messenger exclaimed. ‘He ate potted venison and sausages – and a jugged pigeon! Blithe as you please. A murderer at my breakfast table…’ He struggled to his feet, yelping in agony as the weight passed through his knee. ‘I must call the house together.’

‘No, please – we must not alert Forster. Mr Aislabie will be here presently with enough men to take him. I only wish to confirm that he has not fled. He has an accomplice – one of the Studley servants, I believe. Could he have received warning, within the last hour or so?’

‘No, no,’ Messenger said, gripping the mantelpiece to hold himself steady.

‘Ah – you may be mistaken, sir,’ Gatteker interrupted. ‘I passed one of Aislabie’s men on the road. Thought he must be bringing the news about Sneaton. I said I would take the message myself, but he carried on his way without a word. I thought it strange, but then it has been a very strange morning.’

‘And this was a Studley man?’

‘Aye – it was Bagby. Aislabie’s butler.’

It was a short walk to the abbey. I picked my way through the ruins, the ground a patchwork of high grass and stone flags tangled in weeds. Doves and pigeons fluttered in their nests and along the tops of the old walls, while the jackdaws eyed my approach, curious.

I ventured into the shadowed and cavernous cellarium, every footstep sending echoes to the vaulted ceiling. Lost feathers fluttered in the air, tufts of white and grey. Another turn and I emerged into brilliant sunshine.

Cocking my pistol, I stepped softly through a stone archway into the open square of the cloisters. There was no one there.

The ruins were the size of a small village, and Forster had spent hours sketching them. He could be hiding around any corner. I should leave, draw back until the magistrate arrived with his men. As I crossed the cloisters, I felt as though I were stalking not Forster, but the violence he promised. At the edge of the square lay four great arches. Three were flooded with light, the fourth was almost black with shadow. I hesitated, drawn to the darkest arch. I could hear Kitty calling at me to wait, to draw back. To think. My feet pulled me forward.

There was nothing there. The arch led to a short, dank passage, empty even of birds. I laughed at myself, under my breath. Beneath my laughter, I was disappointed. Where was he? Not in sunlight, not in shade.

I stepped through one of the three brighter arches, into a high-walled chapterhouse. The grass had been cropped here to honour the tombstones that covered the ground. Old monks, laid to rest centuries ago. A journal lay on one of the slabs, held down with a rock. I sensed, though I could not know, that it had been left for me to find. The hairs rose on the back of my neck.

I approached cautiously, expecting Forster to appear at any moment. Crouching down, I removed the rock and picked up the journal, flicking through the pages. There were neat sketches of the abbey and of Fountains Hall: scrupulously detailed notes about columns and windows, with measurements and perspectives. I turned to the next page and my stomach dropped.

It was a self-portrait. Forster stared from the page, mouth set hard. The precise lines of the previous sketches were replaced with savage shading and cross-hatching. He had drawn himself without his wig and hat, highlighting the sharp lines of his jaw and cheekbones until he seemed more skull than living man. Where his eyes should be, he had drawn two empty sockets, blood dripping from the wounds. His fingers curled about his head, covered in blood – as if he had seen too much, and ripped his eyes out in horror.

Upon the next page, Forster had drawn a winding riverbank, with a small dark figure lying sprawled upon the grass. Another page, and here was Sneaton, beaten and drowned in the water trough, deer grazing in the distance as if in some country idyll. The next drawing depicted his sister, Elizabeth Fairwood, laid out dead upon the coffin lawn in front of the banqueting house, flaming torches surrounding her. The darkest of fantasies, or worse: preparation.

The following page was blank, save for a message scrawled lightly in pencil at the bottom.

Hawkins – I pray you find this. You have Ruined all my Plans and you will pay for it. You think you are Strong, but I have survived Seven years of hell. I know how to make a Man suffer. You will beg me to end your Life before we are done. E.F.

I took a deep breath and skimmed the rest of the pages. They were filled with sketches of windowsills and door frames, and notes upon classical proportion. He had written that venomous note, then returned to his designs, in the same way he could murder a man, and then sit down for his breakfast, quite untroubled.

I tucked the journal in my pocket and strode back to Fountains Hall, deeply unsettled. Aislabie had just arrived from Ripon with a magistrate and a small band of men.

‘He is fled,’ I told them, and explained about Bagby.

Aislabie cursed under his breath.

‘We should return to Studley and arrange a search party. He is not at the abbey.’

‘He might be halfway to Scotland by now.’

‘No, he is still here somewhere.’ I showed him Forster’s message.

His body sagged as he read it. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘He has not killed me yet,’ I said, sounding more cheerful than I felt. ‘We know who and what he is, and we know his accomplice. We’ll hunt him down.’

Aislabie tilted his head and gave me a swift, appraising look, as he had at our first meeting. Then he smiled grimly, and swung up into his saddle.

Back at Studley Hall, Aislabie gathered the house together for the second time that day. I stood with him upon the stairs and looked out across the white caps and gowns, the wigs and liveried suits, the rougher garb of the estate workers. Simpson and his men stood at the back, dusty with quarry powder. Work on the stables did not stop even for murder. Their boots had left muddy trails on the floor. I thought of Sally, scrubbing it clean again, then remembered she would not be able to work for a long time, with her burned hands. I searched for her in the crowd and found her standing with Mrs Mason. She caught my eye and gave a valiant smile, but the day had taken its toll upon her, and Mrs Mason had an arm wrapped about her waist to hold her steady.

Aislabie did not tell his household the full story – only that Mr Forster was suspected of Mr Sneaton’s death, and that if anyone should spy him upon the estate, they were to sound the alarm at once.

‘Forster killed Jack?’ Simpson called out, incredulous. He sounded drunk again. ‘That foppish prick? I’ll bludgeon his brains out if I see him.’

‘He is stronger than he seems,’ I warned.

Simpson snorted.

‘I must share further ill news,’ Aislabie said. ‘Many of you will have heard about the foul messages sent to me, and the butchered deer. This too was the work of Mr Forster, aided by a member of this household.’ Aislabie waited for the room to settle. ‘I’m afraid we have all been deceived by Mr Bagby.’

More gasps of astonishment. But I noticed Pugh cup his hand and whisper something to one of the grooms.

‘Has anyone seen him in the last hour?’ Aislabie asked.

No one had. Like Forster, Bagby had vanished.

Aislabie called upon the men to volunteer for a fresh search party. I offered to join him, but he needed estate workers – men who knew the woods well. ‘I hoped you might ride out to meet my nephew. I am worried for him on the road alone.’ He looked tired, his eyes rimmed red.

I bowed. ‘Of course.’

I asked one of the maids to let Kitty know where I was headed, then hurried to the stables, where Athena was being relieved of her saddle. ‘Leave her!’ I called out.

Athena snorted at the sound of my voice, and danced against the reins. The groom murmured in her ear and she settled again, enough for me to catch a stirrup and swing into the saddle. Pugh walked over to me, leading his horse. ‘You know the road to Baldersby?’

I nodded. ‘If you find Forster, don’t approach him alone. He’ll kill anyone in his way.’

‘I’m riding with Mr Hallow.’ Pugh tilted his chin towards the head keeper, who was already in the saddle. ‘Can’t believe Forster would do something so devilish. Seemed such a mild-tempered gent. There’s horses like that: good as gold… until they kick you in the teeth.’

‘Bagby was less of a surprise to you, I think?’

‘Bloody fool. He were furious when you stopped Mrs Fairwood from leaving. Took off at a rare old pace to Fountains Hall. Said Mr Forster would know what to do. Said he were the only honourable gentleman around here. Begging your pardon.’

‘Not to worry. I had rather gathered that he disapproved of me.’

‘He did have some fanciful notions…’ Pugh hesitated. ‘He thought that you were, ah… That you and Lady Judith were… Nonsensical o’ course,’ he added, skating gamely over my disastrous reputation, and her ladyship’s shameless flirting.

I rode with Pugh down the path that ran along the east wing, thinking back over my three days at Studley. I could see now – with the eyes of a suspicious servant – how my behaviour might have appeared dishonourable. I had arrived at the estate without my wife, and moved myself at once to an abandoned set of rooms – the ideal place for illicit visits.

We passed the oak tree that grew outside my window. I thought of Sam balancing on its branches on our first day at Studley, barefoot and grinning. I should never have brought him here.

Hallow was waiting for us at the end of the path. He removed his hat and bowed in his saddle. ‘Bagby,’ he said, incredulous. ‘I’m so sorry your honour, I should have thought to ask for a description yesterday.’

‘Peace, Mr Hallow. I doubt it would have made a difference.’ Bagby was an unremarkable sort of fellow: middling height, brown eyes, neither handsome nor ill-featured. If he’d worn his liveried suit, that would have given us some clue, but most likely he had changed into rougher clothes to avoid notice. In which case, the description would apply to half the men on the estate.

‘He was always a mutton-headed fool,’ Pugh said.

‘But not a killer.’ Hallow shuddered. ‘You didn’t see the body. Devil’s work.’

‘I don’t think Bagby killed Mr Sneaton,’ I said, thinking of the sinister drawings in Forster’s notebook.

‘Maybe he was forced to help,’ Hallow suggested. ‘Blackmailed, even?’

‘Maybe.’

But he had dashed over to Fountains Hall to warn Forster. That was not the act of a man forced against his will.

I turned Athena on to the carriage drive, waving goodbye to Pugh and Hallow. My pistols knocked against my side as I galloped along, and I kept a close eye upon the trees and bushes up ahead. The images I’d seen in Forster’s journal flitted through my mind. So much cruelty, so much hatred: and all of it now focused upon me. I prayed to God that the search party found him before nightfall.

Francis Forster stands by a window in the east wing and watches the search party ride out, sees Hawkins pass by on his grey mare, deep in conversation. No one thinks to look back at the house. The threat lies out there, somewhere in the dark woods. He laughs softly, thinking of all the men hunting for him while he waits patiently in an abandoned room. Do they not know that he is the hunter?

It is the only decision one can make in this life: to be the hunter or the prey. The deer in Aislabie’s park know it, every fox in its den. Man alone has forgotten Nature’s greatest law.

Francis Ellory had been prey: on the boat to Virginia, in the tobacco fields. Forster chooses not to remember those first years. They were Ellory’s memories, not his – and Ellory died a long time ago. It had been the only way to survive. Once Forster was born beneath Ellory’s skin, nothing could hurt him, because Francis Forster feels nothing. There is only the hunt.

Aislabie had been his prey, and he had come so close to destroying him. Forster closes his eyes, imagining the final scene again, as he has always planned it. Elizabeth, lying dead upon the coffin lawn, surrounded by flaming torches. Transformed from a weak, pathetic woman into a Goddess of Revenge. A death of such magnificent horror, she would be remembered for ever. And the Right Honourable John Aislabie, weeping insensibly over her dead body, sent mad with grief at losing his daughter not once, but twice. Tortured for the rest of his days.

It had been fascinating, watching Aislabie these past few weeks, trapped in his snare. How weak he was, how willing to be deceived. How desperate to protect his beloved daughter. Forster could have spent weeks tormenting him. More threats, more butchery. And a fire. Yes, I would have razed this house to the ground, before the end.

There would have been time enough to find the ledger, too – and to choose his next victim. A long list of the guilty, each one deserving punishment. He could have hunted them all, one after the other.

Hawkins had taken that pleasure from him.

Rage burns in Forster’s chest, a pain he had vowed never to feel again. But all is well, all is well – he knows how to rid himself of it.

He has only to wait until nightfall.

A muffled sound brings him back to the room. He turns away from the window to consider the man gagged and bound upon the bed, his face battered and swollen.

‘My dear sir.’ He crouches in front of his prisoner. ‘I am so grateful to you for bringing me here in secret. Your concern for Mrs Fairwood does you credit.’

Beneath his gag, Bagby begins to weep.

Forster frowns, considering. A hunter does not kill indiscriminately. There must always be a purpose to any death. But he made a mistake leaving the boy to die by the riverbank. Even now, he cannot say what stayed his hand. Some remnant of Ellory’s weakness, no doubt. And something in the boy’s black eyes: watchful and clear, even at the end. Forster had admired that.

He can’t afford another mistake.

He pulls a dustsheet from a dressing table and lays it out on the floor. Then he sits down on the bed, shoulder to shoulder with his prisoner. ‘This is all Thomas Hawkins’ fault. Maddening fellow. I promise you this, Mr Bagby – he will suffer for it.’ He reaches in his coat, and takes out a knife. ‘I do hope that is a comfort to you.’

He wraps the body in the dustsheet, just as he had wrapped the doe with its fawn. It feels no different. In truth, he had felt more pity for the fawn.

He pulls out his watch. A few more hours yet. A shame there’s no way to fetch something from the kitchens. At least he’d breakfasted well.

He lifts a chair and places it by the window, and settles down to wait.

Chapter Twenty-five

I had reached the outskirts of Ripon when I spied Metcalfe on the road ahead. He was travelling with one of his father’s servants. Both wore pistols.

I was relieved to see him safe, and told him so. ‘Forster has escaped. Your uncle is searching the estate.’

‘I have a good description of his man.’

‘A wasted journey, I’m afraid. We know it was Bagby.’

Metcalfe frowned, then winced. His top lip was cut and swollen from where I had punched him. ‘Is that certain?’

‘He ran off to Fountains Hall this morning to warn Forster. Now they are both disappeared.’?We turned the horses about

and headed for Studley. ‘Does that not match your information?’

Metcalfe gestured for his companion to ride alongside us. ‘This is Malone, my father’s gamekeeper.’

‘Fellow rode over two days ago,’ Malone said. He was an Irishman of about five and thirty, with colouring close to my own: pale skin, dark brows, and keen blue eyes. ‘Carried a note with him, looked enough like Mr Robinson’s hand to pass.’

‘Blotchy,’ Metcalfe explained.

‘I’m awful sorry, sir. I should’ve studied it with more attention.’

‘Oh no, it is quite the sort of demented request I would make. You can’t blame yourself, Malone. I’m an erratic wretch.’

Malone threw him a kind smile. ‘There’s no shame in a pinch of spontaneity, sir.’

‘Those poor stags,’ Metcalfe said, shaking his head. ‘Butchered in such a dreadful fashion – and to what end?’

‘I think Forster knew you suspected him,’ I said. Metcalfe had not – to be fair – been entirely subtle about it. Forster’s response had been cunning. Not only had the three stags frightened Metcalfe, they also led back to Baldersby, should anyone think to ask.

‘Poor creatures,’ Metcalfe said. ‘Such a dreadful waste.’

‘Oh! Did the meat spoil?’ Malone asked.

‘Mrs Mason has them hanging up somewhere,’ I said.

‘Well, then, no waste at all sir!’ Malone observed cheerfully to Metcalfe.

I asked him to describe the man who had brought the note.

‘He was a handsome devil, that’s for sure. Tall as you are, sir, with powerful arms and shoulders. Hard muscles, like a workhorse. I joked with him about it – said he could carry two of those stags across his back at a time.’

I glanced at Metcalfe. ‘That doesn’t sound like Bagby.’

‘Martin Bagby?’ Malone laughed so hard it turned into a coughing fit. ‘No – this was a young fellow, and strong-looking. An estate man, I’d say. Burned brown from the sun.’

‘Was there dust upon his clothes? More than usual?’ I asked, my heart sinking.

Malone thought for a moment. ‘D’you know, I believe there was. And all under his nails.’

‘Quarry dust,’ Metcalfe said, catching my eye. ‘One of Simpson’s men?’

‘Maybe.’ I rode on in silence. I knew exactly who it was.

John Simpson was prowling about the foundations, watching his men with a narrow eye. From a distance, he always seemed an angry and intemperate master. Now that I ventured closer to the works, I realised that his bellowing was taken with good humour by his men, or at least with a patient roll of the eyes. He pulled a chisel from a mason’s hand and worked the stone himself with an astonishing speed and skill. He was so engrossed in his work that he didn’t notice me until I stood alongside him.

He gave a start, then removed his hat and gave a shallow bow.

‘I’m after one of your men. Thomas Wattson.’

‘Sent him home. Found him sobbing to himself in a corner. No use to me in that state. Jack was fond of the lad,’ he added, more kindly.

‘Where does he live?’

Simpson rubbed his mouth. ‘Over near Kirkby Malzeard, I think. Bill!’ he shouted out to an older man, tipping stones from a wheelbarrow. ‘Where does young Wattson live?’

He scratched his grey stubble. ‘Grewelthorpe?’

‘Grantley, isn’t it?’ someone else shouted, while another man called out, ‘Inglethorpe.’

Simpson shrugged. ‘What do you want him for?’

‘Oh, I only wanted to thank him for finding Master Fleet this morning.’

‘You can thank him with a few coins. God knows when his lordship’ll pay me, now Jack’s gone.’

I asked him to send Wattson to me if he should see him – hoping the money might entice him. There was only the vaguest chance I would find him if he did not wish to be discovered – he had given at least three different addresses to his fellow journeymen, and he knew the area far better than I. Most likely he was with Forster – in which case the search party would find him. For now, let him think he was not discovered.

It made me angry, thinking how he’d deceived us. He must have known all along where Sam lay. Had he expected to find a corpse by the riverbank? And what of Jack Sneaton, the man he claimed to admire and respect? The man who’d been teaching him his numbers, helping him to improve himself? What a wicked betrayal.

I was about to take my leave of Simpson when I remembered something I had wanted to ask him. It was of no great matter now, but I was curious.

‘Mr Simpson – do you remember your argument with Mr Sneaton? Two days ago, I think it was. When your man broke his leg. You mentioned something about the fire on Red Lion Square.’

Simpson pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his sweating face. ‘No business of yours.’

I stared him down.

‘Fuck,’ he grumbled, and walked off, away from the building works and down towards the beech tree. He picked up a bottle along the way.

We stood beneath the shade of the tree. The drinking trough had been drained of the bloodied water, but the deer still kept away. I thought of Forster, carrying Sneaton’s body out here in the dark. Had Sneaton died in his cottage, or had Forster drowned him in the water trough? Either way, it had been a horrible death.

‘Might I trouble you for a drink?’ I asked Simpson.

He looked dismayed – as all drunks do when asked to share – but handed over the stone bottle. God knows what it was: some sort of perilous cider, I think. Drinking it was possibly the most dangerous thing I’d done since arriving in Yorkshire, but I took a second swig, nonetheless. It had been a long day. I coughed my appreciation, and returned it to him.

‘I promised Jack I’d never tell no one about this,’ Simpson said, when I prodded him for his story. ‘He only told me because he was drunk. He was ashamed, you see – not that he had need to be.’

‘What happened?’

‘You know half the story. How he ran into a burning building, and saved young Master William.’ He took a long swig of scrumpy, and wiped his mouth. ‘It were a terrible thing, the way he described it. He had to fight his way up through all the flames and the smoke. Beams collapsing all about him. Staircase burning out beneath him. But he found them both, up on the second floor. William and Lizzie.’ He took another swig. ‘They were trapped in different rooms. He only had time to save one and live himself. Had to make a choice between them. Must have been seconds, but he said it felt like the whole world stopped. As if God was watching him, he said – watching to see what he would do. He saved the boy. Maybe because the other two girls were safe. Maybe because William was just a baby. Ach!’ Simpson waved away the reasons. ‘Maybe there was no thought to it, only what he made up to explain it all later. Do you know what I think? I reckon he would have gone back in again and tried to save her. Jack was strong like that. But he fell – and then it were too late.’

That’s how Sneaton had known Mrs Fairwood was a fraud. He’d been inside that burning house, and he’d made his choice. ‘He was a brave man.’

‘Brave as a fucking lion. He had nightmares about it for the rest of his life. Everyone called him a hero, but he never thought that. His leg, his scars, the pain – he saw it all as punishment. Well, he’s at peace now, God rest his soul.’

We walked back to the stables. The sun was setting, and members of the search party were riding back across the park. No sign of Forster, devil take him.

‘Jack were sweet on that girl, you know,’ Simpson said, as we parted. ‘The one that started the fire.’

‘Molly Gaining?’

‘He’d been saving up enough so he could ask for her hand. That’s why he never married. She broke his heart.’

I needed warmth and comfort after that tragic story. I trudged up the stairs to our chambers and found Kitty there, waiting for me.

‘Sam woke,’ she said, rushing over to hug me. ‘I told him you would be back soon, and he smiled. He understood me, Tom.’

I hugged her back. ‘That’s good news.’ The first of the day.

‘Have they not found Forster?’

‘Not yet. And I don’t suppose they will, now the light is fading. Kitty: we must be careful.’ I took out Forster’s journal, and showed her the message he had left me.

‘He’s turned mad,’ she whispered.

‘I ruined his great design. He’s been building this grand edifice of revenge for months, now I arrive and tear it down in three days. He’ll kill me if he has the chance.’

‘We should leave, Tom. It’s not safe.’ She reached for my hand, frowning at my grazed knuckles.

I glanced at the bed. ‘As soon as Sam is fit to travel.’

‘That could be days! We could stand a guard about him until he recovers. Forster doesn’t care about Sam any more. It’s you he hates.’ She pressed her palms together. ‘Please, Tom. Let’s find a passage to Holland or France, spend the summer somewhere warm. We can send for Sam when he is recovered, if you wish. Then once Forster is caught and hanged, we can go home.’

Kitty knew how to fight, better than most. But she also knew when to run. And she was right: Forster aimed all his hatred at me now – not Sam. I leaned down and kissed her. ‘We’ll leave tomorrow.’

‘Oh!’ she cried, and flung her arms about me.

There was a knock at the door. It was one of the footmen, bringing the bottle of claret I’d ordered from the kitchen. And the spare I’d requested, just in case. Mrs Mason had sent up a large plate of muffins, with butter and damson jam.

‘Oh bless you, I am almost collapsed with hunger,’ Kitty said, taking the tray and settling it on the dressing table. ‘I’ve never had wine and muffins together before.’

‘I could bring you some tea,’ the footman offered.

‘No!’?We both answered in unison.

I asked him to bring supper to our room at nine, along with some broth in case Sam woke up. I couldn’t stomach a formal meal with the Aislabies after such a bleak day, and I doubted they would wish to sit stiff-backed in the dining room either.

Kitty opened the window, and we sat on the window seat eating muffins as the light faded to dusk. I told her about Thomas Wattson.

‘No!’ she cried, dismayed. ‘I cannot believe it.’

‘Why, because he named flowers for you?’

She rested her chin on her knees. ‘He seemed so sorry about Mr Sneaton, and Sam, too.’

‘Guilt, I suppose.’

‘But why on earth would he help Francis Forster? Was he forced to, do you think?’

‘Perhaps. Forster could have killed Sneaton on his own. Wattson was on patrol last night – if he’d stepped away for too long, he would have been missed. And he was certainly angry with Forster this morning.’

‘So perhaps he helped with the notes, and the deer, but not the murder. Or did Bagby help him?’ She crinkled her brow, confused.

‘I don’t think Bagby knew what Forster was doing. I think he saw us dragging Mrs Fairwood to the library and went to find a gentleman who would speak for her. Bagby doesn’t trust me. He thinks I’m a dangerous influence on Lady Judith.’

‘You mean he thinks you’re fucking her?’

‘Well, yes. For some unfathomable reason.’

Kitty snorted into her wine glass. ‘So where is Bagby?’ And then her smile faded. Because really, there were only two answers to that question. Either he had realised his mistake, and run away… Or he was dead.

We sat in silence as the sky turned a deep blue. The day was ended, and Forster was not found. I stoked the fire, studying the painting of Fountains Abbey that hung above the hearth. If I had set off sooner, I might have caught him there, placing his journal on the tombstone.

I crossed the room to sit with Sam. Could I really abandon him here tomorrow? I plumped his pillow, and saw that it was spotted with blood from the wound to his skull, seeping through his bandage. What if the wound festered? He could succumb to some putrid fever while Kitty and I were on the boat to France, all on his own with no family to care for him.

‘Tom?’ She had been watching me.

‘We can’t leave him, Kitty. I’m sorry. I know what I said before… we just can’t.’

She pulled off my wig, and kissed the top of my head. She had always known, in her heart. I could never abandon Sam.

He stirred beneath the blankets, and his eyelids fluttered open.

I leaned forward, eagerly. ‘Sam. Sam. It’s me.’

An impatient look came into his eye. Evidently.

‘Was it Forster who attacked you?’

His breathing turned jagged.

‘We’ll find him, don’t worry. Did Wattson help him?’

‘Yes.’ Breathed out in a whisper. He winced, and closed his eyes.

We talked to him for a while, telling him that he was safe and that we would take care of him. It was hard to know what he heard, and he soon drifted back into sleep. But seeing him with his eyes open, and able to understand me, gave me hope that he would recover.

The footman brought supper at nine, as promised. There was no fresh news of Forster or Bagby, and the final remnants of the search party had returned at last light. The house would be locked up soon, and men put at every door. There was nothing more to be done tonight.

So we ate supper and finished the last of the wine, speaking softly so as not to wake Sam. Then Kitty slipped a hand into the band of my breeches, and pulled me into the cupboard room, and on to the bed. I took off her gown, and she shivered in the cool air until I covered her, and the heat rose between us. We pushed away the death and horror of the day and lost ourselves in a narrow room, with one candle burning by the bed.

‘Tom, you are taking up the whole mattress, you great oaf.’

I propped myself on my elbow, and traced a familiar path of freckles down her porcelain white skin. She was naked, save for the poesy ring she always wore about her neck, and the diamond-studded ring on her finger. She had shifted it to her left hand.

‘Mrs Hawkins,’ I said.

She yawned, and said nothing.

I lit a pipe and we smoked it together. I told her what Simpson had said about the night of the fire, and how Sneaton had been in love with Molly Gaining.

‘What a shame. Just think: if he’d said something, she might never have started the fire.’

‘He must have been too shy.’

‘I suppose. But to live the rest of his life all alone… it seems such a waste.’

I didn’t see it that way. Sneaton had lived alone, but people had loved and admired him, and mourned his death. That, surely, was the sign of a life lived well.

The bed was too narrow to lie upon together for very long. So we dressed and looked in on Sam. Kitty found Forster’s sketchbook lying on the table and flicked through it, gasping with revulsion when she reached the self-portrait. ‘Look how he has drawn his teeth,’ she said, holding it up.

I frowned at the image, the black and bloody sockets and blade-sharp cheekbones. His teeth ended in sharp points, like a wolf’s. I took the journal from her and threw it on the fire. Bright flames curled about the pages, destroying those terrible images. Elizabeth Fairwood dead upon the coffin lawn. Sneaton’s corpse floating in the water trough, surrounded by pages from the ledger.

Paper burned by fire, paper ruined by water. I had pulled the ledger from the water trough and it had disintegrated in my hands. The names of the guilty lost for ever.

And as I thought of it now, I wondered…

‘Kitty. Why would Forster destroy the ledger?’

She gasped, understanding at once. ‘He wouldn’t.’

I’d seen the pages floating on the water, and thought of them as a flourish – and another act of revenge. With the ledger destroyed, Aislabie could no longer use it to blackmail his way back into power. But Forster had been desperate to find the ledger, for the list of names it contained.

‘He must still have it,’ Kitty said. ‘Unless…’ Her eyes lit up.

Unless Sneaton had refused to hand it over. I grinned. Of course he’d refused. The book was still hidden somewhere. If I could find it, I might still free myself from the queen’s service. Yes – I would have to search one of the largest estates in Europe. Yes, night had fallen. And yes, damn it, there was a distinct chance that Forster was still out there and would murder me while I was poking about the bushes. But what is life, without the odd gamble?

I kicked the wall. Even I could see it was impossible. Sneaton could have buried the ledger anywhere. I could search for years and never find it.

‘Never mind,’ Kitty said, pouring me a glass of wine. ‘At least Mr Aislabie thinks it is destroyed. That should satisfy the queen.’

‘Hmm.’ I thought of what Sneaton had promised the day before: that the queen would never get her claws on the ledger. True enough…

I clapped my hands to my head, and laughed at a joke made by a dead man.

The queen’s claws.

The ledger was buried with the sphinx.

‘It’s too dangerous,’ Kitty said. ‘You can’t wander about the estate alone at night, Tom!’

I buttoned my waistcoat. ‘If I wait until morning there will be a hundred men out in the gardens. I can hardly dig the damned thing up in front of them. I haveto go tonight.’

‘No, you don’t! For God’s sake, wait a few days. Why must you be so impatient? It’s perfectly safe where it is.’

‘We need it now, Kitty. Tonight. What if Sam rallies tomorrow? We must be ready to leave at once.’

‘Tom, you can’t go out alone, you can’t. Francis Forster is waiting for you in the woods. He’ll kill you.’

‘Aislabie’s men spent half the day searching the estate. I doubt he’s within five miles of Studley. And he won’t expect me to be wandering about in the dark.’

‘No, because only a screaming lunatic would do something so stupid.’

I put my hands on her shoulders and kissed her forehead. ‘Enough.’ I had to go, and she knew it.

‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’ She pulled her boots out from a corner. ‘We’ll go together.’

‘We can’t. You need to stay with Sam.’

‘Ugh!??’ She stamped her booted foot, quite hard. ‘Why don’t you stay with him? And I’ll go down to the river, as it’s so perfectly safe. I shall take a basket of cakes and drink tea by the cascade.’

We both laughed. ‘At least take Metcalfe with you,’ she said.

‘D’you know, that’s a capital idea. We’ll take a sphinx each.’

‘No. Stay together. One of you on lookout for Forster. Honestly – how much wine have you drunk?’ She clomped over, one boot on, one boot off, and kissed me. ‘Oh, go, go – then you will be back the sooner. I shall fret horribly until you return.’

Metcalfe was in a clean silk nightgown, a crisp white cap on his head. He had been clearing up his room: the window stood open to freshen the air, and the piles of dirty clothes had been sent to the laundry. He drew in his brows as I explained about the ledger and the sphinx.

‘Should we not wait a few days?’

‘Sneaton must have left instructions for your uncle somewhere. It won’t be long before he finds them.’

Metcalfe grunted, acknowledging the truth of it. ‘Is it safe, do you think – to be gallivanting about the estate at night?’

‘Probably not.’

He rubbed his clean-shaven jaw. ‘Let me find my boots…’

I’d lied to Kitty, up in our chamber. I could have asked one of the servants to stand guard over Sam, while we headed out across the park together. The truth was, I thought there was a strong chance that Forster was waiting for me out in the woods – and I hoped to lure him out. I am a restless soul, and I couldn’t bear the thought of sitting trapped indoors for days until Forster was found. Much better to confront him, tonight. I had a brace of pistols, a sword, and a dagger – and for all Forster’s strength and cunning, I was a foot taller than him and knew how to fight. Face to face, the odds were in my favour.

Metcalfe roused Malone, who had bedded down in a room above the stables. The horses shuffled and stamped as we lifted a couple of spades from the stalls. In the courtyard, everything was peaceful, the chickens locked up in their coop. Two of Aislabie’s men were patrolling the yard with dogs, lanterns swinging on long poles. They hurried towards us as we reached the yard door, which opened on to the woods beyond. It was locked. Metcalfe squeezed my shoulder, and put a finger to his lips.

‘Sirs!’ one of the guards called out. ‘The house is locked up for the night.’

Metcalfe drew himself up tall. ‘We are not chickens.’

The guard looked at his companion, then back at us, perplexed.

‘We are not chickens,’ Metcalfe repeated, more slowly. ‘We refuse to be cooped up all night.’

‘Mr Robinson, sir – it’s for your own safety.’

‘How dare you!’ Metcalfe puffed out his chest. ‘Am I to be cosseted and condescended to in such an ignominious fashion? This is not to be endured. Remember your station, you disobedient wretch.’

‘Mr Robinson, sir-’

‘Unlock this door at once.’

The guard did as he was told.

‘Malone. We’ll need those lanterns.’

Malone was carrying the spades. I took them from him, and he took the lanterns from the guards, who were not at all pleased.

‘Should we ask for the dogs?’ Metcalfe asked me, from the corner of his mouth.

‘Best not press our luck,’ I muttered.

We left the courtyard in a procession, Metcalfe leading the way with one lantern and Malone at my back with the other. We kept to the main avenues, our boots crunching on the gravel. Let Forster hear me, if he was hiding out there in the woods. Let him come. I was ready for him.

But he was not in the woods. And he was not waiting for me.

It was past midnight when we returned, jubilant with success. We had found the ledger in an iron strongbox, buried at the foot of the older sphinx. We had worked together under the stars like gravediggers, Metcalfe quoting Hamlet and Malone singing ballads.

I had hoped to encounter Forster on our way back – the three of us together could have caught him easily enough. But I was satisfied at least to hold the ledger in my hands. It felt damp, and the pages were a little foxed – but the writing was legible.

Metcalfe peered over my shoulder, tutting over the names. ‘Look at them all,’ he said. ‘Shameless villains. Tens of thousands of pounds. They robbed the nation dry. Can you imagine such a thing, Malone?’

‘D’you know, I think I can, sir.’

Malone went back to the stables, Metcalfe to his rooms, and I carried on up the stairs, holding my freedom in my hands. The true accounts of the South Sea Company. The bribes given, the free shares. My Lord this, my Lady that. Right Honourables and Most Reverends. Half the current government was implicated – along with the king himself.

The queen would do anything to keep this from the world. She could never blackmail us again.

‘Kitty!’ I called, throwing back the ruined door and holding up the ledger in triumph. ‘I have it!’

The room was empty, and very still.

Someone had thrown a white sheet over Sam’s face.

A chair had been knocked to the ground.

I strode to the cupboard-room door and peered into the gloom. ‘Kitty,’ I said. As if saying her name would conjure her to me. I stepped back into the chamber. It was not possible, none of this was possible. I had the ledger: we were free. I had won.

Where was she?

I lifted the chair by the hearth and my heart lurched. I heard myself say: No.

There was a trail of blood running across the floorboards. A bloody handprint on the wall.

I dropped to my knees, reaching a trembling hand to touch the blood on the floor. Bright red and wet. Gasping for breath, I wiped my hand against the chair to clean it. My head was pounding. I forced myself not to panic. It was only a small patch of blood. She was alive. She had to be.

I caught something glinting in the far corner by the window and crawled towards it. Kitty’s brooch-dagger. The blade was smeared with blood. She had fought him – of course she had. I shoved it in my coat pocket and staggered to the bed.

I stood over it for a moment, afraid of what I would find beneath the sheet. And then I cursed myself for a coward, and pulled it back with one swift movement.

Sam lay with his eyes closed, lips parted. White bandage wrapped over his black curls.

I crouched down and put a hand to his chest. He was warm. Thank God in Heaven, he was warm – and breathing.

‘Sam.’ I shook his shoulder. ‘Sam.’

He groaned, and opened his eyes.

‘Where is she?’

A tear slid from his eye.

A hollow feeling opened up inside me. I looked again about the room, and saw a piece of paper nailed to the painting of Fountains Abbey. I tore it free, my hand trembling. It was a sketch Sam had made of Kitty. She smiled out at me from the page, curls loose about her face. Beautiful.

Beneath it, Forster had left a message.

We are waiting for you, Mr Hawkins. Come alone.

Chapter Twenty-six

The abbey was black against the night sky. I held out my lantern, a golden light in the dark. The ruins were quiet now that the birds were gone. I could hear the River Skell somewhere to my left, and feel the west wind pulling at my coat. I groped my way over the broken walls, searching for the tombstones, where Forster had left his journal. He wasn’t there.

I turned about me in the silence. If I called out, there would be no hope of surprise. I moved the pole into my left hand, and drew my pistol. Nothing stirred. Where were the old ghosts tonight, the monks who had worshipped here for centuries? Fled into the stones, drifted away upon the wind. I was alone, with nothing to guide me but one candle, and a million stars high in the heavens.

I found myself in the cellarium, beneath its vaulted ceiling. The lantern cast great shadows over the brickwork. It was a long room, full of echoes, with any number of wide pillars to hide behind. I ventured slowly down its length, my feet scuffing against the stone. It felt as if I were walking down the throat of some great beast.

A noise behind me made me turn. ‘Who’s there?’ I hissed, circling blind. Something rustled, and then in one terrible motion, a thousand bodies rose up as one. Bats. I dropped to the ground as they rushed around me, squealing and flapping in a huge cloud. I covered my head with my hands, feeling the beat of their wings like soft breath on the air.

And then they were gone, leaving nothing but silence, and a faint, acrid scent. I rose to my feet, shaken. By some miracle, my lantern was intact. I picked it up and walked down through the nave, alone beneath the towering stones, the open sky.

The aisles were empty. Only the chapel remained unsearched, and the great tower looming up ahead. A perfect half-moon hung above it, silvering the stone.

It will be the tower. The highest point of the abbey. He will want the drama of it.

I stood in the transept, the heart of the old church. This was where the first stones had been laid, and men had worshipped for centuries. I groped for the cross that hung about my neck and sent a swift prayer to the heavens. Please God. Let her be alive.

The entrance to the tower stood to my left, black and silent. It must have been magnificent once. Now it was a hollow shell: no stained glass in the windows, no floors, no roof. I raised my lantern and stepped inside. Craning my neck, I glimpsed a flickering light near the top of the tower. There must be a platform running along that wall, though I couldn’t see it from the ground.

‘Hawkins.’ Forster’s voice drifted down. ‘Join us.’

Us. She lived.

In the far right corner of the tower stood a door, studded with iron. I wrenched it open and took the lantern from its pole, thrusting the light ahead of me up the winding stone steps. In my haste I had forgotten about Wattson until this moment. If he were here, if he were crouched waiting for me on the stairs above, I could do little to defend myself. But what choice did I have?

The staircase ran up the full height of the tower, the steps worn and crumbling. I had run from Studley House all the way to the abbey, and I was soon out of breath. I stopped upon the landing where the second floor had once stood, and which now opened upon a black void. This would have been the place for an ambush: Wattson could have grabbed me and shoved me over the edge before I could even fire my pistol. He was not here. I swallowed hard, gathering my strength, and hurried onwards.

After another fifty steps I reached a narrow wooden door. The light had come from this level. I was almost at the top of the tower, just below the belfry. I turned the ring handle and pushed open the door, shielding myself by the wall. No shots were fired; no one rushed through and kicked me down the stairs. I stepped out with my pistol raised.

I could see two figures huddled together in a dark corner, up ahead to my right. It was too dark to see their faces.

‘Forster!’ I yelled.

He didn’t reply. I held out the lantern to guide my way, then shrank back against the door frame.

There was no floor. All that remained was a wooden platform no more than a foot wide, running along the wall from this door to the opposite corner of the tower. There was no rail or rope at its edge, only a straight drop to the ground a hundred and fifty feet below.

Directly beyond the door lay a small stone landing, leading to the platform. I put one foot upon it, testing my weight. The stone was dry, but there were weeds and moss growing on the surface. I would need both hands for balance. I lowered the lantern and slipped my pistol back in its belt. Tore my wig and hat from my head and threw them back down the stairs. Then I lifted my back foot through the doorway and on to the landing.

This alone was terrifying. The tower was cathedral high, the wind roaring through the empty windows and flapping the edges of my coat.

I took my first step on to the narrow platform. The wooden board bowed and rocked, but held firm. I pressed my back against the wall and stretched out my arms, inching sideways like a crab. Even with my heels to the wall, my feet only just fitted upon the board.

As I drew closer to the belfry window I heard a slight scuffle and then a voice. ‘Tom!’

Kitty.

‘Tom, go back!’

There was another scuffle, then silence.

It was agony. We were no more than twenty feet apart, but even the slightest misstep could be fatal. The wooden platform rested on a series of stone brackets. If I balanced towards my toes, the board tipped dangerously towards the yawning dark. Twice I thought I would fall, only to slam back hard against the wall, fingers clawing at the stone. There was no time to think of attack or defence, only the next step, and the next.

I reached the belfry window, clinging to the nearest stone mullion with a desperate relief. The wind was wild and bitter up here, howling through the empty window.

‘No further,’ Forster commanded. I heard the shuffle of footsteps as they moved slowly towards me. Forster had left his own lantern in the far corner, but I could see the white sleeves of Kitty’s gown, and flashes of her skirts, and the darker shape of Forster behind her. They walked the platform head on: I could hear the wooden plank lifting and knocking against the stone brackets.

And then they were in front of me, with only the window between us. Kitty’s face, lit by starlight.

Forster had a pistol pressed to her temple. His left arm, free of its sling, was wrapped tightly about her waist. I could just make out the brand upon his thumb.

He grinned at me in mad triumph.

‘Are you hurt?’ I asked Kitty.

She shook her head, then winced. He must have stunned her with a sharp blow. It was the only way he could have brought her all this way without a fierce struggle.

‘There was blood.’

‘His,’ she spat. ‘I sliced him-’

Forster lowered his lips to Kitty’s ear, and bit down hard. She screamed in pain, trying to pull away. I took a step closer and he lifted his head, pressing the pistol harder into her skin. I could see blood trickling down her neck. Blood on his lips.

‘Animal!’

He wiped his mouth, and smiled at me, as if I had paid him a compliment. It was the strangest thing, to see the dull gentleman transformed before my eyes. The form was the same, and the features: but the spirit… my God. I understood now why he drew himself with vacant holes for eyes. His spirit was as black and desolate as the endless drop below us.

‘Throw your pistols over the edge,’ he said. ‘And your sword.’

I hesitated.

There was a sharp click as he cocked his pistol.

I pulled the weapons from my belt and tossed them away. Drew my sword and let it fall. They were no use to me here.

‘You wear a dagger,’ he said. ‘Take it out.’

I cursed silently, and eased it from my coat pocket. I had to fight the urge to run at him with it: he could fire his pistol before I’d taken a step. I held it up for a moment, then flung it away.

‘What happened to you, Forster?’

I was hoping to distract him – beyond that I had no plan. We were trapped together on the narrowest ledge: Kitty could not struggle free without falling, and I couldn’t reach her. But Forster had no desire to talk about his past.

‘They branded you, I see that. Stole the life you could have had. I know how that might feel. I was sentenced to death for murder-’

‘I don’t care!’ Forster screamed. ‘I don’t give a damn about you. I had a plan. A beautiful, wonderful plan. And you ruined it.’

‘Yes, I did. Me. So let her go.’

‘Oh, am I not playing fair?’ he mocked. ‘How rude of me.’

‘What is it that you want?’

He gripped Kitty’s waist tightly and whispered in her ear. ‘I could throw you from this ledge at any moment. Whenever I wish.’

‘Then I’ll pull you down with me, you fucking arsehole.’

He laughed. ‘I like your wife, Hawkins.’

‘What do you want?’

He licked his lips. ‘I want you to jump.’

My heart lurched.

‘No, not jump,’ he corrected himself. ‘I want you to step off the ledge, slowly, with your eyes open. Facing all of that.’ He tilted his chin towards the darkness beyond.

I gripped the window frame.

‘Would you do that?’ His voice had a hungry, urgent edge to it.

‘Of course not.’

‘Would you do it for her?’

I stared at him, understanding at last.

He grinned. ‘Would you die for your wife, Hawkins?’

I glanced up at the moon. One half black, the other half a blazing silver. I loosened my grip on the window.

‘Tom, no!’ Kitty hissed.

‘Let her go. Let her go and I’ll do it.’

Forster laughed again, high and wild. ‘There is no deal to be made, Mr Hawkins. You must do as I say. You must trust me. Walk off the platform now, and I will set her free. You have my word.’

‘Your word is worthless.’

‘So be it.’ He twisted on the board and it tilted, rocking them together towards the edge. Kitty screamed.

‘No! Wait!’

‘Tom, don’t!’ Kitty lifted her arm, trying to reach me.

‘Promise me you’ll let her go,’ I shouted at Forster. ‘Swear it – on your father’s soul.’

‘I swear.’

‘Tom don’t, don’t,’ Kitty sobbed.

I turned upon the ledge, facing the drop below. My heart was beating so hard I could hardly breathe and my legs were trembling. But I was ready. What else could I do? I took a half-step forward, my feet hanging over the edge. Don’t look down. Look straight out. Face Death and do not flinch.

Forster began to laugh. A high-pitched, gulping laugh, aimed up at the heavens. ‘You would do it!’ he marvelled. ‘Truly! You would throw yourself from a tower to save her. Without even knowing if I would keep my word. Oh, this is wondrous. Step back sir, step back!’

I didn’t understand my reprieve, but I was not about to argue with it. I flung myself back to the wall, fingers grasping the mullion again, my knees almost buckling.

‘You don’t understand revenge, do you Hawkins? A quick death, what is that? How could that ever satisfy me? I could have killed Aislabie the second I met him. Where would have been the pleasure in it? The justice? I spent seven years in hell because of him. He had to suffer, he owed me his suffering. That would have been fair, do you not see? Forster’s eyes were full with a wild, desperate longing. ‘Imagine the grief, the agony of losing his daughter for the second time. If he had seen her murdered, stretched out upon his coffin lawn. It would have destroyed him. You stole that from me!’ he screamed, spit flying from his mouth. ‘You stole my revenge! So now youwill suffer in his place. You will live, wishing you were dead. You will live, and your wife will die.’

And with that, he pushed Kitty a few inches in front of him, and fired his pistol at the back of her head.

The world stopped. I must have screamed, I suppose. I know that I reached out, and the platform knocked beneath my feet. There was a great, blinding flash, and smoke, and Kitty stood, eyes wide, illuminated in the flare.

I lived a thousand years in that moment, knowing I had lost her. I felt the grief well up inside me before she was even gone, anticipated the life I would live without her, bitter and grey.

And then, as the moment passed, I realised that a pistol did not flash that brightly, nor cause that much smoke – unless it had misfired.

That is the trouble with pistols. They are wayward, unreliable things.

Forster stumbled, blinded by the flash, snatching at Kitty’s arm for balance. She staggered backwards with him. In a quick, desperate move I grabbed the front of her gown with my left hand and pulled her into me, locking my right elbow around the stone mullion.

I looked down and saw that Forster had fallen half off the board, his legs dangling over the edge. As he tried to pull himself back up, it lifted and slammed back upon its bracket. Kitty called out in terror. If the board fell, we were lost: we could not cling to the window for ever.

‘Go!’ I yelled at Kitty. We had to get back to the tower door before he was on his feet. At least there we wouldn’t plummet to our deaths.

As Kitty tried to move, Forster reached out blindly and snatched a fistful of her gown, dragging her down. The extra weight wrenched my right arm, still wrapped about the mullion. He would pull us both down with him.

The platform was rocking violently beneath my feet. I put my lips to Kitty’s ear. ‘Dagger. Inside pocket.’

She groped in my coat and found her own dagger, tucked in the hidden pocket she had sewn for me herself, long months before. She pulled it free and plunged it into Forster’s hand where it gripped her gown, grinding the blade back and forth. There was a sickening sound as blade met bone. Forster screamed. Kitty lifted the knife and stabbed again, and again, hacking savagely at his fingers.

He let go.

And in that eternal instant before he fell I saw first astonishment and then rage, pure and terrible as fire.

His howls echoed from the tower walls.

And then, silence.

Afterwards

Chapter Twenty-seven

We limped down the tower steps without a word. When we reached the bottom Kitty sank to the ground, the horror only now catching up with her. I found Forster’s body amidst the rubble – a terrible, mangled, bloody sight. This was the death I had been prepared to accept for myself, only a few minutes before – the death Forster had planned for Kitty. This could have been her body lying broken on the ground. But we were breathing and he was not – and in that moment I felt blessed by the privilege of life.

I helped Kitty to her feet. She had a bump on the side of her head, and was grazed and bruised. The wound to her ear looked the most savage – the blood had poured down her neck and stained her gown. The cut would mend, but it would leave a scar, and it made me sick to think that Forster had left his mark upon her.

I found my sword and slotted it in my belt, tucked my dagger into my coat. My pistols were broken. I kicked them into a corner.

Fountains Hall was only a short walk away, but Kitty looked as though she might fold in upon herself. ‘Let me carry you.’

She shook her head, then gave a gasp of pain. When the spasm had subsided, she staggered over to Forster’s body and stared at it for a moment. Then she spat in his ruined face. ‘I can walk,’ she said. ‘I can walk.’

We headed down the middle of the nave towards the great west window. There we stopped and stared up at the heavens. It was long past midnight. I was – quite by accident – in church on a Sunday. It had been a while.

Kitty touched my hand. ‘You would have died for me.’ She gazed out through the window into the night beyond, to the glimmering stars and the crisp half-moon. ‘I suppose I shall have to marry you now.’

I put my hands in my breeches’ pockets. ‘Not sure I asked.’

She laughed, and linked her arm in mine. Murmured in my ear. ‘If you gamble away my fortune I will shove you off a ledge myself.’

She was jesting, naturally.

I think she was jesting.

‘A tragic accident,’ John Aislabie said.

‘Tragic,’ Mr Messenger echoed.

The two men were in agreement for once. The truth, were it widely known, would damage them both. Messenger had invited Forster to Fountains Hall, and Aislabie had given him the freedom of his estate. No one would blame them for what had happened, but no one would forget, either. Fountains Hall and Studley Royal would be for ever associated with an infamous killer.

‘A cruel fate for such a holy place,’ Messenger said.

‘Bad for land values,’ Aislabie concurred.

So the truth was replaced with a few pragmatic falsehoods. Aislabie announced that Mr Sneaton had fallen, dashed his head, and drowned. No talk of the bloodstains at his cottage, nor how he might have struggled his way through the park at night without his walking stick. As for the accusations surrounding Mr Forster, and the attendant search – this had all been an unfortunate misunderstanding. He must have slipped and fallen to his death while sketching the old belfry. He should never have ventured on to such a narrow platform – not with his arm in a sling.

I wasn’t convinced people would believe there had been two violent accidents within the space of one day, both of them suspicious. But Messenger was respected, and Aislabie was powerful. That same morning, the parson at Kirkby Malzeard and the Dean of Ripon cathedral were leading their congregations in prayers for the two unfortunate gentlemen who had died so tragically, God rest their souls.

I doubted – extremely – that Francis Forster’s soul would be making God’s acquaintance.

Martin Bagby was not discovered until the following evening, in an obscure corner of the east wing. His body had been wrapped in a dustsheet and shoved under a bed, with a horrible lack of dignity. The blood had pooled beneath him, staining the floorboards and the ceiling below.

It was too late by then to place the blame upon Forster, so to avoid uncomfortable questions, Mr Gatteker was persuaded to declare the death a self-murder. Aislabie arranged matters discreetly so that his ill-starred butler might have a Christian burial. A generous gesture, somewhat marred by his complaints about the ruined floorboards, and the cost and inconvenience of the necessary repairs.

But I have raced ahead of myself.

It was almost dawn by the time we left Fountains Hall. Kitty did not fancy jolting back to Studley in a carriage – she said the thought alone made her head throb twice as hard. So we walked instead, soaked by a sudden rain shower and protected by two of Aislabie’s men, who were by now most confused by all the rumours of murder, and accidents, and injuries. No doubt they suspected something closer to the truth than they were told, but they held their tongues – at least in front of us.

I had been almost dead upon my feet until now, but the pelting rain woke me up. By the time we arrived at Studley I was restored, though a glance at my reflection showed pale cheeks and red eyes, and the hollow stare of a man dragged back from the brink of Hell.

Up in our apartment we found Sam awake, drifting in and out of understanding. His face softened with relief when he saw us. Kitty was so tired that she could scarcely stand, so I helped her into the tiny bed next door, taking off her shoes and loosening her stays so she could free herself from her sodden clothes.

She slipped under the sheets. ‘What a night we’ve had,’ she yawned, understating events somewhat. I rolled the blanket up to her chin and kissed her forehead, marvelling at her resilience. She was already asleep.

Back in our chamber, I stoked the fire and laid my head against the wall, grateful for the heat from the chimney. Then I lifted down the painting of the abbey, tore it from its frame, and fed it to the flames.

I could not stop thinking of the moment on the platform, when I was preparing to jump. If I closed my eyes, the floor dropped away and I felt as if I were falling. A fresh scene for future nightmares. But there was a sense of relief too – of joy, almost.

Ever since my hanging I had felt a dull but constant sense of dread that by cheating Death, I had somehow summoned him to my side. If I’d made this dolorous observation to Kitty she would have said it was a natural reaction to being hanged and shoved in a coffin. But was it really so fanciful? Sam – for all his suspicion of metaphysics – had drawn a charcoal shadow about my shoulders.

As I gazed into the fire, I realised that this shadow had now dissolved away. I had offered up my life freely, and Death had not taken it.

The debt was paid. I was free.

‘She saved my life,’ Sam murmured from the bed, so softly I thought he was dreaming.

He meant Kitty, presumably.

‘Sheet.’

This was elliptical, even for him. Later, Kitty told me she had thrown the sheet over him when Forster burst through the door. Sam had lain still, pretending to be dead, while Forster and Kitty fought. He couldn’t help her. He couldn’t even cry out for help.

‘Forster’s dead,’ I told him. ‘He fell from the abbey tower.’

He grunted, pleased. ‘Wattson?’

‘He wasn’t there. But I know where to find him.’ I had puzzled it out on my walk from Fountains Hall, who Thomas Wattson really was, and where I would find him. ‘I’ll deal with him.’

‘Wait for me.’

I thought about this. Wattson didn’t know I had unmasked him, and if I spoke with Metcalfe no one else would, either. ‘As you wish. We’ll ride out together when you’re strong enough.’

He soon fell asleep again. I sat with him as the sun rose, listening to the crackle of the fire, and marvelling that we were all safe. A blackbird began to sing, sweet and clear in the morning air.

I rose, and stretched, and went to tell Mrs Fairwood that her brother was dead.

The next morning I found Lady Judith sitting alone at breakfast, wearing her distracting breeches. She had already taken a long ride through the estate and said she felt much the better for it.

‘How does your wife fare?’

‘Well, I think. She is dressing her hair. Your husband?’

She sighed. ‘He is in his study, dealing with correspondence. It is best he remains busy. He’ll recover, in time. We all will, I suppose.’ She glanced at Sneaton’s empty chair. ‘It will help when that wretched woman has left the county.’

I lowered my fork. ‘She’s still here?’

‘Not at Studley, by God! She stays at the Oak – won’t leave until her brother is buried. Can you believe that devil will lie buried in consecrated ground? I should not be surprised if the earth boils around his coffin in protest.’ She buttered a piece of toast. ‘Speaking of such grave matters… I spied a great mound of earth by the lake this morning.’

I coughed, and pretended to search for my pipe. ‘Indeed?’

‘Indeed. It looked as though someone had dug a hole, and then filled it in again.’

I fumbled for my pouch of tobacco. ‘How curious. By the lake, you say?’

‘Yes. Next to the sphinx. Next to the queen’s claws. Oh, do stop fiddling with your pipe, Mr Hawkins.’ She acted displeased, but there was a glint of humour in those wide blue eyes of hers. ‘I hear that you and my nephew set out for the gardens last night with a couple of shovels. Tell me, sir – if I searched your rooms, might I find a certain green ledger?’

‘Absolutely not!’ I cried. Not unless she reached up Kitty’s petticoat and found her underpocket.

Lady Judith gave me a sidelong look. ‘I don’t suppose my husband will ever return to office.’

‘He did blackmail the queen.’

‘In which case,’ she said, her eyes still fixed upon mine, ‘I suppose the ledger is of little value to him. And it would present no danger, either, as long as the contents remain secret.’

I inclined my head. I had already decided not to reveal the details of the ledger. Not to save Mr Aislabie’s reputation, not for all the world. But to stop a war – for this I would stay silent. While it was tempting to publish and see the government and the royal family destroyed by scandal, the attendant chaos would almost certainly tear the country apart. At the very least it would give France and the Stuarts the spur to attempt another invasion.

If Kitty had died at the abbey, I think I might have done it. In my grief, I would have let England bleed with me. Hundreds would have died, maybe thousands. We might have King James III upon the throne, instead of George II. And Forster – somewhere in the deepest furnace of hell – would have had the most spectacular revenge.

But Kitty lived, and kept the ledger safe. Strange to think that, for a few brief moments, I held the nation’s destiny in my hands. I still wonder, sometimes, whether I made the right decision.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Three days later, Francis Forster was buried in the graveyard at Kirkby Malzeard. The parson gave a short sermon, speaking of a young gentleman with a generous heart and prodigious talent, who would now fulfil his promise building palaces in Heaven. I closed my eyes and prayed instead for Jack Sneaton and Martin Bagby.

At the graveside, Mrs Fairwood sobbed with a desperate grief, drawing sympathetic glances from those who stood with her. There were rumours spreading about the neighbourhood that she and Mr Forster had been engaged to marry. Those who knew the truth gritted their teeth and said nothing. The world must think Forster had died through accident, and so his crimes were buried along with his body.

Lady Judith attended the funeral on behalf of the Aislabie family. She wore a gown of orange silk with a black quilted petticoat, and a straw hat trimmed with an orange ribbon. ‘Poor Mr Forster did so love his bright clothes,’ she said, when people commented upon her gay attire. ‘I thought I should honour him. Do not tell a soul,’ she murmured in my ear as we walked from the grave. ‘But I am dressed as the flames of Hell.’

I was helping her into the carriage when Mrs Fairwood rushed forward, holding a note in her grey-gloved hand. ‘Lady Judith,’ she cried, loud enough that others would hear. ‘I beg you would give this to your husband. Only to him. Please, madam.’

Lady Judith had already settled herself into the furthest corner of the carriage, but Mrs Fairwood had placed a foot upon the step, and half the neighbourhood was watching. With a great sigh, she leaned forward and took the note. Then she sat back, staring straight ahead.

I joined her in the carriage and we rode back towards Studley. The note lay upon her knee. ‘I should burn it,’ she said.

We rode for another mile.

‘Damn the woman,’ she muttered, and broke the seal.

We passed beneath a tunnel of trees, the air turning cold in the shade. As we burst back out into the glorious sunshine, she handed me the note.

Sir-

Your daughter lives. I shall wait for you at Midnight, at the banqueting house. Come alone and you may learn the Truth.

E.F.

Lady Judith had turned her back to me, her hand gripping the side of the carriage. I could tell from the set of her shoulders that she was crying silently. If she gave her husband the note he would have to meet with Mrs Fairwood, who would doubtless spin more of her insidious lies. But if Lady Judith said nothing, and it were true…

We returned to the house in silence. ‘Not a word, please sir,’ she said, as she stepped from the carriage. ‘I beg you. Not even to your wife.’

We spoke no more of it until that evening. We sat together at supper, Mr Aislabie at the other end of the table, trying his best to charm Kitty. There were grey shadows under his eyes, and he had the look of a man recovering from a fever. There were moments when his gaze would flicker to Kitty, and I knew he was thinking of Mrs Fairwood and the dream of his lost daughter. Moments too when the conversation turned to the estate, and although no one dared mention Sneaton, his spirit seemed to weigh upon the room. The meal was not finished when Aislabie made his apologies and left the table, complaining of a headache.

Lady Judith put a hand upon my arm as we left the dining room. She guided me to the snug withdrawing room next door. There were no candles lit, and I could only just glimpse her outline in the gloom. ‘I cannot tell him,’ she whispered. ‘I cannot let her torture him any more.’

I waited in silence, knowing what she would ask, and knowing that I would say yes.

The gardens were spectral and strange in the dark – a thousand shades of black. I could hear the roar of the cascade somewhere to my left, and the rustle of night animals in the bushes. The wind tore through the upper branches of the highest trees, and dense clouds covered the moon. I lifted my lantern and took the high path to the banqueting house.

She stood alone in the middle of the coffin lawn, the grey hood of her riding gown shielding her face, the cape rippling against the wind. Six flaming torches lit the scene, one placed at each corner of the coffin.

It was just as her brother had imagined it, except that she was alive and he was dead.

I stepped forward, holding the lantern high.

Her face fell as she saw me. ‘Where’s Aislabie?’

‘I have come on his behalf.’

She gave a hollow laugh. ‘And does he know this? No matter. I will not speak with you.’

‘Very well.’ I turned and began to walk away.

‘Murderer!’ she screamed at my back.

I swung the lantern about.

She flung back her hood, her dark hair loose about her face. ‘You killed my brother!’

I laughed, incredulous. ‘Your brother tried to kill my wife-’

‘Liar! You threw him from the tower. And now he is dead, he cannot defend himself against your foul slander. But I know. I know.’ She tore at her chest, as if she would rip out her heart.

I almost pitied her in that moment – the last surviving member of her family, alone and raging at the world. Defending, in death, the brother she had feared so much in life, and who caused her years of torment. But she had brought this final torture upon herself. ‘Two men are dead because you came to Studley. Will you not redeem yourself, madam? Will you not tell the truth at last?’

She threw me a mock-innocent look. ‘But Mr Sneaton fell. Everyone says so. And poor Mr Bagby killed himself.’

It began to rain, softly.

‘Elizabeth Aislabie. Is she alive?’ I snapped.

She laughed again, then glanced at the nearest torch, the flame pulling and dancing in the wind. She took a piece of paper from her pocket and touched it to the flame. It caught light at once, turning her face orange in the glow. ‘That was Molly Gaining’s true confession. She gave it to Francis the night before she died. I would have given it to Aislabie, if he’d come as I asked.’

I watched the last fragments burn, orange embers turning to grey ash. Some floated to the ground, while others spun high into the air, caught in the wind. Was it real? Or another counterfeit?

She brushed the soot from her fingers. ‘It was such a tender note. Elizabeth has grown into a fine young woman, with two children of her own. Was it a boy and a girl? Two boys?’ She gave a little shrug. ‘I can’t quite recall.’

The rain fell harder, heavy drops hitting the dry grass between us. ‘So she lives in one of the colonies. You must remember where.’

‘I’m afraid those details weren’t in the letter. Francis knew them. Where she lived, her new name. Now, he did mention that to me, once… Clara, Catherine?’ She gave a sly smile.

‘She will come forward herself, no doubt.’

‘Oh, the girl knows nothing of her true heritage. And even if she did…’ Her laugh sent a shiver through me. ‘Do you think Mr Aislabie would believe her, without proof? After he believed in me? Imagine what a cruel fate that would be – if he rejected his real daughter.’

‘I think you know a good deal about cruelty, madam. If any of this is true, you have separated a father and daughter for ever. May God judge you upon it.’ I turned to leave.

‘I shall write to him!’ she called after me. ‘You think to protect him, but I shall write to him again. I shall keep writing, and one day, one of my letters will reach him. And he will always wonder, for the rest of his life. It will torment him. It will kill him.’

I turned back to face her. The torches were blowing out in the wind and the rain, flames sizzling as they spluttered and died. Her wet hair clung to her face, but she kept her hood down. ‘You will not write to him,’ I said.

She drew back a pace. ‘I have a dagger,’ she warned.

I smiled at her. ‘I am not Sam’s guardian. He has a father: the captain of a gang of thieves.’ I folded my arms. ‘Someone hurt his wife, once. Many years ago. A gentleman, and a brothel keeper. He bound them together, back to back. And then he set them on fire.’ I paused. ‘Imagine if he found out that his only son nearly died – because of you.’

Her eyelids fluttered. ‘You… you would not.’

I stared at her through the rain.

She shivered, pulling her drenched cloak about her shoulders. The last of the torches fizzled out, leaving only my lantern alight.

‘Go home, Mrs Fairwood,’ I said.

Chapter Twenty-nine

It was another week before Sam was well enough to ride out to Kirkby moors. In all this time, Thomas Wattson had not once come to work on the stables. Simpson said he’d given him up as a lost cause. ‘Shame. Worked hard, that one. And he had a talent with a chisel. Worth ten of these bloody wastrels.’ His men exchanged amused, unspoken thoughts about this, over his head. Simpson was the sort of master who never praised a man until he was out of hearing, or dead.

As Sam recovered, Kitty and I watched for signs of any permanent damage to his mind or his body. At the very least, I expected him to be more cautious, and less given to jumping out of windows. Whether this was the case was hard to tell, as he was not yet strong enough to leap about in his usual way. A direct enquiry about his health was rewarded with a shrug, or – if he were feeling voluble – an irritable grunt.

Kitty would have joined us on our visit to the moors, but she had already promised to take a ride about the estate with Lady Judith. It transpired that Mrs Aislabie had several pairs of riding breeches for ladies,as she termed them. An etiquette had formed around these garments, in consultation with Mr Aislabie: they were not to be worn about the house, and were designed solely for the benefit of touring the estate to some specific purpose. Lady Judith had become expert at finding a new specific purpose each morning just after breakfast, and had given Kitty two pairs of breeches as a gift, not that she could ever wear them in public without being arrested as some sort of hermaphroditic invert.

So I rode out with Sam. I need not trouble you with our conversation, as there was none. I was content to let Athena set the pace, and as we did not encounter any burst deer guts, or murderous architects, we muddled along very well. I patted her flank. ‘I shall miss you, when I go home.’

Athena pricked up her ears, and gave a soft snort.

‘D’you see that, Sam?’ I said. ‘Conversation.’

Sam curved his lips. We continued on in silence, until we reached the Gills’ cottage.

‘Remember who you are.’ That had been Sneaton’s warning to Wattson, when he had dared to ask about Simpson’s bill. I’d assumed Sneaton was reminding Wattson of his lowly position as a journeyman, but the warning had been more precise than that. Remember who you are, Thomas Gill. Annie Gill’s boy.

Sneaton had told me the Gills had nine children. I’d counted eight when I’d visited the cottage. Of course the ninth might have been anywhere, and there had been no reason to think he had been sitting at the table, dangling his baby sister on his knee. Should I have noticed how easy she seemed with him? She’d giggled with joy when he bounced her up and down, and screamed when he set her on the floor.

I suppose I should at least have been suspicious when he turned his horse about and rode back to the cottage, presumably to give a warmer farewell to his family. He’d claimed that little Janey had stolen the coins from his pocket, but he had not been paid a farthing since Christmas. And even if there had been a single coin left to steal, would he have been so easy about its theft?

Once I had begun to consider the idea, other thoughts struck me. How he had volunteered to ride out with us, and had seemed so pleased by the journey. How he shared Annie Gill’s high cheekbones, and her tall frame. How he’d known about the poachers’ track beneath Gillet Hill, where we had found Sam. Not that the Gills were poachers, no indeed.

The dogs began barking before we saw the cottage. ‘It’s hidden in that copse,’ I said, pointing towards a cluster of oaks and elms ahead. ‘Won’t see it until we’re hard upon it.’

Sam snuffed in approval. His father’s den was buried deep in a maze of streets, surrounded by a square of taller houses. No one reached it without being seen by at least a half-dozen of Fleet’s men.

By the time we entered the copse, three of the younger Gills had climbed into the branches. They whispered over our heads as we passed beneath them. The oldest one – a boy of about nine or ten – made a hissing sound between his teeth. Sam twisted in his saddle, and with impressive aim threw a stone through the branches, hitting the boy squarely on his forehead. He gave a yelp, then began to cry.

‘Sam!??’

‘Lesson.’ He lifted his voice, so the boy could hear. ‘You going to hiss, keep out of range.’

‘They’re only children, Sam.’

He gave me his How have you survived this long? look, and slid from his saddle.

Annie Gill stood in the doorway, pinning up her grey hair in honour of our arrival. Little Janey clung to her skirts, sucking her thumb. ‘Gentlemen,’ Annie said, warily, as we approached.

‘Mistress Gill. I’m here to speak with your son Thomas.’

She opened her mouth to protest, then thought better of it. ‘He’s not here.’

‘Then fetch him, please. We’ll wait.’ I put my hand lightly upon the hilt of my sword.

She drew herself up tall. ‘I’m not afraid of you, sir.’

‘Then you’ll see no harm in sending for him, will you?’

The cottage was quieter today: the baby was fast asleep, and the rest of the Gills were outside somewhere, including Jeb. We sat at the rough table to wait. Janey toddled up to Sam and gazed at him with the unconditional adoration tiny children give to older ones. She raised up her arms. ‘Lift.’

Sam pulled her on to his lap, so that she was facing him. ‘My name’s Sam,’ he said, bumping her on his knees with each word. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Janey.’

‘How many sisters you got, Janey? Can you count them?’

‘Three.’

‘Only three?’ Sam held out his hand, stretched his fingers wide. ‘I got five. One, two, three, four five.’ He counted off each finger in turn, and tapped his thumb to her nose for the fifth.

Janey giggled.

‘I’ve a sister your age. She’s called Bea.’

‘Bea!’ Janey yelled at the top of her lungs, then started buzzing.

The two of them chattered away happily, while I watched in astonishment. By the time Wattson had arrived (for that is how I still thought of him), Sam was tilting his head forward so that Janey could poke her finger into his curls. Wattson frowned, and plucked her from Sam’s lap. After much wailing, she was persuaded to toddle outside and find her siblings.

Wattson joined us at the table while his mother sewed by the fire, listening to every word.

‘Glad to see you well, Master Fleet,’ Wattson said, gruffly.

‘No thanks to you,’ I said.

He rubbed his thumb across his palm. At least he had the decency to look ashamed.

‘Do you think he had a choice?’ Annie said, without looking up from her stitching. ‘It’s not his fault.’

‘Yes it is, Mother,’ Wattson muttered.

Annie didn’t hear him. ‘If you’re looking to blame someone, start with John Aislabie. Painting us all as thieves and ruining our name. Never trust a Gill. How was Thom supposed to find honest work?’

‘So you changed your name.’

‘Didn’t want to,’ Wattson said. ‘But all the best work’s up at Studley. Mr Sneaton said I could work on the stables if I took a different name. Said a man should be judged by what he does, not who he is.’ He looked away.

‘How did Forster find out?’

‘That devil!’ Annie stabbed her needle into the cloth. ‘May he burn in hell for ever.’

‘There’s a few fellows that know I’m a Gill,’ Wattson said. ‘Them that grew up hereabouts. And there’s a girl, works up at Fountains Hall. We were close, for a time.’

Annie snorted something under her breath.

‘Forster threatened to reveal who you were.’

Wattson nodded. ‘I would have been thrown off the estate on the spot. But it weren’t just that-’

‘And he’s still owed his last quarter pay,’ Annie said loudly, trying to cover his words. ‘Wouldn’t have seen a farthing.’

‘Mother-’

‘No more, love,’ she warned. ‘It’s not your fault-’

‘Will you rest?’ His voice boomed through the cramped cottage. ‘It’s my story and I shall tell it true – here if nowhere else.’ He glanced at Sam. ‘I owe him that.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I wrote the letters.’

Even Sam was surprised by this. ‘First two?’

‘I was angry. Kirkby moor has been common land since…’ he gestured helplessly.

‘Since God created it,’ Annie finished.

‘All Mr Aislabie does is ride about, pretending he’s king of the bloody place. It’s not right. He’s made poachers of us folk for doing what our families have done for hundreds of years. I shouldn’t have made all them threats, but I wanted him to take us seriously…’

‘Well.’ I pulled out my pipe and tobacco. ‘He certainly did that.’

‘They was good threats,’ Sam nodded approvingly.

I lit my pipe. ‘And Forster found out? How? The girl at Fountains, again?’ Heaven save us from vengeful lovers.

He stared at his scarred stonemason’s hands. ‘We were set to marry. But when I told her I was a Gill she said she weren’t marrying into a den of thieves.’

‘I shall have words with Jenny Flynn, the next time we meet,’ Annie promised. ‘More than words.’

That sounded fair to me, though Wattson looked pained about it. Still in love with her, poor devil. ‘Forster came up to me one morning, out by Mr Sneaton’s cottage, said his horse were lame and would I help him. I’d seen him about the estate so I thought nothing of it. We went into the woods and he drew his pistol, aimed it square at my chest. He said he knew I were a Gill, and that I wrote the letters. And if I didn’t do what he asked, he’d see me punished for it.’

‘Worse than that,’ Annie said. She rose and joined us at the table. ‘Tell them the rest, love.’

He curled his fists at the memory. ‘He thought I was like him, that I was after revenge. But all I wanted was for Mr Aislabie to listen. I said I wouldn’t help him. And he says, That’s your choice, Gill. Then he says: Your parents must have known – I’ll see them thrown in gaol for it. And how will your brothers and sisters survive then? They’ll starve to death if they don’t sell themselves, won’t they? He said he’d make sure Jenny was punished too, for not coming forward about the letters. She could be transported for it, he said. Then he told me what they did to young maids on the boats. Boys too…’ He shuddered. ‘If it were just me, I would have stood my ground. But he would have ripped this family apart, without a thought.’

Worse than that, I thought. He would have enjoyed it.

‘It don’t make it right, what I did. I know that. But he didn’t ask for much, not at first. Just to keep an eye on Mrs Fairwood and let him know when she left the house. He liked her to know he was watching her. And I left the sheep’s heart, with the note. I never thought…’

‘And the deer, with its fawn?’

He sank his head into his hands. ‘I don’t want to think of it. Makes me sick.’

‘Forster killed them, I suppose? And the stags?’

Wattson groaned, without dropping his hands. ‘He gave them names, as he slit their throats. He said: This one’s Aislabie. This one’s Metcalfe. This one’s Mrs Fairwood. He hated them all.’

‘Did you know Mrs Fairwood was his sister?’

He looked up, stupefied with horror. His mother poured him a mug of beer without a word. He wrapped his hands about it, but didn’t drink.

I took a long draw from my pipe. There seemed no point in asking him if he had helped carry the stags – no doubt he did. Three stags laid out to match the Robinson coat of arms, to sow confusion and to frighten Metcalfe. ‘And this was what you saw, Sam? Up at the banqueting house?’

‘I never saw you, Master Fleet,’ Wattson said. ‘And I’m very sorry. I should never have let him hurt you.’

‘No,’ I said, because here was the crux of the matter. ‘You should not. You let him lie there for hours.’

‘I thought he were dead. God help me. I didn’t know what to do. I had to go back to my post, guarding the house. I stood there in the dark… Dear Lord in Heaven, may I never know another night like it. Standing there with the rest of the men, all of ’em laughing because they thought it were some great joke, and they would be paid for it. And all the time I knew Forster had killed a boy, and I’d stood by and let him do it. God forgive me…’

‘Worse,’ Sam corrected. ‘You held me.’

Wattson hung his head. ‘I decided I would go to Mr Sneaton at dawn, and tell him everything. I was so ashamed. He’d taken a chance with me, and this was how I repaid him. But then I came to the cottage and you were there, sir, and there was blood… When I saw Forster, I knew he’d killed Mr Sneaton. And he just stood there on the steps, smirking. Bastard. I thought the least I could do was lead you to Gillet hill – and let God decide the rest.’

I sat back, drawing deep on my pipe. Annie was watching me closely, picking at her long fingers. If her son had told the truth, Forster would have been arrested. Kitty and I would have been spared that terrible night at the abbey, and Bagby would be alive. But as far as the world was concerned, Forster and Sneaton had died through accident, and Bagby was a suicide. Wattson couldn’t stand trial unless we unravelled an entire web of lies, and in the end, what good would it serve? He would be transported, if he were lucky. More likely hanged. The Gills would be driven from their home.

In any case, this was not for me to decide.

‘I could kill you,’ Sam said, softly.

Wattson raised his head. His mother snatched up a knife, holding it ready.

‘Not now,’ Sam expanded. ‘Somewhere quiet. When you wasn’t expecting it.’ He skewered Wattson with a black-eyed stare. One heartbeat. Two. ‘But you was protecting your family.’

He rose swiftly, taking us all by surprise. ‘I ever need you, you’re mine. You ever cross me, you’re dead.’

He held out his hand.

Wattson – after a moment’s hesitation – reached out and took it. ‘Thank you, sir.’

Sam nodded, satisfied. He looked just like his father.

Chapter Thirty

I wanted to see the moors one last time before we left: I doubted I would ever return to Studley again. I guided Athena up the cottage path and out towards the open wild.

‘Hall’s that way,’ Sam said, hoicking his thumb down the hill.

‘I want to show you something. Thank you for not killing Wattson.’

‘No profit in it. You’re welcome,’ he added.

The weather had turned warm. It was almost May, and there was a feel of summer to the air. The grouse were less timid this time: I spotted a few heads poking up from the heather. A black and white bird with a long black crest darted across our path. ‘Look.’ I tapped Sam’s arm. ‘A lapwing.’

‘What did you want to show me?’

‘All this.’ I gestured about me. ‘The moors.’

‘Waste of land. No cover. Where’s the houses? Rubbish.’

I gave up. ‘There might be some carrion up here. New bones to add to your collection. Rabbit, grouse. Maybe even a fox or a sheep’s head.’

He dropped from his horse and hurried out into the heather.

We spent a good hour rambling across the moors in search of bones. For once, Sam forgave the country for being empty and worthless and became almost a boy again, hunting eagerly through the bracken for dead animals. We collected his finds in a sack and started back to Studley Hall.

‘I’ve spoken with Kitty,’ I said, bowing across Athena’s neck to avoid a low branch reaching across the road. ‘You’re welcome to return home with us to the Cocked Pistol.’ We had decided to delay our trip to the Continent, now that it was not needed. Home shone like a beacon in both our minds: the shop, Moll’s coffeehouse, our own bed. ‘Kitty will put some money aside for your studies. Do you still wish to become a surgeon?’

Sam was silent for a long time, even for him. He wouldn’t look at me, staring off down the valley instead. ‘I’m a Fleet,’ he said, at last.

I was surprised. I’d been sure this would please him, that it was what he wanted more than anything. ‘Why not think about it on the ride home? That’s five days to consider the matter.’

And so we left it at that.

We spent one last night at Studley House. Metcalfe had already returned home to Baldersby to spend time with his father, but with a promise to visit the shop the first moment he arrived in London. ‘Late September,’ he said, ‘if I’m well.’ And then he put in an order for a couple of whores’ dialogues from the shop, which Kitty promised to send up in some discreet fashion.

Mr Gatteker cared nothing for discretion, and spent a good half hour asking about our curious titles over supper. ‘Mrs Gatteker is excessively voracious.’ A pause. ‘For books.’

Mr Aislabie was less appalled by this conversation than one might expect, and I’m convinced he ordered a few items for himself, under Gatteker’s name. He was glad to see us go though: we were too much of a reminder of Mrs Fairwood, long returned to Lincoln but still haunting his thoughts. In truth we would have left days before if Sam had been strong enough to travel.

We played cards, and I lifted a further thirty pounds from the Aislabies. I’d earned it, and they could afford it. I distributed some of it about the servants and in particular Sally Shutt, Francis Pugh, William Hallow, and Mrs Mason. Hallow said I would dance with the angels in heaven, which sounded agreeable. Mrs Mason packed some extrabottles of claret in with our baggage.

Sam slunk off on his own to say goodbye to Sally. He’d bought her a ribbon, or to be more precise, he had stolen one of Kitty’s. Sally must have liked it, as he came back an hour later with a certain swagger in his step.

There was a quiet moment that final evening when I stepped out into the park to smoke a pipe and watch the deer grazing beneath the beech tree. The sun was setting, the sky a glorious red. The air was fresh and warm, and, as I stood upon the steps, I felt a promise of better days ahead. The water trough stood on its hillock, looking for ever like a tomb. But it felt as though Jack Sneaton’s spirit had moved on: God willing to a happier place.

A rustle of skirts behind me. Lady Judith, in a cornflower blue gown that matched her clever eyes. ‘What a splendid evening.’ She put a gloved hand upon my arm. ‘My husband is too proud to thank you. I wish I could tell him all you have done on his behalf.’ We had said nothing to him of my midnight rendezvous with Mrs Fairwood.

‘Does he still hunt for the ledger?’

A half smile.

I lowered my voice. ‘Did you speak with Metcalfe?’ I’d suggested that he might be able to make a few discreet enquiries about Elizabeth Aislabie. Most likely Mrs Fairwood had been lying, but there were one or two paths he might explore.

‘He has promised to investigate, quietly. He blames himself for all of this, you know.’

‘Metcalfe?’

‘It’s his nature.’

Three words, and a depth of sadness beneath them.

‘We are lucky, are we not?’ I said. ‘To be blessed with sanguine temperaments.’

‘We are, Thomas.’ She leaned closer, brought her lips to my ear. ‘We are.’

We left just before dawn, Kitty at my side, Sam upon the opposite bench with his back to the horses. Pugh took us as far as Ripon, where we’d hired a coach, paid for by the queen, who was – at present – feeling generous. I’d written to let her know that the ledger was in my possession and that Aislabie would trouble her no longer. I had not added that I intended to keep the ledger to ensure she did not force me on another mission, or threaten to hang Kitty for murder. So for now she was grateful, and I intended to make the most of her largesse.

The roads were improved with the good weather, and we travelled with open windows, the scent of fresh grass and cow dung wafting through the carriage.

‘Stinks,’ Sam muttered, the boy from St Giles, where weaker men fainted from the noisome air. A magnificent pair of antlers rested on the seat next to him – an eccentric memento from his trip. I was certain I’d seen them last hanging in the great hall at Studley. I whiled away a good half hour wondering how he’d smuggled them out.

Kitty and I drank a bottle of wine and made each other laugh all the way to Blyth, where we planned to rest for the night.

‘You are yourself again,’ she said, as I helped her from the carriage.

I kissed her, not sure if this were true, or even what it meant.

The innkeeper sent boys out to collect our baggage. Sam watched them with the suspicious eyes of a thief. ‘I know everything in them bags,’ he called after them. He snatched his sack of carrion treasures from the hands of a younger boy, eyes burning like a demon. He had boiled down the bones and planned to display them when he returned home – wherever that might be – a grouse, two rabbits, a badger’s skull, and the antlers. I could pretend this was simply his inquisitive mind at play; the questing, questioning spirit that made him want to become a surgeon. But there was more to Sam Fleet than that. Dark and light, with no promise of which would triumph, in the end.

The innkeeper was offended. ‘My boys are honest, sir. Please tell your valet not to worry.’

‘He’s not my valet,’ I said, following Sam inside. ‘He’s my brother.’