A Death at Fountains Abbey (24 page)

As we played, Lady Judith did her best to counsel her husband on Sneaton’s behalf, in her subtle way. A passing reference to some work that needed doing about the hall, and how Sneaton would be best placed to arrange it. A reminder of how he had ordered the wallpaper and much of the furniture in the room, obtaining the very best price for each item. Aislabie gritted his teeth through each hint and said at last, when his patience grew thin, ‘Enough, madam. Sneaton has put my family at risk with his stubbornness. I will not change my mind on the matter.’

‘You have always loved him for his integrity,’ Lady Judith said, behind her cards. ‘And now you punish him for it.’

Aislabie frowned at her over his cards, and lost the game.

Forster did not join us at the card table. He spent the time speaking to Elizabeth Fairwood while she sat at the harpsichord. I cannot remember what she played, though she played it well. The rest of the world disappears when I play cards. I didn’t pay attention to their conversation, spoken softly beneath the music. I didn’t notice whether Bagby stayed in the drawing room, or if he came back and forth to refill our glasses and bring fresh candles. And I don’t recall when Metcalfe returned from his solitary walk around the water gardens. I noticed him only when we rose from the table at last and saw him slumped alone by the fire, rubbing his forehead with the tips of his fingers, as if suffering from a headache. His fingernails were black with grime.

‘Good heavens, it is past eleven,’ Mr Forster exclaimed.

And with that, our party broke up.

Bagby escorted us to our chamber, with two footmen following close behind. I had been inside two gaols in the last few months, I knew how it felt to be led back to a cell. ‘I will not be locked in like some damned criminal,’ I said, as we reached the door. ‘I would rather stay up all night on watch.’

‘As would I,’ Kitty said.

Bagby considered her for a moment, not unkindly. ‘Mr Aislabie has twenty men on guard, with dogs. It would be no place for a lady.’ He glanced at me, and added in a knowing tone: ‘If you wish to stand watch, mistress, I should keep an eye upon your husband.’

‘What do you mean? What does he mean, Tom?’

‘I don’t know.’ But I’d had my fill of his insolence. I grabbed him by the throat and shoved him against the wall, squeezing hard. ‘Pray tell us. What do you mean, Bagby?’

His eyes bulged, and he began to choke.

The two footmen pulled me away, with Kitty’s help. Bagby fell to the ground, pulling at his cravat to loosen it. Kitty took my hand and dragged me into our chamber as he lurched to his feet, wig askew. When he had regained his composure, and fixed his wig, he took the key from the lock.

‘What if there is a fire?’ Kitty asked, as he closed the door on us.

‘I’m to stand guard here,’ Bagby replied. ‘All night.’ The key turned in the lock.

The sound of it sent a wave of rage through me. I rushed to the door and kicked it as hard as I could. ‘I’m not
your prisoner, damn you!’ I kicked the door again for good measure, splintering the bottom panel. I think I might have torn the door from its hinges had I not turned, and seen Kitty’s face.

‘Tom. Peace. This won’t help.’

‘Fucking Aislabie,’ I snapped, and snatching the nearest thing to hand I threw it against the wall. A sherry glass, as it transpired, still half full. I began to pace the room, kicking at the walls. ‘I am
not
his fucking prisoner.’ Except I was. Locked up again. Pacing my cell again.

Kitty understood rage. I’d watched her kick and punch and curse at the world, and now she watched me do the same, until my anger was spent. She understood my hatred at being trapped, after my time in the Marshalsea and Newgate. She knew what had happened to me in the Marshalsea strongroom that night, and how it still haunted me. She poured some sherry into our remaining glass and proffered it, more as a tonic than as liquor.

I knocked it back in one gulp and offered her a weak smile. ‘I’m sorry.’

She stepped into my arms.

‘When I was in Newgate,’ I said, closing my eyes, ‘I used to dream of holding you like this.’

She sighed into my neck.

I broke free, after a time. Sam had not yet returned – the casement window was open, and his room was empty.

Kitty squeezed into the room with me. ‘Look at these,’ she murmured, flicking through a sheaf of sketches he had left upon his bed. ‘How well he draws. See, he’s captured those strange icicle shapes on the banqueting house.’

‘What was he doing up there?’ I wondered, taking some of the pages from her. Perhaps there was some clue within them, something that had helped him discover the identity of Aislabie’s foes. There were architectural studies of the canal and the moon ponds, and details of the new folly under construction – but that meant little. He liked to puzzle out the workings of things through his sketches, whether he was drawing some mechanical device or the skeleton of a bird. The cascades and the canal would have interested him in themselves, and might have no other meaning.

The subsequent pages were filled with character studies of the Aislabies and their guests, Mrs Fairwood with her eyes lowered, next to a portrait of Forster in his smart coat and bandaged arm. His mouth was open, which was characteristic, to be sure. Sam had made several attempts at Sneaton, with separate details of his scars, his wooden leg, and ruined eye. I had grown used to the way Sam witnessed the world and recorded it in his drawings, though I never liked to see my own face in there. But here I was – a portrait from our journey into Yorkshire, when he’d had hour upon hour to study me. I was leaning back into a corner of the carriage, away from the window. He had filled in part of the carriage interior behind me, shading heavily with his pencil. It looked as though a great charcoal shadow had gathered about my shoulders.

Kitty had found another set of portraits. She held up the page for me: four sketches of Sally Shutt. They were the most well observed and finished of all the pictures.

‘Is he sweet on her?’ Kitty asked.

‘Either that or he suspects her of something dreadful.’

‘Or both. Well, there is no shame in falling for a maidservant, is there, Tom?’

I smiled at her.

‘Has he gone to visit Sneaton, do you think?’

‘I expect so. I’d hoped he would have returned by now.’ I dropped the pictures back upon the bed.

‘He knows how to take care of himself.’

I wandered back into our chamber. ‘We must leave the window open for him.’ I peered out, and saw one of Simpson’s men standing beneath the oak tree holding a lantern. ‘Damn it.’ I craned my neck further out of the window and saw more lanterns, left and right. The men had formed a boundary all the way around the house. I hadn’t really thought I could take Sam’s route out of the window and along the oak tree – I valued my neck too well for that. But this confirmed it. There was no way I could leave the room tonight, which meant that my earlier thought to visit Sneaton and persuade him to talk at pistol point was now impossible.

‘Sam had the same idea, most likely,’ Kitty said. ‘No doubt Mr Sneaton is bound to a chair at this very moment, begging for his life.’

I hunted through my belongings. My pistols were still in their box beneath the bed, but Sam had retrieved his blade. I began to pace again, worried for Sam and worried for Sneaton.

‘He won’t risk sneaking past the men,’ Kitty said. ‘He’ll find shelter overnight, wait until he can slip back unseen. You know how he is.’

I nodded, absently.

‘Tom.’ She stroked my arm. ‘Sam has survived fourteen years in the worst slums in London. He’s a Fleet. I don’t think it’s his fate to die in a deer park.’

I frowned, and touched my mother’s cross for luck.

We undressed and slipped into bed, shivering from the draught blowing through the open window. I snuffed out the candle and lay in the dark, worrying.

‘He’ll be back by morning,’ Kitty whispered, running a hand beneath my shirt. ‘Most likely with the ledger tucked in his breeches.’

We laughed at this, then fell silent.

Kitty curled into me and kissed my jaw. ‘You’re not responsible for him, Tom.’

The silence fell heavy around the bed.

*

There is a body lying on the riverbank.

Sam spends two hours hunting for the ledger in Sneaton’s cottage, while the old bastard sits snoring in his chair. Two hours of nimble fingers – the quiet pulling of drawers, riffling through neat stacks of ledgers. Senses alert to any sound or movement, to the very density of the air. All the skills his father taught him and a few he’d taught himself, roving through St Giles at night.

He finds nothing.

He returns to the hearth and slides the dagger from his pocket. He holds the blade an inch from Sneaton’s neck, keeping his breath steady. No pleasure in this, and no fear. He lets the scene unfurl in his mind, testing it for flaws. First, he would press the blade deeper. Sneaton would wake with a start, and feel the bite of steel. Sam imagines the terror in the old man’s good eye. No pleasure in this, no pleasure. Sam would ask his questions. Would the old man answer him? Maybe. Maybe not. He was stubborn, and loyal to his master. He might refuse, even under the threat of death. And then what?

Never make a threat you can’t keep. His father’s rule and one that Sam respects.
A man’s only as good as his word.

He can’t kill Sneaton. Everyone would know he’d done it.

Sam lowers his blade. No pleasure, no fear. No disappointment. Well, perhaps a twinge.

There is nothing more he can do tonight. Tomorrow will bring new opportunities. This is the first rule of the Fleets
:
Stay alive till morning.

He leaves the cottage. Mr Sneaton, oblivious, sleeps on.

Sam crosses the estate towards Studley Hall, hurrying through the deer park. He is very quiet, but the deer scent him in the air and rise up from their half slumber. A stag bellows, and the herd moves away across the grass.

And here Sam’s luck runs out. Five minutes one way, five minutes another and no one would have discovered him. But two figures have stepped away from the house to talk urgently, and now, as if conjured by magic, their problem is walking towards them across the grass.

They grab him before he has a chance to pull out his blade. He fights hard but they are stronger than him, much stronger than he expected.

‘What should we do with him?’

He’s frightened now. ‘Please, sirs – I won’t say nothing. I’ll say I was telling stories.’

They don’t believe him.

A decision is made.

Sam isn’t struggling any more, he’s too afraid. He thinks of his mother. He is, after all, still a boy.

‘Please,’ he whispers.

He feels a sharp crack to his skull.

He feels nothing.

There is a body lying on the riverbank. It is perfectly still.

The Third Day

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.