Richardson worked his way round the little room. He was methodical, as in everything he did. He turned over the books and examined the table, even peering underneath it. Beside it on the floor was a wooden box containing Soresby’s notes, and he tipped the contents on the table and sifted them with his forefinger. He searched the small press where Soresby kept his few clothes and a jumble of items, from candle ends to rusty needles.
Soresby’s breathing was fast and irregular. The young man was hot, too, as if running a fever. Holdsworth felt the heat coming from his body, and also a sour smell, as if fear were expressing itself as an odour.
At last the tutor came to the bed. He stripped it down to the straw mattress. He examined the bolster and the pillow. Underneath he found dust, a pot that slopped urine when he moved it, and the skeleton of a mouse. He turned his attentions to the mattress itself, feeling and kneading it on both sides, like a physician conscientiously searching for lumps all over his patient’s body.
Suddenly he looked up. ‘There appears to be a rectangular object lodged in the straw, Mr Soresby. Here – where the stitching has come adrift. Would you be so good as to extract it for me?’
Soresby swallowed. He opened his mouth and closed it again. He did not move.
‘Did you hear me, sir?’ Richardson said sharply.
Soresby stumbled across the room and fell to his knees by the bed. Richardson stood aside, watching. The student pushed his hand into the canvas cover that contained the straw.
‘Not there,’ Richardson said. ‘The other side.’
Soresby’s hand wriggled invisibly, changing position. Then, at last, he brought out a leather-bound quarto. Wide-eyed, he sat back on his heels and stared at it.
‘Pray give it me, sir,’ Richardson prompted.
Barely a yard separated the two men. Still on his knees, like a supplicant, Soresby held out the book to Richardson. The tutor took it and opened it, turning to the title-page. He angled the volume so Holdsworth could see it too.
‘I swear,’ Soresby said in a hoarse whisper, ‘I swear I -’
‘Pray do not add perjury to your other sins, sir. Well, we shall take our leave for the moment. You will stay in your room until I send for you.’ The tutor turned to Holdsworth. ‘It distresses me that you should have had to witness such a disagreeable interview. But may I trespass further on your good nature and ask you to accompany me to the Master’s Lodge?’
He gave Soresby the slightest of bows and left the room with his nose in the air, as if trying to raise it as far as possible above the stench of moral corruption in the atmosphere.
Holdsworth followed. In the doorway he turned back. Soresby was still on his knees. His face was a dirty white colour, almost grey. His eyes were wide and blank. Only his hands were moving. A finger joint cracked.
34
Philip Whichcote dismounted from the hack and opened the gate. He led the horse into the yard, and the sound of its hooves sent a dozen doves fluttering into the air. When he released the reins, the horse walked to the trough and lowered its head over the water.
Whichcote tried the heavy door of the mill. It was locked. He had found the place easily enough. The ostlers at the livery stable had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the surrounding countryside, and one of them had once worked for Mr Smedley, the college’s tenant at Whitebeach. Whichcote knew that the next hour could settle the direction of his future life. Prudence pointed one way. His instincts urged him in the opposite direction.
There were footsteps behind him.
Mulgrave appeared at the corner of the thatched cottage on one side of the yard. He marched unsteadily forward, tilting to and fro as he shifted his weight between the shorter leg and the longer. He stopped a few paces from Whichcote. The two men stared in silence at each other.
‘Thought I heard hooves,’ the gyp said at last with the gloomy satisfaction of one who feared the worst and now at least has the comfort of knowing he was right.
‘I’m come to call on Mr Oldershaw. Where is he?’
Mulgrave spat on the cobbles, scarcely a foot away from Whichcote’s boot. ‘He ain’t at home to visitors.’
‘Damn your impudence,’ Whichcote snapped.
Suddenly furious, he drew himself up to his full height. All the worry and frustration of the last few months flooded together and funnelled into a glorious surge of rage. Without pausing for thought, he swept up his right arm and slashed the whip across Mulgrave’s face.
Taken unawares, the gyp tried too late to step back from the blow, putting his weight on his bad leg. He missed his footing and fell to the ground. Whichcote cut him again with the whip, this time sending the tip curling around the angle between Mulgrave’s neck and shoulder.
The gyp howled and scrambled to his feet. He had lost his hat and wig. He ran back the way he had come, staggering, but moving surprisingly fast. Whichcote stalked after him, swinging the whip, his riding boots clattering and slipping on the cobbles. His anger had found a safe target. He felt almost grateful to Mulgrave.
He rounded the end of the cottage and found himself in a neglected garden.
Mulgrave was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he had taken refuge in the cottage, or even in the mill beyond. Whichcote caught sight of a figure by the water, barely visible beyond the unpruned fruit trees at the bottom of the garden.
A whipping, then a ducking. That would teach the knave a lesson.
He realized his mistake before he reached the trees. It was Frank himself down there, quite alone, and sitting with his back to the cottage. His coat and hat lay beside him on the grass. There was a rod in his hand and the line trailed limply into the water, shifting with the current. He did not turn as Whichcote drew nearer, though he must have heard the approaching footsteps.
Prudence, Whichcote told himself. He felt unusually calm now. He would play the long game.
‘Frank!’ Whichcote drew level and smiled down at him, knowing that now he must dissemble as never before. He shifted the whip to his left hand, ready to shake Frank’s hand with his right. ‘I give you good day. I am rejoiced to see you.’
Frank laid down the rod and stood up. He ignored Whichcote’s outstretched hand and bowed stiffly.
‘And looking so well,’ Whichcote went on, placing the spurned hand negligently on his hip as if that had been his intention all along. ‘Why, you are a positive advertisement for the beneficial effects of rural pursuits. I declare you tempt me to come and live in seclusion with you. We shall do nothing but fish and shoot and ride, and be happy the livelong day. Are you quite alone?’
Frank said nothing, but Whichcote fancied he nodded. It was difficult to be sure because the sun was low in the sky. It was behind Frank, obscuring his face and shining into Whichcote’s eyes. The heavy golden light caught the ends of Frank’s hair, which he was wearing loose and unpowdered for all the world as though he were a ploughboy.
‘I am sorry to say I was obliged to discipline your servant as I came in,’ Whichcote went on. ‘That man Mulgrave – damn the fellow, he’s old enough to know better. He was downright impudent. You should turn him out of your service, you really should.’
He paused but Frank said nothing.
‘Your friends are anxious for news. May I tell them you are fully restored? When will you be back among us?’
He heard sounds behind him, and turned. Mulgrave was limping down the path. The gyp stopped beside the trees, keeping a safe distance between himself and Whichcote. There was already a weal burning across his left cheek, and another cut like a red furrow around his neck, just below the jaw.
‘He took a whip to me, sir,’ Mulgrave called. ‘Ain’t right. I’m not his servant. And he owes me money, too.’
‘Hold your tongue,’ Frank snapped, his sense of propriety outraged by Mulgrave’s daring to speak so rudely of his betters.
‘You’ll chastise him yourself, I hope,’ Whichcote said. ‘Good God, what is the world coming to?’
Frank turned his eyes back to Whichcote. With sudden violence, he leaped forward and seized the older man around the waist. Whichcote, taken entirely by surprise, at first made no attempt to defend himself. Frank pulled
