The Silent Woman (27 page)

‘I thought she had come from you, Mary.’

‘Is that what she told you?’

‘We did not even speak.’

‘But you said that Susan came to find you.’

‘Someone stopped her reaching me.’

‘Then where is she now?’

Nicholas tried to put it gently. ‘Susan will not be returning here, I fear,’ he said.

‘She is surely not dead!’

His expression was answer enough and Mary went off
into a paroxysm of weeping. Nicholas put a comforting arm around her but it was minutes before she was able to speak again. Her body still heaved and shook as she looked up at him. A new and deeper level of despair came into her eyes.

‘How did it happen?’

‘That need not concern you,’ he said.

‘How did it happen? I must
know
, Nick.’

‘She was poisoned.’

‘Lord in heaven – no!’

She trembled on the edge of hysteria again and he kept his arm around her, but Mary Whetcombe did not collapse again. Guilt and sadness consumed her. Her voice was a faraway murmur of pain.

‘
I
killed that girl,’ she said.

‘No, Mary.’

‘She went to London because of me.’

‘You did not send her.’

‘Susan wanted to do all that she could. She was a headstrong girl and would not be ruled by anyone.’ Mary raised her shoulders in a shrug of remorse. ‘I was sorely troubled. I needed help. Susan thought she could find it in London.’

‘But why did she come to
me
?’ asked Nicholas.

‘There was nobody else.’

‘The girl did not even know me.’

‘Your name was often spoken in this house.’

Mary detached herself from him and walked a few paces away before standing beside a small table. She wrestled with a vestigial fidelity to her husband and then glanced down at the documents that Barnard Sweete had left for her. Matthew Whetcombe had shown her no loyalty and she owed none to him now. He had cut her completely adrift.

‘Matthew and I often argued,’ she said, tossing a look towards the other bedchamber. ‘Your name was much used by him in those arguments. He spoke it with great bitterness and always in a raised voice. You are
known
here, Nick. To every servant in the household, Susan among them.’ She turned away from him. ‘Then there was your father.’

It brought him to his feet. ‘My father?’

‘He often came here at one time.’

‘Why?’

‘Matthew and he did business together.’

‘You let my father come
here
, Mary?’ he accused.

‘Only at my husband’s invitation,’ she said. ‘The name of Bracewell is familiar in this house. Your father never talked about you. He wanted to believe you had died at sea.’ She turned to face him. ‘He looked so much like you, Nick.’

‘How did you know I was in London?’

‘From my husband.’

‘Matthew?’

‘He prospered, Nick. He made a fortune. But the more Matthew had, the more he wanted, and he set up a company in London. He went there last September. They took him to all the theatres.’

‘The Queen’s Head was amongst them, I’ll wager.’

‘He saw Westfield’s Men three times. The last time …’

‘He saw me.’ She nodded then bit her tongue. ‘There is more to come, Mary. Do not spare my feelings. What did your husband say about me?’

‘Matthew could be very cruel.’ She took a deep breath and blurted it out. ‘If I had married you, he said, I would be the wife of a vagabond in a theatre company. He gave me all this – you could offer me nothing!’

‘In some sense, that is true,’ admitted Nicholas sadly. ‘You were better off with Matthew Whetcombe, after all.’

‘I was not!’ she retorted vehemently. ‘I was married to a man I despised instead of to one I loved. Matthew may have given me all this – but he has taken it away again now!’

The force of her outburst had distracted them from the noise of the opening door. Lucy stood there watching them with anxiety. Mary recovered quickly and went across to close the door after drawing the child in. Lucy was carrying her collection of dolls. She set the bundle down in front of Nicholas and unrolled it with great care. One by one, she stood the dolls in a line. When Lucy picked up the last one, she offered it to Nicholas.

‘Take it,’ said Mary. ‘I think it is you.’

‘Me?’

‘Susan and Lucy made the dolls between them. Matthew would have beaten them again if he had known. That is you.’

Nicholas took the doll and looked at its fair hair.

‘But they had no idea what I looked like.’

‘They saw your father.’

‘This is
me
?’ he said with surprise, and Lucy nodded vigorously as she read his lips. He thanked her with a smile then looked at Mary. ‘Am I so important in Lucy’s life?’

‘Yes, Nick.’

The girl was down on her knees, moving the other dolls about and placing them into little groups. Nicholas looked over her and asked a question with his eyes. The idea had almost become a certainty in his mind, but Mary replied with glistening tears and a shake of the head.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Lucy is not yours.’

‘Can you be sure?’

‘She was Matthew’s child. I should know! He spent most of his time blaming me for her. That is why he’s struck back at me now. Because of Lucy and because of …’ Her voice trailed away.

Nicholas watched Lucy happily at play, at once disappointed and relieved by the news. Mary ran an affectionate hand through the girl’s hair, but Lucy did not look up. Her mother turned back to her visitor.

‘Susan was Lucy’s closest friend,’ she said. ‘Her only real friend in some ways. I can never tell her that Susan has been …’ She put a hand to her face. ‘Lucy would be heartbroken.’

‘Why did Susan Deakin come for me?’ he asked.

‘She knew that I needed help.’

‘How?’

Mary picked up the documents from the table and handed them to Nicholas. He read the first page of the will and understood the nature of the crisis at once.

‘Your husband made this will?’

‘They say that he did.’

‘It cuts you right out of the estate. Apart from a house to live in and a small income, you get nothing. It all goes to Gideon Livermore.’ Nicholas knew the name and spoke it with contempt. ‘Livermore takes precedence over a man’s wife and child. This will is an insult. It is obscene!’

‘The lawyer assures me it is legal.’

‘He even inherits the
Mary
.’

‘That was Matthew’s pride and joy.’

‘It should be yours now,’ said Nicholas. ‘You are being abused here, Mary. This will must be contested.’

‘I have no means to do that,’ she complained. ‘They are all
against me here. The lawyer, his partner, Gideon Livermore and even the vicar. Who can hold up against all those?’

‘We can,’ he said. ‘Together.’

‘This is not your fight, Nick.’

‘It is, Mary. Susan Deakin taught me that.’ He held up the document. ‘This is a nuncupative will. Did Matthew not write out a will of his own?’

‘Yes, but this second one rescinds it.’

‘Where is the first?’

‘It was lodged with the lawyer but destroyed when this new will was made.’ She sighed helplessly. ‘Matthew had a copy of the first will but we do not know where he kept it.’

‘Who were the witnesses?’

‘Why?’

‘They will know what was in it.’

‘Barnard Sweete was one. He is Matthew’s lawyer. He swears the second will is almost a replica of the first.’

‘Then why need to make it?’ asked Nicholas. ‘Can the other witnesses support what this lawyer says?’

‘I fear they will, Nick. They are mostly the same men who witnessed the second will. There is but one exception.’

‘Is he an honest man?’

‘Only you will know that.’

‘Tell me who he is and I will go to him at once. This will turns Gideon Livermore into the master here. You would be thrown out of your own house.’

Mary lowered her head. ‘He wants me to stay.’

Nicholas understood and his anger soared. The will was not just being used as a way to deprive Mary Whetcombe of her rightful inheritance. It was a crude lever to get her into the bed of an ambitious merchant. Susan Deakin had
not understood the details of her employer’s plight but she knew enough to summon Nicholas. She had been killed in an attempt to cover deceit and gross malpractice. A legal will did not need a professional killer to enforce its terms. The document was rigged for the benefit of others and it needed to be contested. A huge fortune was at stake. One honest man might guide it into the right hands. If Nicholas could have some indication of the contents of the first will, he could carry the fight forward. But he desperately needed the other witness.

‘Who
was
the man, Mary?’ he said.

‘Your father – Robert Bracewell.’

A
lexander Marwood had suspended all belief in the notion of divine intervention. After a lifelong study of the phenomenon, he concluded that there was no such thing as a benevolent deity who watched over the affairs of men with a caring love and plucked those in danger from beneath the wheels of fate. Marwood spent most of his existence beneath those wheels and they had left deep ruts across mind, body and soul. If there really was any pity in heaven, it would surely have been shown to someone in his predicament yet none came to relieve the unrelenting misery of his lot. His plight should make angels weep and archangels wring their hands in sorrow but compassion was always on holiday. He became ungodly.

Work, wife and Westfield’s Men. Those were the triple causes of his ruin. A man of his temperament should never have become an innkeeper. He hated beer, he hated people and he hated noise yet he chose a profession which tied him
forever to them. His introspective nature was ill-suited to the extrovert banter of the taproom. It was a crime to make him serve out his sentence at the Queen’s Head. Marriage had compounded the felony. Sybil Marwood bound him to the inn and fettered him to her purpose. One year of muted happiness in her arms had produced a daughter who was miraculously free from the spectacular ugliness of both parents. It had also turned a tepid marital couch into a cold one and so much ice had now formed around its inner regions that Marwood felt he lay beside a polar bear. Westfield’s Men completed his nightmare.

Separately, each of his tribulations was enough to break the heart of man and the back of beast. Together, they were unendurable. The fire at the Queen’s Head had somehow welded all three of them together and the combined weight of his afflictions was now pressing the last glimmer of life out of him.

‘Have you come to a decision yet, Alexander?’

‘Not yet, my love.’

‘Move swiftly or we lose the advantage.’

‘There is no advantage in a theatre company.’

‘Then why does this other innkeeper woo them?’

‘Madness.’

‘Profit.’

‘Suicide.’

‘Respect.’

‘Ignominy.’

‘Fame!’ cried Sybil. ‘Do not lose
that
, Alexander, or we perish. Be wise, be proud, be famous!’

The polar bear roared at her husband every day now.

Marwood left his wife in the taproom and scurried out
to the yard, bracing himself for the sight of devastation and vowing that Westfield’s Men would never again be given the chance to set fire to his premises. A surprise greeted him. The restoration work had advanced much faster than expected. Diligent carpenters had now completely removed all the charred timbers and replaced them with sound ones. Behind the wooden scaffolding, the gaping hole was slowly being filled. The galleries no longer sagged in the corner. Fresh supports had lifted them back up to something like their former shape. There was still much to do but the yard of the Queen’s Head was recognisably his again.

A less agreeable surprise awaited him. Though busy hammers still banged away and busy ostlers brought horses in and out of the stables, the yard was curiously quiet. There was no crowd of spectators jostling each other, no packed galleries setting up a further buzz, no servingmen calling out for customers as they carried trays of beer amid the throng. Above all there were no players strutting about the stage, flinging their speeches and leaving them embedded like so many spears in the minds of the audience. There was no Lawrence Firethorn to hurl his verbal thunderbolts, no Barnaby Gill to make the boards echo with his jig, no Owen Elias to put the rage of a whole nation into his voice. And there was no applause. Alexander Marwood missed them. It made him feel sick.

‘Good morning, sir.’

‘You have work to do, Leonard.’

‘I’ll about it straight when I have done my duty.’

‘What duty, man?’

‘Give me time, sir, give me time.’

Leonard wiped the back of a massive hand across his
mouth then motioned two figures across. Anne Hendrik had been shopping at the market in Gracechurch Street and brought Preben van Loew with her so that they could move on to the cloth market and buy fresh supplies of material. Since they were so close to the Queen’s Head, they slipped in to see how the repairs were progressing. Anne had another reason for the visit. Primed by Margery Firethorn, she was ready to lend her weight to the campaign to bring Westfield’s Men back to the inn. Though still unsure about one member of the company, she wanted the others to regain a home.

Marwood viewed the pair with cautious respect. Anne was patently a lady but the sober garb and austere manner of Preben van Loew suggested that he had never been inside a taproom. Leonard had no social graces but he managed a few clumsy introductions. As he moved off to work, he threw in a last tactless piece of information.

‘Mistress Hendrik is a friend of Master Bracewell.’

Marwood glowered. ‘He burnt my yard down.’

‘That is not what I hear,’ said Anne, coming to the defence of the book holder. ‘Report has it that he saved your inn from total destruction.’

‘He starts a fire, he puts it out. That is to say, he gives me a disease then helps to cure it. But I had rather the disease did not come in the first place.’

‘The carpenters work well,’ noted Preben van Loew.

‘When I keep them to their task.’

‘Your galleries will be stouter than ever,’ said the Dutchman, peering around. ‘I was here once before to see a play and I noticed the rot in some of your beams. It was worst in the corner where the fire struck which is why the flames got a hold so quickly. Rotten wood burns best. Had
you replaced those old timbers yourself, they might have withstood the blaze much better.’

‘Do not lecture me on my inn, sir,’ said Marwood.

‘I make one simple point. You now have sound timbers where you had rotten. Such neglect was dangerous. Those pillars would have snapped under the weight in time.’

‘Preben is right,’ said Anne. ‘In a strange way, the fire may have done you a favour.’

‘It did, mistress. It showed me my folly.’

‘About not replacing bad timber?’ said the Dutchman.

‘About suffering the deadwood of a theatre company.’

‘Westfield’s Men gave you a name,’ said Anne.

‘It is one I disown entirely.’

‘That is a poor reward for their patron,’ she observed. ‘Lord Westfield has brought half the Court to the Queen’s Head. Was that not an honour?’

‘Indeed, it was.’

‘Then why discard it?’

‘Wisdom comes with age.’

‘Then you must be immensely wise,’ said Preben van Loew with a wry grin. ‘Please excuse me.’

He went off to view the renovations at close quarters. Anne Hendrik was left with the daunting task of improving the status of Westfield’s Men in the eyes of the innkeeper.

‘They are feted wherever they go,’ she said.

‘Who?’

‘Westfield’s Men.’

‘God keep them far away!’

‘They prosper in the provinces.’

‘Let that prosperity hold them there.’

‘They will return in triumph to their new home.’

Marwood was interested at last. ‘You know where it is?’

‘In Southwark or in Shoreditch.’

‘Which? The two are separated by the Thames.’

‘What does it matter, sir?’ she asked. ‘You have thrown them out of here. They may go wherever they wish.’

‘On what terms, though?’ he wondered.

‘Better than they enjoyed here.’

‘That cannot be.’

‘I speak only what I have been told on good authority.’ Anne did not mention that the good authority was Margery Firethorn. Having gained his ear, she now pretended to walk away from it. ‘I grow tedious, sir. I will go.’

‘Wait, wait.’

‘Westfield’s Men are dead here. This is a tomb now. I will have to send them somewhere else.’

‘Send who?’

‘I tax your patience here.’

‘No, no. You talked of custom.’

‘In a small way, Master Marwood,’ she said. ‘My name is Dutch but I am English, as you see. I speak both languages and that makes me useful in our community.’

‘We have a lot of Dutchmen here.’

‘And most of them resented like any other foreigner. But a man like you turns nobody away. That is why your inn will always flourish.’

‘I do not serve many Hollanders,’ he said, glancing across at Preben van Loew. ‘They are not ale-drinkers.’

‘They are if they are taught to be. And playgoers, too. That is my argument.’ She indicated her employee. ‘Preben works for me and frowns on all pleasure. Yet when I brought him to a play in this yard, he enjoyed it so much he sent
a dozen of his friends back. Each one of that dozen sent a handful more and so on. You stay with me here?’

‘Why, yes,’ said Marwood thoughtfully.

Anne was into her stride. ‘Visitors come from Holland all the time. When they seek entertainment, I send them here because Westfield’s Men never disappoint. All this trade will be lost if the company goes.’

‘It
has
to go. They burnt my premises down.’

‘They are helping to build it up again.’

‘How so?’

‘Take a closer look at these workmen,’ she suggested. ‘That man on the ladder is Nathan Curtis, master-carpenter with Westfield’s Men. I know him as a neighbour of mine in Bankside. With him is his assistant, David Leeke. When they sent their fellows away on tour, they stayed to rebuild the company’s home.’

‘At my expense! These repairs are costly!’

‘Defray the amount, Master Marwood.’

‘If only I knew how!’

‘It is not for me to say, sir,’ she remarked. ‘I am in business myself but employ only a handful of men. Preben there is one. This I do know, however. If I ran this inn, I would seek to spread the cost of restoration.’

‘I have tried, I have tried.’

‘Everywhere but the easiest place.’

‘And where is that?’

‘Westfield’s Men.’

‘They are almost penniless.’

‘Not when they fill your yard every afternoon. Think on this. Suppose they agreed to pay half of all the bills that you incur from the fire. Would that not cut your grief in two?’

‘How could they afford it?’

‘You levy a surcharge on each performance.’

‘Explain, I pray.’

Anne was persuasive. ‘Westfield’s Men pay a rent for the use of your yard, do they not? Add a fire tax to that rent. Some small amount, it may be, and spread over a whole year. At the end of that time, you would have earned back the half of all you spent.’ She saw a smile almost peeping out at her. ‘And that will be on top of all the extra revenue the company will bring in. London has missed them sorely. When they return, this yard will fill in minutes.’

Alexander Marwood could hear the sense in her argument but he still had grave reservations. Anne Hendrik left him with one more idea over which he could mull.

‘Their first performance would be the best of all.’

‘Why?’

‘Because all its proceeds would go to you.’

‘They will play for
nothing
!’

‘As a gesture of faith,’ she said, ‘they will donate the takings of an afternoon to the repair fund. If that is not generosity, then I do not know what is.’ She waved to Preben van Loew to indicate an imminent departure. ‘We must leave you now, sir, but I tell you this in private. I would not have Westfield’s Men go to this other inn to play.’

‘Why not?’

‘It has a most villainous innkeeper. Farewell.’

It was dark when Nicholas Bracewell left the house in Crock Street and there was no question of his riding out to visit his father that night. The confrontation, in any case, needed a degree of forethought. What he had done after his talk with
Mary Whetcombe was to walk back to the quay and take a proper look at a place which had meant so much to him at one time. It was empty now but still redolent with activity. He could almost smell the cargoes being unloaded and hear the deals being struck by astute merchants. When his father had first taken him there, Nicholas had loved the cheery commotion of Barnstaple quay. A few small ships floated at their moorings but it was the vessel which lay at anchor in the middle of the river which had captured his interest. The
Mary
was a fine craft, still riding on its reputation as a privateer. Even in the moonlight, he could judge its character. To own such a ship was to own the town. No wonder Gideon Livermore was ready to kill for it.

When the curfew bell sounded, he had gone back in through West Gate and headed for the Dolphin Inn. Sleep came with merciful swiftness. Rain tapped on the window to wake him in the morning but it had cleared by the time he went down to the taproom for his breakfast. Over toast and ale, he read the letter which Barnard Sweete had left for him with the innkeeper. Nicholas was invited to visit the lawyer in his chambers. The subject of discussion was not stated but he could guess at it. Mary had told him enough about Sweete to alert him to the man’s cleverness and Nicholas already had a clear impression of the sort of man the lawyer might be. Before taking him on, however, he needed more evidence and that could only come from his father. It was ironic. The man who had torn him away from Mary Parr might now be in a position to offer a kind of restitution.

Nicholas hired a horse and rode northwards out of the town in the direction of Pilton. Two men followed him this time but at a comfortable distance. They were there to watch
and not to attack. Nicholas smiled when he came to an old signpost that pointed his way. The village of Marwood was one of three listed and he knew it from his boyhood. Its namesake at the Queen’s Head had none of its rural charm and still less of its abiding warmth.

The cottage was not far from Pilton and his first sight of it shocked him. It was a small, low, half-timbered building with a thatched roof. Standing in a couple of acres, it had a neglected and world-weary air. When he got closer, he saw that birds were nesting under the eaves. One of the trees in the garden had been blown over in a gale and was now propped up with a length of timber. Panes of glass were missing from an upper window. The garden gate was broken. A goat chewed unconcernedly outside the front door.