Chapter 38
H
annah Lovelock eased off her husband’s hob-nailed boots in front of a dwindling fire. Normally he would have scolded her for not tossing another log on it, but he seemed gleefully preoccupied with other matters that evening. The couple were due to travel to Oxford in two days’ time to give evidence at the trial and Jacob had seen his wife in conversation with the local butcher, who had been among the rabble at the court that day.
“So, what did ’e say?” asked Jacob as she grasped the tongue of his boot.
“Who?” she queried, knowing full well to whom her husband referred.
“Sam Bowmaker, ’course.” He was smiling mischievously. “I saw you lapping up his words like a cat with cream.”
Hannah thought for a moment as she pulled off his right boot first.
“He said them doctors had been telling the court what they thought.”
“And?” His breath smelt stale and unpleasant and Hannah turned her face away.
“They said they thought it was the laurel water what did it.”
“Laurel water, aye?” He paused thoughtfully. “And did they point the finger?”
“No.” She did not elaborate.
Lovelock sat back in the chair and let his wife pull the final boot off. “Looks like the captain’s in the shit, then, don’t it?” He smiled wryly.
Later that night, when Hannah was sure her son was abed and her husband was dozing after his ale by the fire, she sneaked out of the house and across the courtyard to the apple store. From her apron pocket she took out a piece of tallow candle, secured it into a holder, then struck a flint and lit it. She knew that what she sought would be difficult to find, but plunging her arm into the deep barrel, she felt the cold, smooth skins that were so fragrant and enticing.
It was in there somewhere. Down, down she delved, deeper and deeper, until the tips of her toes were no longer on the ground and her body was doubled over, swinging from the barrel neck. Suddenly her palms hit the wooden bottom, but as soon as she cleared a space, the apples descended again, filling it once more, making her search almost impossible. It was in there. She knew it was, but perhaps she needed to return in the daylight, when she could see what she was doing and not have to rely simply on touch, like some blind woman groping helplessly in the sweet-smelling dark.
Hannah tipped herself backward so that both feet now touched the ground and recovered her composure. Smoothing her hair and her apron, she retrieved the candle holder and snuffed out the ineffectual flame. She then made her way back toward the door. She had almost reached the threshold when she sensed that someone, or something, was lurking in the shadows.
“Is this what you seek, Hannah?” came a voice from out of the blackness.
She gasped and turned to see a figure emerge, holding up the elusive physick bottle that she had hidden in the apple barrel. She recognized the voice instantly.
“Dr. Silkstone. You frightened me,” she told him as he emerged into the pool of moonlight that fell on the threshold.
“Is it not time you told the truth, Hannah?” asked Thomas, still holding up the bottle so that it was level with her eyes, which were wide with terror.
“I ... I don’t know what you mean, sir.” She was backing away from him like a frightened animal.
The young doctor moved toward her and for the first time she could see his face quite clearly. His countenance was not threatening, but he was frowning. “A man’s life is at stake, Hannah. You must tell me all you know.”
“What’s this?” asked Jacob Lovelock as his wife stood at the doorway of their home, accompanied by Thomas. “You sick or something?”
“May we come in?” asked Thomas earnestly.
Lovelock nodded and bade him sit down. Hannah seated herself opposite, by now her shoulders heaving in deep sobs. Her breath was ragged and her words rasped like a file on metal. “Forgive me,” she pleaded. “Please forgive me... .”
“What be the meaning of this?” shouted Lovelock above his wife’s strangled protestations.
“Do you have any strong liquor in the house?” asked Thomas.
Lovelock looked bemused, then pointed to a jug on the table, half filled with ale. The doctor poured some into a tankard and eased it up to Hannah’s lips. “Drink this,” he urged her, hoping it would calm her.
She sipped it slowly at first, then began to swallow great gulps until she had downed the whole tankard. A stream of ale trickled down the side of her mouth and she wiped it away with the back of her hand.
“What ails the woman, Doctor?” questioned her anxious husband.
“No ailment but guilt, I suspect,” replied Thomas. He held Hannah firmly by the shoulders. She did not look at him at first. Her gaze was fixed on some far-off point, but when she heard the young doctor’s voice calling her, she shook her head as if fighting off some malaise.
“Hannah, we need to know the truth,” urged Thomas. “Tell us about Rebecca. Tell us what happened to her.”
Jacob suddenly became agitated. “What’s it to do with Rebecca?” he scowled. But Thomas put his finger to his lips, signifying Lovelock to hold his tongue. Hannah was about to speak. Slowly she nodded, as if she accepted that the truth needed to be told, then took a deep breath. Her voice was faltering at first.
“My Rebecca was a fair girl. Just passed her twelfth birthday, she ’ad.” A faint smile flickered across her face as she recalled some distant, pleasant memory of her daughter. But her happy expression was short-lived. “We was in the orchard last autumn, picking the fallers,” she recalled. “The young master walked by. ’E stopped by me and I could see ’e was looking at my girl. Eyeing her up, he was, with those weasel eyes of his that were so full of lust. I see’d it in ’im and I warned my girl to stay away from ’im.”
At the recollection of the scene Hannah’s voice began to crack. She wiped away a tear. “Then a few days later she came home all quiet and there was bruising on her arms and I knew it had happened.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” raged Jacob Lovelock, rising. “The bastard,” he cried, clenching his fists, wanting to strike out. He caught the tankard and sent it crashing to the floor.
“Please, Jacob, calm yourself,” urged Thomas. “Your anger can serve no purpose.”
Hannah went on. “She said she didn’t want to talk about it. I knew she felt dirty and ashamed.” The tears now rolled freely down her cheeks. “I told ’er she must not feel bad. ’Twas not her fault, but she’d changed. ’E’d taken away her flower and I knew she’d never be my little girl again.”
The tears were flowing down Jacob’s face now, too. Hannah went on: “Then, after Christmas, she was even quieter. I begged her to talk to me, but she would just turn ’er back on me. She was like a stranger to ’er own mother.”
So the silence and the isolation went on, recalled Hannah, until one chilly day in May, when the ground lay covered by a late frost, Rebecca failed to report to the kitchen to help Mistress Claddingbowl prepare the vegetables for luncheon. They sent young Will to look for his sister and he had found her, lying facedown in among the reeds of the lake. The poor child had run to get help and they had dragged his sister out of the water like a limp doll.
“She killed ’erself, Jacob,” said Hannah, turning to her husband.
“You knew it was no accident?” asked Thomas.
She nodded. “I saw Will take the stones out of her pockets, but I wasn’t going to let them bury ’er at a crossroads with a stake through her heart,” she replied calmly. Her voice had gathered strength, just as it did on the witness stand at the inquest. “No, I knew she killed ’erself and when I prepared her body for the grave I found out why.”
Thomas and Jacob were transfixed. “Her belly was rounding,” she said softly, in almost a reverential whisper.
At these words Jacob Lovelock leapt up and let forth a desperate cry. Lurching over to his wife, he started shaking her. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why? I could’ve ... I ...” he shouted. Thomas tried to pull him off, but he was too strong. Hannah stood her ground and looked at her husband straight in the eye. “So that you could’ve killed the man who raped your daughter and left her with child?” she asked. She spoke calmly and with great clarity, like a woman who had come to terms with her actions and was prepared to pay the consequences.
“Is that what you did, Hannah?” asked Thomas. “Did you kill Lord Crick?”
An aura of tranquillity had descended upon her, as if she had become impervious to any slights or accusations. Like Saint Sebastian, her flesh could have been penetrated with countless arrows yet, thought Thomas, from her calm demeanor not a single cry of pain would have passed her lips.
“On that morning he came to us. He said he wanted to see Jacob about one of the horses. He stood in our home and he saw our Rachel.” Suddenly there was emotion in her voice once more. “He saw her and he took her face in his filthy hands and he said to me: ‘She has her sister’s eyes.’ ”
Hannah turned and looked at Thomas. “ ’Twas then that I knew I had to do it, before he had my Rachel, too.”
At this forthright admission, Jacob Lovelock looked at his wife, then rushed forward, kneeling at her feet and smothering his tear-stained face in her skirts. She began to stroke his tousled hair gently.
“So you added something to his lordship’s physick?” Thomas continued. “What was it, Hannah? Purple foxglove?”
She glanced across at the shelf, to the jar from which she had taken leaves to treat Thomas’s wound. “Yes,” she whispered.
“And you knew it was poisonous?”
She nodded her head. “That I did,” she groaned. “But I never meant to kill him. I never did.” Thomas saw her breast heave as her lips trembled. He frowned.
“But what of the cyanide? The smell of bitter almonds?”
“I took one of his kerchiefs from the laundry and soaked it in laurel water,” she said calmly. “I knew ’twould be thought that the rat poison killed the master.”
“So you would let an innocent man hang?” he asked her.
Her face hardened. “He is of the same sort,” she sneered. “They treat us all like dog shit on their boots.”
Thomas shook his head. “I do not believe that you would let the captain go to the gallows, Hannah.”
She was silent for a moment.
“No. You are right, Dr. Silkstone. I never thought ’twould go this far. I thought they’d say the young master died natural-like, but when you was called in things changed. I had to point the finger somewhere.”
Thomas sighed heavily. “But now you will do what is right?”
She nodded and grabbed hold of her husband’s hands.
“Then we shall go to Oxford at first light.”
“And may God have mercy on my soul,” she murmured.
Chapter 39
H
annah Lovelock sat straight-backed next to Thomas as he steered the cart toward Oxford. They had left at dawn, just as the sun’s first beams had begun to dispel the darkness of one of the longest nights Thomas had ever known. He was acutely aware that he was, in all probability, taking this woman, this mother who sat beside him, to her death. There was a sort of dignified righteousness in her poise, strangely akin to a martyr being conveyed to an undeserved death and Thomas was feeling like her executioner.
There had been tearful farewells to Jacob Lovelock and to her children that proved too painful for Thomas to witness. It was for the love of her second daughter that Hannah had done what she had done; not out of selfishness, nor greed, nor personal gain. Her only motive had been to protect her child and now she would make the ultimate sacrifice.
As the spires of Oxford came into view, Thomas turned to his stoic passenger. “Will you forgive me for what I am about to do?”
Hannah, her face lined and pale, took a deep breath and looked into the young doctor’s eyes. “You are a just man, Dr. Silkstone,” she said in an unfaltering voice. “You do what is right.”
With these simple words, Thomas felt absolved, even though no absolution was needed. Grasping both reins in one hand, he reached out the other and laid it gently on her arm. She reciprocated the gesture and cupped her left hand over his, but she said nothing, because nothing more could be said.
As the cart trundled on toward Oxford, in the assizes below the wheels of English justice were also turning. Sir Montagu Malthus perched himself in the witness box, his black eyes peering out from under hooded lids. He had been called to testify for the prosecution as he had uncovered some irregularities in the late Lord Crick’s accounts.
“And of what do these irregularities consist?” asked the counsel for the prosecution, a portly man in his sixties by the name of Archibald Seabright.
“Large amounts of money were withdrawn on a regular basis,” replied Sir Montagu.
“Pray define the term ‘large,’ ” urged the prosecution.
“Between two and five hundred pounds each week,” came the reply.
“But could these not be considered normal living expenses for a gentleman of Lord Crick’s means?” suggested Mr. Seabright.
Sir Montagu’s large eyebrows met in a frown over his hooded eyes. He gave a supercilious shrug. “These monies were in addition to his normal allowance,” he replied.
“And do you have any idea what Lord Crick might have been doing with this money?” asked the portly lawyer.
James Lavington exchanged a nervous glance with his client, while Sir Montagu looked directly at Judge de Quincy. “I believe he was losing it at cards,” he replied in an assured manner that left no room at all for doubt in his mind.
Lavington’s damaged arm suddenly began to tremble. He tried to steady it with his good hand and hoped no one had seen.
“What gives you that impression?” asked Seabright.
Malthus looked at him straight. “Because, sir, I also discovered a number of copies of credit notes in Lord Crick’s safe deposit box.”
“And to whom were these notes made out?”
The witness paused for dramatic effect. “To Captain Farrell,” he said.
By this point, most of the players in this courtroom drama were so immersed in the action, that, on his arrival, Thomas was able to approach James Lavington almost unnoticed.
The solicitor saw him out of the corner of his eye and turned. Thomas bent down and whispered in his ear. “I have news. New evidence.”
Lavington frowned, waving his hand as if warning off a troublesome fly, but Thomas persisted. “We need an adjournment,” he urged.
At the word “adjournment” Lavington turned to face the doctor. “New evidence, you say?”
By now Thomas’s presence had been noted by the judge, who swiftly brought down his gavel. “What goes on here?” he enquired, obviously riled.
Lavington heaved himself up, his wayward hand now under control. “My apologies, Your Honor,” he began, then, glancing at Thomas he continued: “I would ask for an adjournment.”
“On what grounds?” barked the judge.
“I believe there is new evidence, Your Honor,” replied the lawyer.
“Very well,” declared Mr. de Quincy. “You have until tomorrow at ten o’clock,” and with these words not only Thomas, but Lavington, too, breathed a sigh of relief, but for very different reasons.
“So, you are confessing to the murder of Lord Crick?” James Lavington needed to make sure in his own mind that what he had just heard from Hannah Lovelock’s lips was correct.
The servant nodded. “Aye, sir.” Her voice was calm, as if she had just admitted to making a bed or stoking a fire. “ ’Twas not my will, sir, as I said, but it happened nonetheless.”
Lavington simply nodded. Any relief that his old friend and client could now be acquitted of a crime for which he stood to lose his life remained hidden.
The lawyer’s reaction surprised Thomas, who interceded. “Hannah will make her mark on a written statement,” he said, but still there was little reaction.
“I see,” was his only reply, as he looked at Hannah rather strangely.
“Shall I ... ?” Thomas was about to ask if he should call the clerk into the room so that a confession could be taken, when Lavington raised his right hand to silence him.
“Thank you for your help, Dr. Silkstone,” he said coldly, “but I need some time with Mistress Lovelock ... alone, if you please.”
Bemused by Lavington’s response, Thomas nonetheless acquiesced. “Very well,” he replied reluctantly. “I shall leave matters in your hands,” he said as he left.
Lavington waited until the doctor had shut the door. The maidservant was seated, staring impassively at the table before her.
“So, Hannah,” Lavington finally addressed her. “You’ve done a foolish thing.” His voice was measured.
“Yes, sir,” she replied softly. He was standing beside her now, close enough for her to smell his sweat. For the first time since she had revealed her secret she felt afraid. She was prepared for her punishment to be public, so that every man and woman could see her suffer for protecting her own child, but she did not want to endure a secret pain, behind closed doors, where no one would hear her cry out the name of her dead daughter; where her anguish would not penetrate the closed doors and the thick walls that now surrounded her. She wanted people to know she died for a cause. She turned toward her inquisitor and saw that he had lifted his stick and held it by the middle of the shaft, lightly hitting the palm of his hand.
Bending down so that the hideous side of his face was on a level with hers, so that she could see the shards of metal that lay still embedded beneath his skin, James Lavington whispered: “But Hannah, I would hate you to do anything even more foolish.”