Читать книгу A Crowning Mercy - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 12

4

‘Apoplexy,’ Dr Fenderlyn said.

‘Sir?’

‘Apoplexy, Dorcas.’ Fenderlyn stood beside his horse at the entrance to Werlatton Hall. ‘Too much blood, child, that’s all. I could have bled him last week, if I’d known, but he wouldn’t come to me. Power of prayer!’ He said the last scornfully as he slowly climbed the mounting block. ‘Urine, child, urine! Send your physician urine regularly and you might have a chance, you might …’ He shrugged, drawing in a hiss of breath that suggested everything was doomed anyway. ‘You’re not looking well, child. Too much yellow bile in you. I can give you an emetic, it’s better than prayer.’

‘No, thank you, sir.’ Campion had been given one of Fenderlyn’s emetics in the past, dark brown and slimy, and she could still remember the desperate breath-stealing vomit that had erupted to the doctor’s grave approval.

He gathered the reins of his horse, swung his leg across the saddle and settled himself. ‘You heard the news, Dorcas?’

‘News, sir?’

‘The King’s taken Bristol. I suppose the Royalists will win now.’ He grunted approvingly. ‘Still, I suppose you’ve got other things on your mind. You were to be married tomorrow?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Not now, child, not now.’ Fenderlyn said it gloomily, but the words were like an angelic message in her head. The doctor pulled his hat straight. ‘It’ll be a funeral not a wedding. Fine weather, Dorcas! Bury him soon. I suppose he’ll want to rest beside your mother?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I’ll make sure Hervey opens up the grave. Heigh ho. Another one gone.’ He looked up at the eaves of the Hall where the house martins had their nests. ‘It comes to us all, child, comes to us all. Apoplexy, the stone, strangury, the gout, epilepsy, leprosy, botches, plague, fistula, cankerworm, dropsy, gut-twisting, rupture, goitre, fever, the pox, tetterworm, the sweat, gripes.’ He shook his head, relishing the list. ‘It’s only the young who think they’ll live for ever.’ Dr Fenderlyn was seventy-eight years old and had never had a day’s illness in his life. It had made him a cheerless man, expecting the worst. ‘What will you do, Dorcas?’

‘Do, sir?’

‘I suppose you’ll marry Mr Scammell and breed me more patients?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’ There was a joy in Campion, a leaping joy because she did not know what the future held. She knew only that the marriage had been postponed and she felt as a condemned prisoner must when the gaoler announces a reprieve.

‘I’ll bid you good day, Dorcas.’ Fenderlyn touched his whip to the brim of his hat. ‘Tell that brother of yours to send me some urine. Never thought he’d survive weaning, but here he is. Life’s full of surprises. Be of good cheer!’ He said the last miserably.

Ebenezer had found his father dead, slumped over his study table, and on Matthew Slythe’s face was a snarl that had been there so often in life. His fist was clenched as if, at the last moment, he had tried to hold on to life and not go to the heaven he had looked forward to for so long. He had lived fifty-four years, a good length for most men, and death had come very suddenly.

Campion knew she should not feel released, yet she did, and it was an effort to stand beside the grave, looking down at the decaying wood of her mother’s coffin, without showing the pleasure of the moment. She joined in the 23rd psalm, then listened as Faithful Unto Death Hervey rejoiced that Brother Matthew Slythe had been called home, had been translated into glory, had crossed the river Jordan to join the company of Saints and even now was part of the eternal choir that hymned God’s majesty in the celestial skies. Campion tried to imagine her father’s dark-browed, ponderous scowl in the ranks of the angels.

After the service, as earth was shovelled on to her father’s coffin, Faithful Unto Death Hervey took her to one side. His fingers gripped her arm tightly. ‘A sad day, Miss Slythe.’

‘Yes.’

‘Yet you will meet in heaven.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Hervey glanced back at the mourners, out of earshot. His straw-coloured hair fell lank on his thin, pointed face. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed. ‘And what, pray, will you do now?’

‘Now?’ She tried to pull her arm away, but Faithful Unto Death kept firm hold of it. His eyes, pale as his hair, flicked left and right.

‘Grief is a hard burden, Miss Slythe.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And not one that should be borne alone.’ His fingers tightened on her upper arm, hurting her. He smiled. ‘I am the shepherd of this flock, Miss Slythe, and I stand ready to help you in any way I can. You do understand that?’

‘You’re hurting me.’

‘My dear Miss Slythe!’ His hand leaped from her arm then hovered close to her shoulder. ‘Perhaps together we can pray for the balm of Gilead?’

‘I know you will pray for us, Mr Hervey.’

It was not the answer Faithful Unto Death wanted. He was imagining emotional scenes in the Hall, Campion perhaps prostrate on her bed with grief while he administered comfort, and he began to blink rapidly as his imagination stirred thick with the image.

Samuel Scammell walked over to them, breaking Hervey’s thoughts, and thanked the minister for the service. ‘You’ll come to the Hall tomorrow, brother? Mr Blood has the will, indeed yes.’ He licked his lips and smiled at Hervey. ‘I think our dear departed brother may have remembered your good works.’

‘Yes. Yes.’

The household waited for Scammell and Campion beside the farm cart that had brought Slythe’s body to the churchyard. Ebenezer was already mounted beside the cart, drooping in the saddle, his twisted left leg supported by a specially large stirrup. He held Scammell’s horse. ‘Brother Scammell?’ He held the reins out, then looked at his sister. ‘You’ll go in the cart with the servants.’ His voice was harsh.

‘I shall walk, Ebenezer.’

‘It is not seemly.’

‘I shall walk, Ebenezer! I want to be alone!’

‘Leave her, leave her!’ Scammell soothed Ebenezer, nodded to Tobias Horsnell, who had the reins of the carthorse and Campion watched them go.

It took all of her control not to run across the ridge down the hayfields to the stream, and there to strip naked and swim in the pool for the sheer, clean joy of it. She dawdled instead, relishing the freedom of being alone, and she climbed part way up through the beeches and felt the wings of her soul stretching free at last. She hugged one of the trees as though it was animate, clinging to it in joy, feeling the seething happiness because a great weight was gone from her. She put her cheek against the bark. ‘Thank you, thank you.’

That night she slept alone, ordering Charity from her room, insisting on it. She locked the door and almost danced for the joy of it. She was alone! She undressed with the curtains and windows open and saw the touch of the moon on the ripening wheat. She leaned on the sill, stared into the night, and thought her joy would flood the land. She was not married! Kneeling beside the high bed, hands clasped, she thanked God for her reprieve. She vowed to Him that she would be good, but that she would be free.

Then Isaac Blood came from Dorchester.

He had a white face, lined with age, and grey hair that hung to his collar. He was Matthew Slythe’s lawyer and, because he had known Slythe well and knew what to expect at Werlatton Hall, he had brought his own bottle of malmsey wine which he eked into a small glass and sipped often. The servants faced him, sitting on the benches where they gathered for prayers, while Samuel Scammell and Faithful Unto Death flanked Campion and Ebenezer on the family bench. Isaac Blood fussed at the lectern, arranging the will over the family Bible, then fetched a small table on which his wine could stand.

Goodwife Baggerlie, in memory of her good, loyal and God-fearing service, was to receive a hundred pounds. She dabbed her red-rimmed eyes with her apron. ‘God bless him! God bless him!’

Faithful Unto Death had been surprised at the legacy. It was an enormous amount. His eyes watched Goodwife and he assumed that Slythe would be more generous with a man of God than with a house-servant. He smiled to himself, and waited as Isaac Blood sipped malmsey and wiped his lips.

‘To our Brother Faithful Unto Death Hervey,’ Isaac Blood began reading again, and Scammell leaned forward on the bench and smiled at the vicar. Hervey kept his eyes on the lawyer. ‘I know,’ went on Blood, ‘that he will not wish distraction from his humble toiling in God’s vineyard, so we will not burden him beyond his desires.’

Hervey frowned. Blood sipped his wine. ‘Five pounds.’

Five pounds! Five! Hervey stiffened on the bench, aware that all the servants were watching him, and he felt the agony of insignificance, of virtue unrewarded, of hatred for Matthew Slythe. Five pounds! It turned out to be the same sum that went to Tobias Horsnell and some of the other servants. Five pounds!

Blood was unaware of the seething indignation to his left. ‘To my beloved children, Samuel and Dorcas Scammell, go those properties described in the marriage settlement.’

Scammell grunted in satisfaction and nudged Campion beside him on the bench. The truth was slow to dawn on her. The marriage settlement? It was part of her father’s will, so that his death had solved nothing. She began to feel the despair of the last few weeks return. Even from the grave Matthew Slythe would control her.

Werlatton Hall, its farms, fields, and all the tenancies attached, went, as expected, to Ebenezer. Her brother did not move as he listened to the wealth shower on him, except to smile at Scammell when the will dictated that Brother Samuel Scammell would administer the wide estate until Ebenezer was of age. If Ebenezer should die without issue, then the Werlatton properties passed intact to Samuel Scammell.

There was little more to the will, except a homily on righteousness that Isaac Blood read tonelessly. It was Matthew Slythe’s last sermon in this hall. Campion did not listen. One thing only was clear to her; that she was a chattel, disposed of in her father’s will, bequeathed to Samuel Scammell.

The sermon over, Isaac Blood folded the stiff papers and looked at the servants. ‘It was Matthew Slythe’s wish that you all continue in service here. I assume that is your wish too?’ He asked the question of Scammell, who smiled, nodded, and made a vague gesture of welcome towards the benches.

‘Good, good.’ Blood sipped his malmsey. ‘And now I would ask the immediate family to stay here alone.’ He indicated Scammell, Ebenezer and Campion who waited on their bench as the servants filed obediently from the room. Faithful Unto Death, unhappy to be lumped with the household servants, hovered expectantly, but Isaac Blood chivvied him politely from the room. The lawyer closed the door and turned back to the family. ‘Your father’s will had one more instruction. If you will be so good as to wait.’ He went back to the lectern and laboriously unfolded the papers again. ‘Ah! Here it is.’

He cleared his throat, sipped some wine and held the paper up to his bloodless face. ‘I was instructed to read this to you in private, and I shall now do so. “My duty to the Covenant is discharged by appointing Samuel Scammell, my son-in-law, to be the holder of the seal in my possession. Should he die before my daughter has reached the age of twenty-five, then the guardianship of the seal will pass to my son, Ebenezer, who will, I know, obey the terms of the Covenant.”’ Isaac Blood glanced sternly at Campion, then looked back at the paper. ‘“Should my daughter, Dorcas, die before her twenty-fifth year and leave no issue, then whoever is the holder of the seal will direct that the monies of the Covenant be used for the spreading of the Gospel to the unenlightened.” There, I’ve read it now.’ Blood looked at Scammell. ‘You understand, Mr Scammell?’

‘Indeed and indeed.’ Scammell smiled and nodded vigorously.

‘Master Ebenezer?’

Ebenezer nodded, though Campion could see a small frown on his face as though he did not fully understand.

‘Miss Dorcas?’

‘No, I don’t understand.’

This was unexpected, for Isaac Blood started with some surprise, and then looked annoyed. ‘You don’t understand?’

Campion stood and walked towards the north-facing windows. ‘What is the Covenant, Mr Blood?’ She felt that her wings had been mangled, torn, bloodied, and she was plummeting helpless to earth. Her father’s death had solved nothing, merely delayed the wedding.

The lawyer ignored her question. He was bundling his papers together. ‘If you will permit some small advice? I would suggest a quiet wedding in the near future. Six weeks perhaps? It would not be unfitting.’ He peered heavily at Samuel Scammell. ‘You understand, Mr Scammell, that the will supposed your marriage, and your position in the household is dependent upon it?’

‘I do understand, yes.’

‘And, of course, it would be Matthew Slythe’s wish that the happy event was not overlong delayed. Things must be regular, Mr Scammell. Regular!’

‘Indeed and indeed.’ Scammell stood to show the lawyer out.

Campion turned from the window. ‘Mr Blood, you did not answer my question. What is the Covenant?’

Her father had been embarrassed by the question, but the lawyer shrugged dismissively. ‘Your marriage portion, Miss Slythe. The estate, of course, was always destined for your brother, but your father made arrangements for your dowry. I fear I know little more. It was handled by a lawyer in London, but I suspect you will find yourself generously provided for.’

‘Indeed.’ Scammell nodded at her, eager for her to be pleased.

There was a brief silence. Campion’s question had been answered and it had offered her no hope of escaping marriage with Scammell. Then Ebenezer’s grating voice was loud in the room. ‘What is “generously”? How much is the Covenant worth?’

Isaac Blood shrugged. ‘I do not know.’

Scammell raised his eyebrows archly, fidgeted, and looked pleased with himself. He was bursting with his news, eager to impress the beautiful, golden-haired girl whom he wanted to embrace. He wanted Campion to approve of him, to like him, and he hoped that his next words would break the dam of her withheld feelings. ‘I can answer that question, indeed I can.’ He smiled at Campion. ‘Last year, as near as we can judge, the Covenant yielded ten thousand pounds.’

‘Dear God!’ Isaac Blood held on to the lectern.

Ebenezer stood up slowly, his face animated for the first time that day. ‘How much?’

‘Ten thousand pounds.’ Scammell said it humbly, as though he were responsible for the profit yet did not want to sound boastful. ‘It fluctuates, of course. Some years more, some less.’

‘Ten thousand pounds?’ Ebenezer’s voice was rising in shocked anger. ‘Ten thousand?’ It was a sum of such vast proportions that it was scarcely conceivable. A king’s ransom, a fortune, a sum far in excess of Werlatton’s income. Ebenezer might expect £700 a year from the estate and now he was hearing that his sister had been given far, far more.

Scammell giggled with pleasure. ‘Indeed and indeed.’ Now, perhaps, Campion would marry him with a glad heart. They would be rich as few in this world are rich. ‘You’re surprised, my dear?’

Campion shared her brother’s disbelief. Ten thousand pounds! It was an unthinkable sum. She was grasping for understanding and failing, but she remembered the words of the will and ignored Samuel Scammell. ‘Mr Blood? Do I comprehend the will to mean that the money becomes mine when I am twenty-five?’

‘Quite so, quite so.’ Isaac Blood was looking at her with a new respect. ‘Not, of course, if you are married, for then the monies will be your dear husband’s, as is proper. But should he predecease you,’ here Blood made an apologetic motion towards Scammell, ‘then, of course, you will take the seal into your own keeping. That much, I think, is clear from the will.’

‘The seal?’ Ebenezer had limped close to the lectern.

Blood was pouring the last of the malmsey into his glass. ‘It merely authenticates the signature on any paper dealing with the Covenant.’

‘But where is it, Mr Blood? Where is it?’ Ebenezer was unusually animated.

The lawyer drank the sweet wine, then shrugged. ‘How would I know, Master Ebenezer? I assume it is in your father’s belongings.’ He stared regretfully into the empty wine glass. ‘You should look for it. I recommend a diligent search.’

He left, after expressing perfunctory but profound sympathies for their sad loss, and Ebenezer and Scammell escorted the lawyer to his horse. Campion was left alone. The sun slanted through leaded windows on to the polished, waxed floorboards. She was still a prisoner here; the fortune of the Covenant changed nothing. She did not understand all the legalities; she only understood that she was trapped.

Samuel Scammell came back into the hall, his shoes squeaking on the boards. ‘My dear? Our fortune surprised you?’

She looked wearily at him. ‘Leave me alone. Please? Leave me alone.’

It was August now, a high, ripening August that promised better crops than for years past. Campion walked through the scented fields, avoiding those where anyone worked, seeking always the solitary places where she could sit and think. She ate alone, slept alone, yet her presence pervaded Werlatton Hall. It was as if her father’s force, his ability to impose a mood upon the house, had passed to her. Goodwife Baggerlie resented it most. ‘She’s got a devil in her, master, you mark my words!’

‘Grief is hard,’ Scammell said.

‘Grief! She’s not grieving!’ Goodwife crossed her arms and stared defiantly at Scammell. ‘She needs a beating, master, that’s all! A good beating! That’ll teach her her place. Her father would have beaten her, God rest his soul, and so you should.’ Goodwife began vigorously dusting the hall table where Scammell was finishing a lonely lunch. ‘She’s lacked for nothing, that girl, nothing! If I’d been given her advantages …’ She tutted, leaving it to Scammell’s imagination what heights Goodwife might have scaled had she been Matthew Slythe’s daughter. ‘Give her a beating, master! Belts aren’t just for holding up breeches!’

Scammell was master now, doling out the servants’ wages and collecting the estate’s rents. Ebenezer helped him, sharing the work and always seeking to ingratiate himself with the older man. They shared a concern, too. The seal of the Covenant could not be found.

Campion did not care. The existence of the Covenant with its extraordinary income did not help her. She was still trapped in a marriage she did not want and neither ten pounds nor ten thousand would reconcile her to Scammell. It was not, she knew, that he was a bad man, though she suspected he was a weak man. He might, she supposed, make a good husband, but not for her. She wanted to be happy, she wanted to be free, and Scammell’s flabby lust was inadequate compensation for the abandonment of her dreams. She was Dorcas and she wanted to be Campion.

She did not swim again – there was no joy in that now – yet she still visited the pool where the purple loosestrife was in flower and remembered Toby Lazender. She could not summon his face in her imagination any more, yet she remembered his gentle teasing, his easy manner, and she daydreamed that one day he might come back to the pool, and rescue her from Werlatton and its crushing rule of the Saints.

She was thinking of Toby one afternoon, a smile on her face for she was imagining him coming, when there were hoofbeats in the meadow behind and she turned, the smile still there, and watched as Ebenezer rode towards her. ‘Sister.’

She held the smile for him. ‘Eb.’ She had hoped, for one mad, exhilarating second, that it was Toby. Instead her brother’s face scowled at her.

She had never been close to Ebenezer, though she had tried so hard. When she had played games in the kitchen garden, safe from her parents’ prying eyes, Ebenezer would never join in. He preferred to sit with his open Bible, memorising the chapter ordained by his father for the day, and even then he had watched his sister with a jaundiced, jealous gaze. Yet he was her brother, her only relative, and Campion had thought much about him during the week. Perhaps Ebenezer could be an ally. She patted the grass beside her. ‘Come and sit down. I wanted to talk to you.’

‘I’m busy.’ He frowned on her. Since their father’s death he had adopted an air of burdened dignity, never more evident than when he shared the ministration of household prayers with Samuel Scammell. ‘I’ve come for the key to your room.’

‘What for?’

‘It’s not for you to ask what for!’ His anger showed as petulance. He held out a hand. ‘I demand it, isn’t that enough? Brother Scammell and I wish to have it! If our dear father was alive you would not be skulking behind locked doors!’

She stood up, brushing the grass from her skirt and unhooked the key from the ring at her waist. ‘You can have it, Eb, but you’ll have to tell me why you want it.’ She spoke patiently.

He glared at her, his face shadowed by his wide-brimmed, black hat. ‘We are searching, sister, for the seal.’

She laughed at that. ‘It’s not in my room, Eb.’

‘It isn’t funny, Dorcas! It isn’t funny! It’s for your benefit, remember, not mine! I don’t get ten thousand a year from it!’

She had held the key towards him, but now she withdrew her hand. She shook her head. ‘You don’t understand, Eb, do you? I don’t want ten thousand pounds. I don’t want anything! I just want to be alone. I don’t want to marry Mr Scammell. We can look after the money, Eb. You and I. We don’t need Mr Scammell!’ The words were tumbling out now. ‘I’ve thought about it, Eb, I really have. We can live here and you can take the money and when you marry I’ll go and live in a house in the village, and we can be happy, Eb! Happy!’

His face had not moved as she spoke. He watched her sourly, disliking her as he always had because she could run while he could not; she could swim naked in a stream while he dragged his twisted, shrunken leg behind him. Now he shook his head. ‘You’re trying to tempt me, aren’t you? You’re offering me money, and why? Because you dislike Brother Scammell. The answer is no, sister. No.’ He threw up a hand to stop her interrupting. ‘It sounds so good, just you and me, but I know what you’d do! You’d run away with the money as soon as you were twenty-five. Well, you won’t, sister, because you’re going to marry, and when you’re married you’ll learn that Brother Scammell and I have an agreement. We will share the money, Dorcas, all three of us, because that’s what Brother Scammell wants. It’s what our father would have wanted and have you thought of that? You think that because he’s dead all his hopes are to be destroyed? That all he prayed for should be destroyed?’ Ebenezer shook his head again. ‘One day, Dorcas, we will meet him again and in a better place than this, and I want him to thank me on that day for being a good and faithful son.’

‘Eb?’

‘The key, sister.’ He thrust his hand out again.

‘You’re wrong, Eb.’

‘The key!’

She gave it to him, then watched as he wrenched violently at the horse’s rein, rowelled savagely with his right spur, and galloped towards the house.

She sat again, the stream placid in front of her, and she knew that her dreams were vain. Ebenezer disliked her, she did not know why, and she suspected that he enjoyed her misery. Ebenezer had inherited more than anger from his father, he had taken too the streak of cruelty that had been in Matthew Slythe. She remembered when Ebenezer was ten how she had found him in the orchard, Clark’s Martyrologie open beside him. The page showed Romish priests disembowelling a Protestant martyr, and she had screamed in anger because, tied to an apple tree, was a small kitten on which Ebenezer was copying the torture, tearing at its tiny, soft stomach with a knife. She had dragged him away from the blood-soaked tree, away from the yowling kitten, and Ebenezer had spat at her, clawed at her, and shouted spitefully that this was the tenth kitten he had so killed. She had been forced to kill the kitten herself, cutting the little throat, and she could remember Ebenezer laughing.

Now Ebenezer was in league with Samuel Scammell. Her marriage portion was to be divided between them and she would have no say in the matter.

There was nothing for her in Werlatton. She watched where the stream ran strong and calm past the pool’s entrance, and she thought that she must leave. She should go with the stream, seeing where it led, and even though she knew that it would be impossible to run away, she knew too that it would be impossible to stay.

She stood up, sad in the afternoon sun, and walked slowly back towards the house.

She entered through the side passage that led past her father’s study. The lawn was pungent with the smell of newly-scythed grass, the sunlight so bright that she was temporarily blinded when she walked into the darkness of the passage. She did not see the man who stood in the door of her father’s room.

‘The bowels of Christ. Who are you?’

Her shoulder was gripped, she was pushed against the wall, and the man grinned at her. ‘Sweet God! A little Puritan maid. Well, well.’ He tilted her chin up with his finger. ‘A ripe little piece of fruit.’

‘Sir!’ It was Samuel Scammell’s voice. He hurried out of the study. ‘Sir! That is Miss Slythe. We are to marry!’

The man let her go. He was big, as big as her father had been, and his face was scarred and ugly. It was a broad face, hard as leather, with a broken nose. At his side was a sword, in his belt a pistol, and he looked from Campion to Scammell. ‘She’s yours?’

‘Indeed, sir!’ Scammell sounded nervous. The man frightened him.

‘Only the best, eh? She’s the answer to a Puritan’s prayer, and no mistake. I hope you know how damned lucky you are. Does she have it?’

‘No!’ Scammell shook his head. ‘Indeed, no!’

The man stared at Campion. ‘We’ll talk later, miss. Don’t run away.’

She ran. She was terrified of him, of the smell of him and the violence that he radiated. She went to the stable-yard that was warm in the sunlight and sat on the mounting block and let the kittens come to her. They rolled about her hand, fur warm and sharp clawed and she blinked back tears. She must run away! She must go far from this place, but there was nowhere to go. She must run.

There were footsteps in the archway to the yard. She looked left, and there was the man. He must have followed her. He came swiftly towards her, his sword clanging against the water trough, and before she could move he had seized her shoulder and pushed her once more against the wall. His breath stank. His leather soldier’s jerkin was greasy. He smiled, showing rotten, stained teeth. ‘Now, miss, I’ve come all the way from London so you’re going to be nice to me, aren’t you?’

‘Sir?’ She was terrified.

‘Where is it?’

‘Where’s what, sir?’ She was struggling, but was helpless against his huge strength.

‘God’s bowels, woman! Don’t play with me!’ he shouted, hurting her shoulder with his hand. Then he smiled again. ‘Pretty little Puritan, aren’t we? Wasted on that bladder of a man.’ He stayed smiling as his right knee jerked upwards, forcing her legs apart, and he pushed it up between her thighs, reaching down with his free hand for the hem of her skirt.

‘That’s enough, mister!’ The voice came from her right. Tobias Horsnell, the stable-man, stood easily in a doorway, the musketoon that was used to kill sick beasts held in his hand. ‘I doubt this be good, mister. Let her go.’

‘Who are you?’

‘I’m the one who should be asking that.’ Horsnell seemed unconcerned by the man’s crude and violent air. He twitched the gun. ‘You take your hands off her. Now what be this about?’

The man had stepped back, releasing her. He brushed his hands as if she had been filthy. ‘She has something I want.’

Horsnell looked at Campion. He was a thin man, his wiry forearms burned black by the sun. He was taciturn in household prayers, though he was one of the few servants who had learned to read and Campion had watched him laboriously mouth the words of the Bible. ‘Is that true, Miss Dorcas?’

‘No!’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t even know what it is!’

‘What is it, mister?’

‘A seal.’ The man seemed to be gauging whether he would have time to pull the pistol from his belt, but Tobias Horsnell kept his musketoon steady and his voice neutral. ‘Do you have the seal, Miss Dorcas?’

‘No.’

‘There, mister. That be your answer. I think you should go.’ The musketoon added force to his polite suggestion and Horsnell kept the weapon levelled till the stranger had left the yard. Only then did he drop the muzzle and give her a slow smile.’ ‘Twasn’t loaded, but the Lord looks after us. I hope you told the truth, Miss Dorcas.’

‘I did.’

‘Good, God be praised. He was an ungodly man, Miss Dorcas, and there be plenty like him outside these walls.’

She frowned at the words. She had spoken little with Tobias Horsnell, for he was a man who stayed away from the house except for prayers, yet he seemed to have divined her intention of running away. Why else would he have stressed the dangers outside Werlatton’s estate?

She smoothed the collar of her dress. ‘Thank you.’

‘You thank your Lord and Saviour, miss. In times of trouble He’ll be at hand.’ He had stooped to pick up and fondle one of the kittens. ‘I could tell you tales of His mercy, Miss Dorcas.’

‘And tales of His punishment, Mr Horsnell?’

It was a question she would never have dared put to her father, nor would her father have given her the answer that his stable-man now gave. He shrugged, and spoke as matter-of-factly as if he were talking of hoof-oil or dung shovels. ‘God loves us, miss, that’s all I do know. Wind or blow, Miss Dorcas, He loves us. You pray, miss, and the answer will be there.’

Yet she knew the answer already and had been too blind to see it. She knew what she had to do. She had to do what the strange man had failed to do, what her brother had failed to do, and what Samuel Scammell had failed to do. She must find the seal and hope that it would be the key to a door which led to freedom. She smiled.

‘Pray for me, Mr Horsnell.’

He smiled back. ‘Nigh these twenty years, Miss Dorcas, I’ve done that. Reckon I won’t stop now.’

She would find the seal.