by Andre Norton
When the maid appeared, she was plainly full of news. “ ‘Twas set, Squire says,” she burst out before she was hardly through the door.” ‘Twas a wicked thing to do; they got the poor beasts out, but only just. And didn't Mick feel sick in the night they might have all burned, men and beasts together! Right wicked it was—and Squire says as how the law will make it a hanging matter, too!”
“But who would do such a thing?”
“Well might you ask, miss.” Liz looked at her slyly, and Nan knew what the maid was thinking. Her father had more enemies hereabouts than one could total up on the fingers of both hands.
She flushed. It was horrible to be hated, to think someone was so mad as to threaten the lives of men and animals by cruel fire just because he hated so blackly.
“The Squire, he has offered ten guineas—he said it to all who were there—for the name of him as did it. And ten guineas—that is a mighty sum, miss. There'll be men as will come with news hoping to lay hand on that.”
“But if no one was seen,” Nan began.
“Miss, it was a dark night. Anyone can swear he saw something, and who can say he be right or wrong?”
Nan drew a deep breath. She understood Liz's meaning. If anyone in the village had a spite for another, this would be the time to work that off and get a small fortune, or what would seem a small fortune, in return.
“There would have to be proof,” she said with a confidence she did not feel. She knew her father's hard angers. Would he ask for much in the way of proof? And any man desperate or vile enough to betray another would make his story as strong as possible.
“I know who Squire wants.” Liz shot another of those sly, unpleasant glances at her. “Master Fitton, he came with his men to help put out the fire at the farm. Squire ordered him away.”
Nan sat down on the edge of the bed. She felt very cold inside. Yes, above all, her father would relish hanging such a crime on someone connected with the inn. She did not know the law, but perhaps if her father could prove that, he might in turn somehow get the inn itself.
“That is only suspicion, Liz,” she returned as stoutly as she could. “No one must be named without proof. You know that Master Fitton would no more burn out a neighbor than he would set fire to his own place.”
“Maybe not him, miss. But he ain't the only man—or boy—at the Red Hart.”
Nan got back into bed. The sheets were very chilly about her. She knew what Liz was suggesting. But that was outright folly! Chris Fitton would not set fire to the home farm, just because her father had once ordered him off Manor land and tried to lash him. Chris had dodged that blow—his face had gone very white under the tan, and his eyes had seemed to glitter. He had been wild with anger then, Nan knew that, even if he had said nothing, simply turned and stalked away.
Remembering the whole scene now, she thought that his silent withdrawal had fed her father's rage even more. But she must not say anything which might point up Liz's suggestion. Of course, no matter how much her father might wish to find him guilty, Chris Fitton was not.
But she could not go back to sleep, even though she lay still and breathed evenly, hoping Liz would be fooled. Instead she tried to think of what her father might do. Would he really bribe someone to swear it was Chris or someone else from the inn? If so, was there anything she could do? Over and over again, until her head began to ache, her thoughts followed the same pattern.
Chris pulled off his clothing and rolled into bed. With no hot brick at the foot, it was beastly cold. But worse than the icy sheets around his shivering body was what his father had pointed out and his own memory of that figure who had hailed him from the dark. He tried vainly to remember the voice, and so put a name to the lurker. But he could not. The fact that someone knew he had been in the bushes watching the fire remained a threat he would have to live with—
He dozed twice that night, awaking each time with a start of terror from a nightmare. And he was only too happy to have Peter, the potboy, knock on his door in the first light to say his father wanted him. Chris, after he had dressed, splashed icy water on his face, pulled a comb raggedly through his hair, and clattered down the back stairs.
The warmth and the food smells in the kitchen were comforting, but he had to leave those, go on to the room where he had fronted Sergeant Major Fitton the night before. At his father's answer to his knock Chris braced himself to enter.
There was a paper lying on the table. Even upside down, Chris could read the bold outline of the top line of three words: HUE AND CRY. This was the sheet that the Bow Street magistrates sent out to all inns and tollgates in the country, bearing a list of crimes and descriptions of wanted men. His father always posted it in the taproom and read the facts aloud to all those servants who could not spell them out or to villagers who were ignorant of their letters.
Ira Fitton still wore a crumpled shirt with an ash streak across one sleeve, and he looked very tired. He had another paper folded up and sealed with the dark wax he kept for special occasions. With the tip of the quill pen he held, he pointed Chris to one of the stools.
“The mail will be through in a half hour if they are making regular time. I shall give this to Worcester, who owes me a favor. With ordinary luck it will reach London by tomorrow afternoon. Worcester will see it gets to Bow Street, to Harry Hawkins—”
Harry Hawkins—Father had served with him in the Peninsula under the Duke and later they had been together at Waterloo. Afterward, Harry had gone into the Bow Street runners, was one of those thief-takers who were noted for good service.
“I may be crying to arms when there is no attack,” Ira Fit-ton continued. “But given Mallory's temperament and the fact that you were on his land last night, and apparently seen, I think it wise to take my own steps for your protection. Private people can hire the runners when it is a criminal matter. I am asking Harry down to have a look into this. We must hope that he is not otherwise busy and will come.”
“You think—” Chris glanced from his father's frowning face to his own dirty hands, still carrying the marks of last night's struggle to beat out the racing flames.
“I think that you have been a fool and that you may be in bad trouble. News came with Tomkins this morning—he made sure I would hear it, so I know that suspicion is already pointed this way—Mallory has offered ten guineas for information leading to the arrest of the one who fired the rick and so destroyed the barn.”
Chris swallowed. Ten guineas—that was a fortune! To anyone in the village, it would be a temptation.
“Now"—his father leaned forward a little—"suppose you tell me more about this shadow who called you by name.”
“I have been trying most of the night to remember. It was a boy, I am sure. But I did not see his face.”
“Sampson Dykes?”
Chris shook his head. “No, I know Sampson. That wasn't his voice.”
“Have you had dealings with any of the village boys who might want to wish you harm?”
Again Chris shook his head. He did not go around looking for fights. There were some, he knew, who envied him living in the inn, even the fact that he went to Mr. Preston, the Vicar, twice a week for schooling. But no one had ever shown him active ill will.
“It can well be,” his father continued, “that he whom you saw was the actual one who did the firing. As for trying to find one of those hereabouts who hates the Squire more than another, that is going to be a lengthy task. It is more likely that someone will give in a name, either for the money or to save his own neck. And the Squire, being a Justice, can then pronounce his own sentence forthwith.”
Chris clasped his hands together more tightly so that his father would not see how they shook. He could well believe it would all happen just as his father said and that he might well be the one named.
“For the moment"—his father arose, the folded and sealed letter in his hand—"we shall do nothing. You will not talk of this matter, nor of that boy, to anyone. You will act as you always do,
nor will you answer any questions. Do you understand?”
Chris agreed in a low voice.
Nan pushed her needle through the cloth stretched on the embroidery frame. At the moment she had no governess, so there were no lessons in painting or polite manners or the other things a “lady” must learn. She liked reading, but the books left in the big library, after her father had bought both the house and most of its furnishings, were not very interesting. Many were in Latin, or were volumes of sermons as dry as the dust which lay upon them. She was bored through the long days with just needlework and Aunt Margaret's thin voice, which always sounded near a whine, going on and on about family connections who were dead long before Nan was born.
Aunt Margaret was one of Mother's family, and really she was Nan's great-aunt—a shriveled-up little wisp of a woman who now had only the importance of her own birth to give her any pride. She had early striven to impress upon Nan that her mother was a Ruthven and had given up much to marry a mere Mallory, wealthy though he might be. Nevertheless, as Nan had noted, Aunt Margaret was quick to “yes” her father whenever chance threw them together; which was not too often, since Squire Mallory resented that he did not have a son and made it very clear that Nan was not satisfactory as a substitute.
“Such a pother.” Aunt Margaret was sorting embroidery silks, holding one skein against another very close to her eyes. “Depend upon it, the criminal will be speeedily found. Any of these villagers will snatch at gold—”
“What,” asked Nan, “if someone says the wrong name then just to get the money Father offered?”
Aunt Margaret sniffed. “It is none of your affair, miss, what is done. It was a murderous thing, for men were asleep there and beasts. This blue is a sad match. I should not have sent Mary to buy it; that girl has no true sense of color at all.”
Nan took three stitches. She had become tolerably good at this work and admitted that Aunt Margaret, for all her stupid stories and talkativeness, was a good teacher. They now had ahead of them the project of recovering all the seats of the small chairs in the parlor. Nan sighed to herself, just thinking about what that would mean in years of work.
“Your father"—Aunt Margaret had set the offending skein of blue to one side—"has sent for Hal Chickett's hound. They will cast around for a trail.”
“I don't see how they can. Near everyone from the village was there,” Nan pointed out, “so how can the dog sniff out the one who was guilty from all the rest?”
“Your father seems to have some information he has not spread abroad. Now this rose is good for shading, but the other is too faint a color; it will look sun-streaked before it really is. Mind how you stitch, girl.” She snapped her thimble-tipped finger down on the edge of the frame sharply. “This is too fine a stuff to have to pick out ill-set lines!”
“Yes, Aunt Margaret.” Nan made herself answer that meekly and sweetly. She longed to know what made her father think he could sort out one trail from all those around the farm. And if so, be sure that trail was the right one?
The day wore on dully. They stitched; they had a small lunch in the morning room. Then Aunt Margaret retired to nap, and Nan wandered into the library to hunt for a book. It was a gray day, and the shadows were almost as thick as at evening. Outside the window sounded the soft hiss of falling snow. Nan watched it. That would certainly spoil her father's plan of using the hound. And she found she was glad.
No, Nan told herself in horror, it was not that she wanted the wicked person to escape. But her trust in her father's judgment was small; she was sure he would be only too pleased to fasten the crime on someone whom he already disliked, if he had only a fraction of evidence to guide him.
She crept behind one of the long red brocade curtains, so sun-faded and full of ancient dust that even the vigorous actions of the maids Aunt Margaret spurred on could never clean them completely. The wall here was part of the oldest section of the house and very thick, so that the window was in a recess and there was a broad seat for an inner sill. Nan knelt on it to watch the snow coming down, covering the tracks on the drive without. It was cold, but she had brought her woolen shawl, which she drew more closely about her.
A sound from the room startled her. She did not move when she heard her father's voice raised in that tight tone he used when greatly angered.
“In here, you rogue! And do not think to deceive me. I know very well your mangy stock and that your brother has uttered threats against me. Had I proof of his ill-doing, he would be wearing chains in Rye jail long since. And there would be no mercy to send him overseas, either.”
Nan squirmed around on the window seat. She inspected the length of the curtain folds before her and sighted what she had hoped might be there—a slit where the old cloth had given away and Aunt Margaret had not yet darned a mend. Using her fingers very carefully, she spread that slit so she could see a portion of the room.
Her father stood on the hearth, still wearing his topcoat and hat. One hand swung his whip, so that the lash caught against one of the fire irons with a menacing and threatening sound.
Before him cowered a ragged boy, a piece of sacking cobbled around him for a coat. His hair stood out above his head in a matted thatch, but Nan could not see his face clearly, only his chilblained hands, near blue with cold, and his feet wrapped in sacking from the top of which sprouted wisps of the straw he had used to stuff about his feet.
“Now"—her father leaned forward, his face sharply eager, as if he were on the brink of learning something that would please him greatly—"now, tell the truth, fellow!”
“It be the truth, Squire—”
Nan started. She might not have recognized the ill-clad boy, but she knew the voice. It was Tim Dykes, whose oldest brother had been transported for poaching. Was he the one—? But her father did not act as if he had his prey to hand, rather as if he expected some information of value.
“Very well, give me the truth, fellow, and I'll keep my part of the bargain. Ten golden boys—” Squire Mallory reached into an inner pocket and brought out a netted purse. He shook it so there was no mistaking the metallic chime of what lay inside. “Ten golden boys for the truth!”
“I did see ‘im, Squire. He be a-hid in the bush like, watchin’ the fire. Me, I came up when I heard the shoutin’ and all. There he was. No mistakin’ ‘im—I saw him clear—just a-hid and watchin’.”
“And who was watching?”
“Him from the inn, Squire, him what thinks he's so big and all—'twas that Chris Fitton.”
Squire Mallory laughed. “Watching my barn burn was he? And you didn't see him a-creeping back from lighting that fire now, did you?”
But it would seem Tim was not yet aware of the need to add to his story.
“No, Squire, ‘twas already well burnin’ when I comes. It just be him watchin'—”
“Tim, I want you to think well about it.” Her father clinked the purse again. “Perhaps you saw more. Think well, boy, think well. Get you to the kitchen now. Cook will give you something to cover those ribs of yours. There will be some gentlemen here later, and I'll want you to tell your story to them. So you think some more about what you are going to say.”
Tim scuttled out. Nan saw her father smile as he slipped the purse back in his pocket. Then he left also.
He would see that Tim added to his story. Nan knew that as well as if she had heard him urge the boy to do it. And if Tim swore falsely, Chris Fitton would be brought before the Justices. Maybe her father would not dare to sit in the sentencing, not when he was so closely involved. But he could impress both Sir William Lighten and Mr. Rowley Morris. When he mentioned the gentlemen to whom Tim was to tell his tale, Nan was sure that was whom he meant.
The Fittons must be warned. Nan moved from behind the curtain. There was no one in this house she dared to trust to send a message by; her father ruled with too heavy a hand. Which meant—she would have to go herself. There was the way through the woods which gave on the back of the inn. The snow wa
s coming down, but not too deeply to shut her in as yet. She must move now if she ever was to go. Having made her decision, Nan went about carrying it out.
Cloaked and wearing the heaviest of her shoes, she slipped away from the house to cut across the garden, using the wall there to cover her going, even though that was not the shortest way. So she stumbled on into the woods path, clutching the folds of her cloak more tightly about her.
It got dark early when it snowed. Already, though the hour could not be more than midafternoon, the light was graying fast. She slipped and slid as she went, hurrying so she had a stitch of pain in her side, and she gasped for breath. Then the outer wall of the inn loomed before her, and Nan hesitated.
If she went on openly, rounding the side of the building to the front door, she could not miss being seen. And she did not doubt that news of her visit to the Red Hart would spread through the village, would eventually reach her father's ears. The snow was continuing to fall but not enough to hide her going.
She could, however, see no other way of getting in. After making as sure as she could that there was no one in sight, she flitted across to shelter under the arch of the front door. Luckily that was on the latch, and she could open it without knocking. But she was not sure about the interior as she had never been inside. Where could she find Master Fitton?
The hall she stepped into was hardly wanner than the world outside. Now she could hear voices as she crept along. To her right must lie the taproom, somewhere beyond that the kitchen. Both places would be dangerous for her. She eyed a short side hall, which opened from the foot of the flight of stairs, more impressive-looking even than those at the Manor, and wondered if she dared try any of the closed doors there.
Then she started back, almost ready to retreat to the outer world once more, as one of those doors opened and a man stepped into the dusky hall, carrying a candle in one hand. Nan blinked and knew him—fortune had aided her in this so far. It was Master Fitton himself.
