A Death at Fountains Abbey (13 page)

‘If I can.’

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

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

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

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

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

‘Enough!’ I snapped, breaking from him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter Eight

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

Someone had entered the room.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Get off me!’

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

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

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

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

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

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

I didn’t refute this.

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

‘True.’

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

‘I’m sorry.’

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

‘I—’

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

I covered her hand with mine.

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

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

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

I smiled, and handed her a glass.

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

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

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

‘Because I love you.’

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

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

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

‘Who let you in so late?’

‘The butler. Busby?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Where’s Sam?’ Kitty asked.

‘Hunting for the ledger.’

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

‘I don’t snore.’

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

How could he fault the logic?

But I am so much more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Second Day

Chapter Nine

I woke early, Kitty asleep beside me. I dozed for a time, happy she was there, then slid carefully from the bed. At home Kitty always rose before me, often by several hours. She had spent the last few days in a bone-rattling carriage, leaving at first light each morning in her race to reach me. I let the drapes close again around the bed. Let her rest.