tree?’
Susan, always rosy, became purple-faced. ‘Oh, ma’am – the one by the pond, the Founder’s tree. He fooled me something terrible, he did, said he wanted to see my new cloak – you remember, ma’am? You’d just given it to me, and I’m so grateful, truly I am. So I slipped out in the night, he came over the wall from his lodging and he wanted to touch the cloak, and he was saying it was soft and warm like my skin, and then it was fondling and kissing and sweet words, and then -’
‘Stop,’ Elinor commanded. ‘But it was night-time. How did you get out of the house?’
For an instant she surprised on the girl’s face a smug, almost mocking superiority. ‘Oh, ma’am,’ Susan said, ‘he made me come down the back stairs and let myself out the garden door. He’d left the gate at the bridge unlocked when he was doing his rounds. And he was there waiting for me.’
Elinor thought how cold the March night must have been, and how warm their desire.
‘But I learned my lesson, ma’am. Next time we tried it, I had a terrible fright. I was there first, see, and someone bumped into me in the dark.’ She stared at Elinor with large brown eyes. ‘So I never went there again.’
No, Elinor thought, you and Ben used the wash-house in the daytime instead. ‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘The person you encountered in the dark, the person who wasn’t Ben. I suppose it was Mr Frank Oldershaw?’
45
After supper, Mrs Phear made tea, humming as she set to work. Whichcote sat back in his chair. The curtains were drawn across the window, and the door was shut. He listened to the humming and the chink of spoons on china and the rustle of water into the pot. For the first time in days, he felt tranquil. When all this was done, he thought, he would move to London, and perhaps winter abroad in a dry and sunny climate where money would stretch further. He had had enough of the dampness of Cambridge with its Fen fogs and its dreary, provincial inhabitants.
Mrs Phear passed him his cup. ‘You look a little better now. I declare you seemed quite hag-ridden when you came to the house.’
‘It has not been easy, dear madam. I am like a rat in a hole. If you’d not been here to lend a helping hand I might be still in that sponging house.’
She frowned at him, rejecting his gratitude. ‘When will you send the first letters?’
‘Tomorrow, I think. To start with, I have a peer of the realm, a dean, an under-secretary at the Ministry of War and a member of the Royal Household.’
‘It will take time. No one likes parting with money.’
‘I have time,’ Whichcote said. ‘Too much time.’
‘Though of course it is not merely money that’s the issue here. If this scandal with the girl rears its head, you will need powerful friends who feel it in their own interest to oblige you.’
They stayed together for another hour, sometimes talking, sometimes sitting in a comfortable silence. Mrs Phear took up her embroidery. At one point Whichcote was on the verge of drifting into a doze to the sound of her humming; and when he snapped awake, he was momentarily confused, believing himself a boy again in his father’s house, sitting in the little parlour with Mrs Phear and nodding over his book.
He left the house at about a quarter past eleven, with Augustus beside him to carry the lantern. Inevitably they were obliged to walk slowly because Trumpington Street was ill-paved and ill-lit. Pembroke Lane was even darker and dirtier underfoot.
‘You are to return to Mrs Phear’s tonight,’ Whichcote said to Augustus. ‘I shall expect you to wait on me in the morning as soon as the gates open. I intend to make an early start of it.’
They were passing the dark open space of the Leys on the right. Ahead, and on the left, was the faint glow of the lamp on the corner of the Beast Market.
All of a sudden, Whichcote sensed the presence of danger. Perhaps there had been a sound or even a movement of the air. Something alerted him but the warning came too late.
There were running footsteps behind him. The lantern was thrown to the ground, extinguishing the flame, and rolled away with a clatter. Someone seized his arm. Whichcote swung round, trying to bring his stick to bear, but his assailant twisted the wrist and forced him to drop it. His other arm was gripped and pushed up behind his back.
He shouted for help. A hand clamped over his mouth, strangling the sound. Panic rose in his throat. He gasped for air.
Thieves, damn them, but they would not find much in his purse. How many? All he had seen were indistinct silhouettes against the night sky. Two or three, possibly four.
He struggled but it was no use. They held him tightly and dragged him into the field. In the distance he heard more footsteps, but they were running down the street, not towards him. That damned cowardly boy had abandoned him.
Did they mean to murder him?
His attackers threw him to the ground. He was face down in the mud with the taste of earth on his tongue. Someone kneeled on his back, jolting his spine. Many hands turned him this way and that. A rough and foul-tasting rag was thrust into his mouth. He gagged, fighting the urge to vomit.
It was at this point that he realized that these were no thieves. No one had said a word. They were not searching his pockets or snatching at his rings. Then what the devil did they want?
They bound his arms and legs with ropes, tightening them until he yelped at the pain. They grasped his legs and his shoulders, and swung him into the air. They marched deeper and deeper into the darkness. With every step they took, the jolting bruised his body.
Time and distance lost their meaning. He was aware of nothing but pain and fear. They stopped abruptly. A bolt scraped. A hinge squealed. They carried him a few more yards and dropped him. He landed heavily and the impact winded him. He lay on the ground, whimpering.
The door closed behind him. One bolt rattled home, followed by another. His nose pressed into cold earth. There was a smell of pigs. There was no one to hear him, no one to save him. He could not move.
Tears forced their way through his eyelids. What were they going to do? His assailants must have some purpose. They had made him as helpless as a baby in swaddling clothes.
An uncomfortable memory flooded into his mind: Tabitha Skinner, all in white, her face discoloured, tied to the bed with her legs apart, and waiting for the Holy Ghost to ravish her.
Elinor Carbury’s bedchamber was next to her sitting room. She pressed her face against the window, to avoid the reflections of the room behind her. Her breath misted the glass. In daylight, if she stood to the right, and craned her head, she would be able to see the wall of the service yard and, if she stood on tiptoe, a corner of the private gate to Jerusalem Lane. She saw none of these things now because it was dark.
An orange glow flickered and danced on the wall of the yard. She was almost sure of it. She could not see the source of the glow, only a faint, blurred reflection of the movement of flames.
Elinor was still dressed. Further along the passage, Dr Carbury lay snoring gently, wrapped in the peace that only opium could give him. There was a night nurse sitting beside him. She was a sensible, experienced woman who could be relied on to do her duty. Ben had been sent away to his lodgings. Susan was in her attic. For a few precious minutes, even hours, Elinor was as free as air.
She draped a shawl round her shoulders and went quietly downstairs. She unbolted and unlocked the garden door and went outside. She waited on the path, listening, feeling the coolness of the evening grow on her cheek. Her breath was coming more quickly than usual.
She set off along the flagged path. The entrance to the yard was just before the Jerusalem Lane gate, bounded to the north by the crumbling, windowless wall of Yarmouth Hall. She heard the flames crackling as they devoured the fuel.
The fire was brighter than Elinor had expected, shockingly vivid against the darkness. Holdsworth was standing beside the brazier. He must have heard her footsteps because he was looking in her direction. The flames changed his face, making it fiery and fluid, turning him into a devilish stranger. Suddenly she was mortally afraid.
