They rode back along the coast road, following the estuary. The tide was out and the sands looked to be wide expanses of rippled cloth with sandpipers and gulls flapping like white papers against them.
On the way back, Richard told Stephen about his disagreement with Mistress Ibbetson over the orchid, and described to him the uncanny appearance of the white dove in his woods.
‘You see, Sam, I read it for a sign, it made the hairs stand on the back of my neck. It is my belief that that is how God speaks with us, through signs and wonders–and the small voice inside that will not be stilled.’
‘Few would dispute it,’ said Stephen, as if to sound knowledgeable, ‘but if she is a thief, and stole the orchid, what is to prevent her doing even worse? Thou art convinced of her innocence?’ He was thinking of his father. Alice Ibbetson must be the woman with whom his father had recently been associated, and in their last conversation his father had been certain of her guilt. But he kept these thoughts to himself.
Richard replied, ‘Quite sure. It is an instinct, something I have no words for. Besides, stealing a plant for study and killing another person in cold blood are by no means in the same order of things. I wonder why that scoundrel Fisk, her patron, has not vouched for her?’
Stephen was about to reply when he realized he would give him self away, so he shut his mouth again. After they had ridden a little further he felt safe to ask, ‘Who is Fisk, then?’ He hoped to find out more about Richard’s opinion of his father.
‘A local squire–owns most of the land hereabouts. We used to be close before the war, we played together as boys. My father knew his father well. My family had land in the Loyne valley, and Geoffrey and I were like brothers.’
‘What happened? Are you still close?’
‘No,’ he replied curtly, and his face darkened. ‘No, we no longer see eye to eye. There were irreconcilable differences. And we fought for different allegiances in the war. There was–’ he seemed to struggle for the words–‘an incident. A tragic accident.’ Stephen stiffened, he wondered if this was his grandmother’s death he referred to. ‘Afterwards, Geoffrey tried to cut me down, ambushed me in the dark. But I escaped with only this.’ He peeled open his shirt to show a deep scar across the chest.
Stephen looked at the raised white seam of skin. His own father had done this. He was transfixed by the sight of the mark of his father’s sword. He rallied himself to reply.
‘He sounds like a dangerous man. And he is Mistress Ibbetson’s patron?’
‘So I hear.’ Richard’s words were clipped, he seemed angry. ‘When he is sober enough. Though I cannot see that my appealing for his aid will help Alice’s cause. He hates me with a vengeance.’
Stephen took all this in. He realized his father’s appetite for drink had become common knowledge and he was ashamed his family should be the subject of general gossip. He was hurt by it, and his conflicting loyalties rose up to choke him. He flushed scarlet and said, ‘Perhaps Fisk has changed. After all, if you were friends once, you could be again.’ Even as he said this, he realized with a sinking feeling that this was impossible. Richard pulled up his horse sharply.
‘No. It is far too late for that.’ He looked at Stephen as if he were half-witted. ‘You have no idea, have you? What we went through in the war.’ His voice was loud and harsh. ‘Brother fighting brother, men cut into ribbons before our eyes, crawling with their quartered bellies gushing. Women sliced open like pigs to slaughter, their bloodied petticoats flapping from the ramparts…’ His chest heaved with emotion before he went on. ‘I did things then which are beyond speaking of.’
Richard gathered himself with difficulty, regaining control of his crumpled face. ‘I was a lad like you once, but made old overnight. We all were.’
Stephen noticed that Richard had forgotten the Quaker mode of address but he remained silent. He felt uncomfortable seeing Richard in distress but also realized with a pang of guilt that he knew nothing at all about his father’s early life, that it had been a closed book to him. Unsure how to respond, Stephen cast his eyes down to the ground where the last leaves of autumn rustled around the horses’ hooves.
Richard hauled hard on the reins and dug his heels into his horse’s ribs so that it set off at a gallop, mane and tail flowing in the wind. He drove the horse on. Stephen’s horse was in a hurry to follow after, but it was slower and heavier, and Richard’s horse soon receded to the horizon. Stephen did not know whether to ride harder to catch him up or to let him go on alone. He slowed to a trot, for his horse was panting from the exertion and Richard had disappeared from view. Stephen rode disconsolately for another half mile before seeing that Richard had stopped and was waiting for him in the track.
After an awkward moment or two, Richard said softly, ‘I spoke out of turn, Sam. Thou hast lost thy family in the troubles, and that must have been hard.’
Stephen looked up into the older man’s concerned face.
‘Forgive me if I spoke harshly,’ Richard continued. ‘It is right thou shouldst know nothing of the fighting life. It is past, and should be buried whilst we build a better world.’
He paused, looking away to the horizon where the sun was just beginning to set, casting a pink-tinged glow over the empty sands. ‘That is why I became a Quaker–to live and let live, each man giving due respect to his brother, and to make a pledge never to lift a hand against another. But I will not say it has not been hard.’ He gestured with his hand to his side. ‘I am used to speaking with my sword. It is hard to fight the ills of the world with an empty hand.’
He shook his head, then kicked his horse on into a smart trot and Stephen’s horse ambled after.
Richard waited again for Stephen’s slower horse to catch up. ‘I was wondering why thou chose the Quaker life, Sam. What was it for thee?’
Stephen was ready with his story and it slipped like grease from his tongue. ‘I was at one of Fox’s meetings and felt the calling. I have no family to consider, so I followed my heart.’
As he said this a part of him longed for it to be true. That he should be the man following his convictions, that he should be Sam Fielding, the devout Quaker.
‘I admire thee, Sam,’ said Richard. ‘Thou art an example to the sons of my generation, and thou hast all thy life ahead of thee to witness for peace in thy faith.’
Richard Wheeler was no traitor, but a peacemaker. Stephen realized the days of this friendship were numbered. His task was finished; he had found out what his father wanted to know, and though his father might not like it, he had fulfilled his duty. But if he were to confess this, there would be no more reason to be Sam Fielding. The noose of deceit seemed to tighten about Stephen’s neck.
He baulked at stopping his visits to the Hall. Dorothy had made him so welcome–there he was somebody, a person, not a ticket with his title and income scribed upon it. But sooner or later, word would out that he was the son of Sir Geoffrey Fisk. He squirmed in his saddle, his stomach churning. For the rest of the journey he maintained a miserable silence, Stephen Fisk, the liar, caught in the trap of his own making.
When the time came to go their separate ways, he gave Richard heartfelt thanks for the meal and agreed to meet him the next morning as usual. But even as he spoke, he wondered how long his creation Sam Fielding would pass undiscovered.
Chapter 27
Geoffrey looked out of his chamber window absentmindedly, a glass of claret in one hand. Nowadays, apart from his usual wine, the little phial of physic from the lady’s slipper was the first thing he turned to in the morning, to take the edge off the inevitable itching. His head always swam with the first dose of the day. He let the wavering world out of the window come slowly into focus.
He went over to the window and took in the view: the long-horned cattle grazing in the distance, the double avenue of beech he had planted as the main driveway, the yew boundary hedge beyond. It swayed beneath his gaze as if under water. His eye roved over the intricately designed gardens, laid out in the
Spanish courtyard style, but the patterns danced and undulated and would not stay still. The red apples, growing ripe already on the espaliers, looked as if they were drifting against the wall. He rubbed his forehead, pushed his knuckles into his eyes. When he opened them the world quavered before him. It was disconcerting. He left the window and sat, ruminating.
He had ceased to scratch. The tetters were much improved. The backs of his knees used to be cracked with it so he could not sit comfortably, and last week’s meetings with Rawlinson and Woolley the Constable, would have been sheer torture had it not been for the new draught. He had admitted to himself now that the potion made him feel a little peculiar, but it was a small price to pay if the itch had stopped.
Worry made the itch worse too. Still, he could relax now. Someone else was to take the rap for the old woman’s death. He breathed a long sigh of relief and drained his glass. It was a shock to discover that the woman he had dispatched was not one of his unruly tenants after all, but one Margaret Poulter, the crone from whom he had purchased the green salve. A quack, that much was certain, for the ointment had been useless, as he had thought. But he darkened at the thought of her. What if she was genuinely possessed of cunning powers? Her words returned to his mind. He tried to shrug them off but they stuck like sealing wax. ‘I will never let you go,’ she had said. Geoffrey shuddered. He had no doubt the old woman intended to hex him.
At least his estate was secure at last. There would be no one knocking at his door, no one taking him off to the gaol in chains and seizing his house and goods. The estate was for Stephen, and his heirs after him. It had panicked him when the old woman’s family had turned up in the village intent on avenging her death. When he saw the son at Constable Woolley’s, and the ire in his face, he did not much fancy his chances should he find out who was responsible.
But now it was certain Mistress Ibbetson would swing for it. It was regrettable, of course, he had some pleasant remembrances of times in her company before she turned unruly against him. In any case, he reassured himself, he had had nothing to do with her arrest–that seemed to be the way the river was flowing anyway, so who could blame him if he eased its passage.
He contemplated Ella. That maid must have a grudge against Alice Ibbetson the size of a boulder, but it suited his purposes very well. Once or twice though, to his mind, Ella treated him in a manner that was over-familiar. He frowned. He must keep an eagle eye on her.
He went downstairs carefully, holding the banister rail, watching his step, for even the stairs seemed to shift like quagmire, not solid wood at all. He went into the stables where he had unloaded the plants the previous night. He hummed a little to himself. It was ingenious to think of fetching the knife over to the Ibbetsons’ summerhouse. He remembered the tableau of Woolley and Rawlinson standing staring at the knife on Alice Ibbetson’s table, and with a little snort laughed out loud.
Now that he saw the plants in the light, it was apparent only a few were worth keeping. None of them was labelled, to his annoyance. There were three pots filled with earth, but he poked around thoroughly in the soil with his finger and found no trace of any seed or root in these, so he discarded them to the midden, shaking out the earth and stacking the pots to the side of the door.
There were three larger pots of sprouting seedlings which he was sure were the new lady’s slipper plants. They had been on the top shelf right next to the big plant, which he recognized. He rubbed his hands together, pleased with himself, and watered them, placing them on the windowsill. He would tend these carefully. Johnson the gardener could keep an eye on them in his glasshouse. Perhaps they would grow faster under glass. The big plant, the original lady’s slipper, had drooping leaves, now dried out and hanging over the edge of the pot, the leaf edges wrinkled like brown paper.
He pulled it up from the soil to look at the roots. Yes, this was certainly the same plant from which he had secured a part–there was the broken place where he had taken his first sample. His interest aroused, he carried it up to his chambers. He would cut this one up and grind more of the necessary mash from these roots to make his medicinal tea. He calculated that by the time that supply ran out, there would be new plants on the way. It was all very satisfactory.
He spent a pleasant, busy afternoon soaking one of the roots from the big plant to make tea, mashing the foul urine-smelling pulp with a pestle, grinding it into a paste and soaking it in brandy. It would not keep, else. He weighed it carefully with his apothecary’s weights, making it into small doses of twelve liquid grains each.
Fresh herbs were always more effective, so he decided to take another dose forthwith. When stowing the glass away in the cupboard, he came across the oily green mixture the cunning woman, Margaret Poulter, had sent. Shuddering, he picked up the lidded pot intending to throw it out. As he did so, a dizziness overcame him. His hand unaccountably slipped and the bottom fell away from the lid and smashed on the floor, splattering a pale green slime over the floorboards. It startled him and his heart began pounding like a battledrum in his chest. He looked aghast at the broken pieces. The old crone’s words came back to him again.
He recalled the expression in her piercing brown eyes, as if she could see into the depths of his soul and found it black as tar. He saw again her white head banging against the path. Like a nightmare he was back there, holding the knife slippery with blood in his fingers. Again he felt the sensation of scrubbing his hands under the icy pump. He dropped the lid with a clatter and backed away, staring at the floor. The slime made a pattern on the floorboards. It appeared to be a skull with a gaping mouth. A quick glance behind him. He had an intimation that someone was with him in the room. It was an omen.
Geoffrey rang the bell. Patterson entered and bowed.
‘I dropped a bottle by mistake. See to it, will you.’
Patterson looked at it. ‘I’ll send the kitchenmaid.’
‘No. Do it now. Now I say. I want it out of my sight. And bury it outside the grounds.’
‘Outside the grounds?’ Patterson looked at him uncertainly, as if he was not sure he had heard correctly.
‘You heard me. Now get on with it.’ He threw Patterson a washcloth from the rail near the washstand, then took himself downstairs on shaky legs.
‘Master Stephen is home, sir,’ said Patterson as he passed with a dustpan containing the green-tinged washcloth. ‘I have seen his bay mare coming up the drive.’
Geoffrey nodded, and instructed him to send Stephen to the with drawing room. He took a snifter of wine, just to fortify him. By now he had calmed down and begun to reason with himself, dismissing the breaking of the jar as an accident. He felt a little better.
He heard Stephen arrive from the stables and Patterson’s voice rudely imparting Geoffrey’s instructions to him. Why did Stephen not reprimand him, take him to task for his rudeness like the master’s son should?
His son had always disappointed him a little. When he was born, he had hoped he would be tall like himself, but he had taken after Emilia, short and slight, with his fluffy yellow hair flopping over his face. Even in a wig, his bearing was less than imposing. In character too he was soft like Emilia. Too much hanging around her apron strings like a milksop. If he had had his son’s perfect skin, then nothing would have held him back. He would have been at court by now, making something of himself, not running away from London like Stephen did at the first sign of pestilence. Still, this spying might be the making of him. He had seen him going out diligently every morning dressed in that appalling brown suit. Perhaps he would have found out what was really afoot at Lingfell Hall.
Stephen was dressed in the same grubby brown breeches when he arrived. ‘You might at least have changed,’ said Geoffrey irritably, from the fireplace. Of course the fire was not lit; it was a relief to him not to endure the raging heat his wife had seemed so fond of.
‘Sorry, Father. I will change before dinner.’
‘What news from the Quakers?’
‘Last week I spent
a day with Richard Wheeler. He has signed a pledge for peace with the rest of the Quakers. It has gone to the king, with his name on it. He is not planning any sort of rebellion.’
‘Oaths mean nothing to someone like Wheeler.’
‘You are wrong, Father. It is not an oath. Quakers do not make oaths, as they always speak true. It is a pledge, for the peace of our land, and I know he intends to keep it.’
Geoffrey was momentarily bewildered. Stephen stood there stubbornly like a mule, and Geoffrey felt for the first time a quiet resistance in his son. He did not like it; he knew the humour of mutiny well from his time at sea and would recognize its wormy taste anywhere.
‘Are you telling me you found nothing?’
‘There is nothing to find. The king will have received his pledge by now.’ Stephen appeared somehow taller, more broad-shouldered. He looked Geoffrey calmly in the eye. ‘If you do not believe me, send someone else to do your spying for you. In fact, I resign from this duty. I am not going back.’
Geoffrey was stupefied. He gaped at his son, who now was shifting from foot to foot, wearing an expression of open resistance.
‘You coward. You are not up to it, are you?’
Stephen stepped forward, his hands clenched into white fists by his sides. ‘I am no coward, Father. I have put myself at risk every day for you and your cock-eyed notion, and there is not even a whiff of any sort of plot.’ He stuck his chin out. ‘Face it, Father, you were wrong. And whatever Richard Wheeler did to thee in the past, it is surely time to let it go and move on.’
And with this astonishing speech, he turned on his heel and stalked off. Geoffrey leaned back in his chair and rubbed distractedly at his forehead with the ends of his cravat. His son seemed to be swinging out of his control. Could it be that Stephen had turned tide and gone over the Quakers? No, it could not be possible. But he had used that abominable ‘thee’ he had heard it plain as plain. His stomach sank. He imagined the look on Lord Esham’s face if he was to tell him Stephen was a Quaker sympathizer. Lord Esham had that week sent a missive to enquire about this very matter, and Geoffrey did not want to tell Esham he had made a mistake. No, Stephen must be wrong; Wheeler had always been a soldier. And worse, there was an unsettling feeling creeping round Geoffrey’s chest, a dread like a pall of smoke. His son had talked of Wheeler as though he admired him.
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