must go indoors. It would not do for you to catch a chill.’
It was only afterwards, as she lay in bed hugging herself and thinking of what had happened, thinking of the feel of him on her skin and the taste of him in her mouth, that she realized she had forgotten to tell John Holdsworth about the ghost.
46
Philip Whichcote did not sleep. As the long night hours drifted past, he lay in a paralysis of discomfort varied with stabs of cramp that became steadily more frequent and more acute.
He did not know who had attacked him, or why. Did they mean to leave him here to die? Did they mean to murder him?
The temperature dropped lower and lower. A full bladder caused him exquisite unhappiness until at last he lost control of it and there was a new element added to his misery. The bells of Cambridge chimed, muffled and distant, marking the hours of his suffering. He slipped into a trance-like state, neither waking nor sleeping.
A crack of metal roused him. Then another. The bolts were sliding back. He opened his eyes. It was growing light. There were footsteps behind him. He knew there was more than one person because he felt their hands on him and heard their breathing. A dark, coarse material was thrown over his head and pulled down over his shoulders. They lashed the material down with a strap passed around his neck.
They hauled him to his feet. But his legs gave way underneath him and he collapsed. His captors hooked their arms under his armpits, one on either side, and dragged him outside. He lost consciousness from the pain of it.
When Whichcote came to, he was again lying face down. Something was rattling and jolting his body. His limbs were no longer bound and his head was uncovered. The gag had been removed. His mouth was parched and his tongue felt swollen and alien. There was a foul smell in his nostrils and his face was moist.
Iron-shod wheels rattled on paving stones. He retched and brought out a mouthful of sour liquid. He tried to turn himself over and sit up. He called out, ‘Stop!’ but his mouth had lost the habit of speaking and the word came out as another mouthful of thin vomit.
He heard voices and the rumble of other wheels. The cart jolted over a kerbstone, swayed and came to a halt. The air was full of nagging voices, as vulgar and insistent as quarrelling magpies.
He rolled over and sat up. To his astonishment, there was a burst of cheering.
‘Make way for My Lord Shit in his chariot!’ a man shouted.
The cheers turned to laughter and catcalls. Whichcote looked about him. He realized that he was sitting in a handcart in front of the main entrance of Jerusalem College. The forecourt was crowded with college servants, dozens of them, men and women, waiting for Mepal to open the gates. Whichcote put his hand to his head. His wig and hat had gone. His coat was ripped and soiled.
Oh God. He was sitting in the night-soil cart in a pool of excrement before all the world.
All of a sudden the jeering diminished, though it did not die away. Tom Turdman let down the flap at the side of the cart with a great clatter, exposing Whichcote like a freak at Stourbridge Fair.
‘Look at his breeches!’ a woman screeched. ‘My Lord Shit’s pissed himself!’
The crowd parted, making way for two burly men in black who were advancing towards the handcart.
‘Good morning, Mr Whichcote,’ said the older man, who had a large red face and a rounded belly that went before him like a great cushion. ‘Here we are again. I’ve got four writs against you, I’m afraid. Unless you’ve the upwards of two thousand pounds in your pocket, I’m afraid I shall have to ask you to accompany me again to Mr Purser’s.’
Whichcote looked wildly about him, hoping against hope to find a friendly face in the crowd. He caught sight of Mulgrave only a few yards away, standing with a squat little man nearly as broad as he was tall. They were both staring at Whichcote. The other man murmured something in Mulgrave’s ear. The gyp smiled and fingered the red mark on his cheek.
Good God, Whichcote thought, that’s where I hit the crooked little knave. And this is his revenge.
A few paces behind Mulgrave was his own footboy near the gate, waiting admittance to the college.
‘Boy,’ Whichcote called, suddenly finding his voice. ‘Come here this moment.’
Augustus seemed not to hear.
‘This instant, I say!’ Whichcote called. ‘Quick!’
Mulgrave turned and laid his hand on Augustus’s arm. Mepal unlocked the college gate and swung it open. But no one entered the college. They were watching Whichcote. This was the revenge of the servants, the cruellest revenge of all.
‘You come along with me, sir,’ said the bailiff. ‘We’ll soon have everything pleasant and comfortable.’
The sand on the floor needed changing. The air was heavy with old tobacco smoke. The glass on the windows was coated with pale yellow-green grime.
A waiter wandered over, wiping his hands on a dirty apron. ‘Good morning, sir.’
‘I am engaged to meet someone,’ Holdsworth said, looking round the low-ceilinged room. The place was almost empty. ‘A pot of coffee while I wait, if you please, with two cups.’
He chose a table in a booth with a view of the door. While he waited, he took a letter from his pocket. A groom in Lady Anne’s livery had arrived with it just as he was leaving college. He toyed with the letter but did not break the seal. He knew what her ladyship would say: that now her son was restored to himself, Holdsworth should bring him back to London immediately.
Why not? There was no longer anything for Frank to fear from Philip Whichcote. The records of the Holy Ghost Club were destroyed. Thanks to Mulgrave, Whichcote himself was in the sponging house and it was unlikely that either he or Mrs Phear would be able to pay his debts. If Whichcote were lucky, he might find a way to flee to the continent. If not, if the worst came to the worst for him, he could anticipate only a transfer from the sponging house to a debtors’ prison, where he would grow old and die. Better to be trundling a barrow of broken-backed books through the streets of London than that.
After all, what did it matter what had happened to Sylvia Whichcote? The unhappy woman was dead and nothing they could do would bring her back. But Frank Oldershaw was restored to himself. That was something worth having. Somehow life had to continue. One could not allow the dead to act as a brake on the living.
Holdsworth broke the seal on the letter. But he still did not unfold it. He had hardly slept last night. Confused memories of Maria and Georgie had jostled in his mind with newer but in some ways equally confused memories of Elinor Carbury, particularly as she had appeared beside the brazier, lit like a devilish temptation by the flames. His own behaviour, his own desires, were perfectly vile to him. He lusted after a woman whose husband lay dying. And he could not altogether rid his mind of the notion that perhaps she too had a kindness for him. She had not moved away from him at once. And had not her lips parted a little when he kissed her mouth?
The light changed. He looked up. Soresby was standing in the doorway of the coffee house. He saw Holdsworth and gave a start, as if Holdsworth were the last person he had expected to find. The sizar’s face was even more gaunt than usual. He looked not only shabby and dirty but also ill. Holdsworth beckoned him over and called to the waiter to hurry with the coffee and to bring a plate of rolls as well.
‘Mr Holdsworth, words cannot express my -’
‘Have something to eat and drink first,’ Holdsworth said. ‘Then you can search for the right words.’
The waiter, scenting a tip, did not delay. Soresby ate four rolls and drank three cups of coffee. Holdsworth watched, remembering how, less than a month before, he himself had fallen like a ravening wolf on Mr Cross’s sherry and biscuits in St Paul’s Coffee House. It wasn’t easy to act a man’s part on an empty belly.
‘Mr Archdale tells me you wish to ask my opinion about what you should do,’ he said when Soresby had paused.
‘All I ever wanted, sir,’ Soresby said in a rush, ‘was to be a scholar. Why will they not let me? And to come so near to it and to see my prospects blighted for ever through no fault of my own -’
