Shadow of the Raven

by Tessa Harris

  “Next, sir, I heard Dr. Silkstone’s voice. He were calling out to Mr. Charlton, but he just ignored him and turned and started walking away quick.” Her delivery was deadpan and melancholy, and she held the courtroom enthralled. “That was the last I see’d of him until I heard he were gone.”

  Judge Dubarry arched a brow. “And when you heard he was ‘gone,’ Miss Trott, what was your reaction?”

  The girl shrugged. “I was sorry, sir, and shocked, and then . . .”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I remembered the letter he gave me.”

  “So you read it?”

  A ripple of laughter went ’round the courtroom, and the girl, bowing her head briefly, replied, “I don’t know my letters, sir. That is why I took it to someone who I could trust to read it and do the right thing.”

  “And that person was Dr. Silkstone?”

  Molly nodded and shot a look across the floor to where Thomas sat.

  “I knew him to be a good man, sir. He’d helped all them that was shot at by the redcoats,” she said.

  The judge nodded. “Thank you, Miss Trott. You may step down,” he told her.

  Next it was Thomas’s turn to take the witness stand. He had not expected to be called and felt ill prepared for any cross-examination. Nevertheless, he had taken the liberty of comparing the letter purportedly from Charlton with bills the chainman had signed at the Three Tuns and had shown them to the clerk for verification.

  Initial formalities over, Judge Dubarry addressed Thomas. “I would ask that you read this letter from Mr. Charlton to the court, Dr. Silkstone,” he said. The missive was passed across from the bench to Thomas, and in a clear voice he began:

  To Whom It May Concern

  I write this letter in the sure knowledge that when it is next read it will be after my death. My own folly and cowardice have drawn me to the conclusion that I have no honorable course but to take my own life. I cannot expect forgiveness from those who have been compelled to deal with my self-inflicted misfortune, but I do crave their understanding.

  At this point Thomas looked up and saw that the courtroom was hanging on his every word. Somewhere a fly buzzed. He resumed:

  On the afternoon of April 20th I found myself extremely nervous. The local villagers had been trailing us and tormenting us. We were in fear of our lives when we entered the woods, and when I heard the horse whinnying, I was convinced we were being ambushed. Mr. Turgoose, seeing my distress, put me in charge of his pistol, little knowing that I was not fit to have it. He left me alone to see what had happened, and when he returned I mistook him for a brigand. God help me, it was me who fired the shot that killed Mr. Turgoose. I do not recall much that followed immediately afterward, only that I was in shock and great pain when fragments flew into my eye when the pistol discharged. Our guide, Mr. Talland, helped me back to Boughton Hall. It was all my fault and I alone should be judged for my actions. I was forced to perjure myself in court in the case of Abe Diggott but I cannot stand by and watch as another innocent man is charged with the murder of Mr. Turgoose. I therefore own up to my reckless crime and hope that my confession will ensure the dismissal of any case brought against any other man and a subsequent pardon.

  Thomas looked up to address the captivated court directly.

  I go to my Maker in the hope that he will grant me forgiveness for my most grievous sins.

  James Charlton

  For a moment it seemed that time in the courtroom stood still as everyone reflected on what they had just heard. Finally Judge Dubarry spoke.

  “Thank you, Dr. Silkstone. That was most enlightening,” he said before addressing the defendant. “I have no choice but to say: Adam Diggott . . .” The coppicer straightened himself in the dock. “I hereby dismiss all charges against you. You are free to go.”

  Thomas felt his whole body suddenly lighten. A heavy burden had been lifted from his shoulders. Jeffrey Turgoose’s death had been a tragic accident. As if Charlton’s torment at his own mistake was not enough, Sir Montagu and Lupton had forced him to comply with their elaborate charade to cover up the truth. It suited Sir Montagu’s purpose to mark the villagers as lawless murderers, so that his own brand of justice could prevail. And now he and his allies had been revealed in court as nothing but liars and tyrants. He allowed himself a smile, but it was only a flicker before it snagged on Lupton’s gaze. The steward was standing, talking with Prosecutor Bradshaw. He wore the dazed look of a man not used to defeat. The brief encounter reminded Thomas that despite this immediate victory, his battle with the Boughton Estate, and Sir Montagu in particular, was far from over.

  Chapter 55

  The journey from Draycott House to Boughton Hall was almost at an end. It had passed smoothly enough. Richard had slept for much of the way, while Lydia had contented herself with looking out of the carriage window at the familiar countryside, or conversing now and again with Nurse Pring. The rolling hills were clothed in bright spring green, and the sun was coaxing the leaves in the beechwoods to unfurl. She was taking simple delight from the vista. She was going home. Suddenly, however, she heard a great rattle up ahead, and her pleasure was rudely curtailed as the carriage lurched, plunging her forward. The coachman cussed loudly and was forced to pull up the horses to allow another carriage to pass at speed on the right-hand side. Lydia’s head whipped ’round to see a passenger inside, railing at his driver to go faster. For a moment she thought she recognized the man, but then decided she must have been mistaken.

  “All well, your ladyship?” the footman called down from his perch.

  Richard had taken a tumble but thought it rather amusing. Nurse Pring was fussing over his clothes, which had gone askew.

  “All well,” Lydia assured him, smoothing her skirts.

  Yet she could not pretend that she did not feel apprehensive. It was not that this small, yet sudden, incident had unsettled her, but that she was uncertain as to the reason for her journey. The message had come from Sir Montagu only the previous day. He was away on business, but they were to rendezvous at Boughton Hall. He did not say for what purpose, but she hoped very much that it heralded a permanent return to the place she loved and missed so much.

  They drove on for another mile or so, until the carriage swung through the huge wrought-iron gates. Lydia felt her heart lurch in her chest as she caught sight of the hall for the first time in almost three months.

  “Look, my darling!” She reached out her arms across the carriage and drew Richard close to her. Together they stared out the window onto the hall’s ornate façade, with its barley-sugar chimneys and its elegant pediments. “We are home!” she cried.

  Her son, although not sharing his mother’s obvious delight, seemed happy enough to be returning. “Is Mr. Lupton here?” he asked.

  Lydia smiled and pushed a wayward curl away from her son’s eye.

  “Yes, I think he is,” she replied, remembering the enthusiasm that Richard had shown for the steward’s company.

  As the carriage progressed up the driveway, Lydia’s excitement grew as she saw the staff gathering on the front steps to greet her. There were Howard and Mistress Firebrace, the housekeeper, Mistress Claddingbowl, the cook, and a dozen more familiar faces, all smiling and ready to welcome their mistress.

  The moment the horses pulled up, Sir Montagu stepped out, too. His expression was somber but not foreboding, and he managed a polite smile as she alighted from the carriage, helped by the footman.

  “Welcome back, your ladyship,” he greeted her.

  Lydia slipped him a strange look—Sir Montagu welcoming her into her own home; the irony was not lost on her. At first she had believed it was he who had deprived her of her beloved Boughton. Then, as the story unfolded, she had come to realize that her father was in fact her ally and that all along she was being betrayed by the man whom she had come to trust above all others. The wound was still raw, and even to think of Dr. Thomas Silkstone pained her, but as she glanced at Richard as he made his way down
the carriage steps, she knew she could endure anything as long as her son was with her.

  “After you have settled yourself, we shall take tea,” Sir Montagu told her, holding out his long arm in a sweeping gesture up the steps.

  Mistress Firebrace, her face wreathed in uncustomary smiles, showed Lydia to her bedchamber. It was just as she had left it: the bed draped in silk, the escritoire by the window, and a huge arrangement of peonies on the table that fragranced the air. Walking over to the window, she looked out onto the lawns, to the rose garden, still tended but wanting Amos Kidd’s touch. She ran her fingers over her chest of drawers, her washstand, the embroidered shawl her late husband had brought back from India, draped over her favorite chair. They were so familiar, so comforting, and yet strangely different. Perhaps it was that so much had changed since she had last opened those drawers, or brushed her hair in this room. Perhaps it was because her own life had taken a different direction that she perceived these objects differently. Each one held a memory, a thought, or a moment frozen in time. Making for the bed, she let her fingers hover over the pillow where Thomas’s head had once lain. She dared not touch it for fear it was still warm. She knew it was a ridiculous notion, but every time she recalled his caress, his scent, his breath, a terrible sense of loss washed over her. Trust was the bridge that had joined them, the thread that had bound them, and now that it had gone, there was nothing, except a deep and irrepressible yearning for something no longer there.

  “Tea is ready, your ladyship,” Mistress Firebrace announced a little later. “I shall see that your luggage is unpacked in the meantime.”

  “Yes,” replied Lydia flatly. Being back at Boughton after all that she had endured still seemed like a dream to her. She was afraid she might wake at any moment. “Thank you,” she said, and she made her way downstairs to the drawing room, where Sir Montagu was waiting. This was where it had happened; where she had been restrained, where order had descended into chaos before she was taken to the madhouse. And now gentility ruled. Decorum had been restored. Her nightmare seemed no more than that, a terrifying dream to be forgotten and never spoken of again. She took a seat opposite her father.

  The tea tray lay on a cabinet by the sofa. “You will do the honors, my dear?” Sir Montagu asked.

  Lydia, who sat smoothing her skirts self-consciously, declined. “I would rather not,” she said with a polite smile.

  “Of course,” he replied. “You must be fatigued after your journey, my dear,” he said, and he nodded to the maid to serve the tea.

  For a few moments they sat in silence, the clink of the china cups the only noise in the room, as Lydia’s eyes lingered on familiar objects and on the view over the lawns. She was aware that her newfound father, with his hawkish gaze, was watching her every move. She willed herself to pretend that her joy at her return outweighed all her other emotions, but she had never been adept at hiding her feelings. Returning to Boughton brought back so many memories of Thomas that her happiness and relief were tempered.

  She steeled herself to make conversation. “Mr. Lupton,” she began.

  Sir Montagu, in the midst of a sip of tea, made an odd slurping noise.

  “Lupton, my dear?” He could not hide his surprise that his steward should be paramount in her thoughts.

  “I trust he is well?” Lydia did her best to ignore her father’s thinly disguised astonishment. “Richard is looking forward to seeing him.”

  Sir Montagu arched a brow. “That will not be possible, I fear,” he replied.

  “Oh?”

  “I fear Mr. Lupton and I have parted company.”

  The memory of the carriage speeding its way down the country lane flashed in front of her eyes. So it was Lupton she had seen, his face darkened by fury.

  “A disagreement?” She knew she was being bold.

  Sir Montagu twitched his lips, but his eyes remained cold. “Of sorts. I maintained he was incompetent and he disagreed, so I dismissed him.”

  Lydia looked away with a little sigh. “Richard will be disappointed.”

  “Not as disappointed as I was in the man’s capabilities, I can assure you, my dear.”

  Another awkward silence ensued. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked away the seconds as if they were minutes.

  “You are still pained,” her father told her, after a few uneasy moments had passed. It was an observation, not a question. “But it will ease,” he added unsympathetically. He took another sip of tea. “And we have plans to make.”

  “Plans?” Lydia blinked and looked up from her cup. Plans were for those who could see into the future, a place she had not dared go for many weeks.

  “For the estate,” riposted her father. “Changes are afoot, and we must discuss them. Boughton needs you.”

  She inclined her head thoughtfully, then said, “And what can I give that you and Mr. Lupton could not?” Her time away had exposed her as weak and ineffectual. Boughton could be run just as efficiently, if not more so, without her. She was an irrelevance.

  “I am sure you have ideas, my dear.”

  She knew his words were calculated to make her feel at ease, but in truth she felt overwhelmed. She managed a weak smile, but for now she was content to live in the moment. Thoughts of Bedlam, betrayal, and Thomas still whirled around in her brain, sapping her of her strength and any confidence she had previously acquired. Yet, as if her father had read her mind, the past reared its head once more.

  “I know Silkstone has left you bruised, but surely you must now see how he tried to use you? He abused your wealth and status to further his own career, and—”

  Suddenly something inside her snapped. He was trying to boost her confidence while vilifying Thomas. The nerve was still raw, and he had touched it directly. “He saved your life,” she interrupted.

  Taken aback, her father’s bushy brows lifted. “He did, indeed, save my life, and for that I am most grateful, but he did it for his own gain. By saving me, he made both of us indebted to him.” He took another sip of tea. “A cold and callous calculation,” he added, returning his dish to the tray.

  Lydia knew that everything he said made perfect sense. After all, his lawyer’s cunning ensured that all his arguments were neatly taken care of, all objections swiftly overruled with the finality of a judge’s gavel. She knew, too, that she needed time to herself. What was it the Reverend Lightfoot had told her after her brother Edward’s death so long ago? Time is a great healer. At this moment her wounds were still exposed. Time would, no doubt, heal them, but she also needed the balm of space. She rose.

  “Forgive me, but I need to go to my room,” she said with a nod. To hear her father go through a catalog of Thomas’s faults and failings was too much for her to bear.

  Sir Montagu got to his feet, too. “Of course, my dear,” he replied.

  In Lydia’s absence, Mistress Firebrace had supervised the unpacking of her luggage. Her scent bottles had been returned to her dressing table, along with her hairbrush and mirror. Her favorite novels had been arranged on her bookstand and the painted dressing screen positioned in its rightful place. Yet rather than ease her anxiety, such familiarity only reminded her of Thomas more. Her room had returned to its former self, and Thomas had been a part of it.

  Moving over to the escritoire, she recalled the times she had sat there, composing letters to him, her words pouring like summer rain on the page. She had laid her feelings bare, exposed herself to him, and he had cut her with all the precision his surgeon’s scalpel could muster. Her fingers played on the top drawer, smaller than the rest. In one swift move she opened it, and there, lying bound by a blue ribbon, were his letters. She had kept them all, testaments to a love she had believed so real and true. Seizing them, she untied the ribbon as she walked over to the fireplace; then, one by one, she began feeding them to the flames and watched through glassy eyes as they crackled and spluttered and disappeared.

  So lost in her own grief was she that she did not hear footsteps and the opening of
the door. In fact, the first she knew that someone was behind her was when she heard a voice.

  “Welcome back, your ladyship!”

  She turned to see Eliza, her eyes welling with tears, standing in the middle of the room. Instinctively Lydia hurried forward and took her by both hands.

  “Oh, Eliza! How I have missed you!” she cried.

  “And I, you, your ladyship. We thought you was dead!”

  Lydia took a step back and let her maid’s hands fall. “Dead?” The word bounced off her tongue.

  “Why, yes, your ladyship. We was told you died. Sir Montagu put a notice in the newssheet and—”

  “Dead?” repeated Lydia. She slumped down on the nearest chair, her face suddenly pale.

  Eliza crouched down beside her. “We didn’t know what to think, your ladyship. There was a funeral and—”

  Lydia shook her head. “I have been unwell,” she acknowledged. “But why would Sir Montagu say I was dead?”

  In her joy, Eliza could not think to question. She shrugged. “I do not know, my lady, but you are here now.”

  Lydia, however, could not put her questioning to one side so easily. Her happiness at seeing her maid once more had been blunted, dealt an inadvertently cruel blow. If she was still dead to all intents and purposes, then did Sir Montagu plan to keep her dead, unable to reveal herself once more to the outside world? Could it be that he intended to bury her alive at Boughton? She tried to shrug off the ridiculous notion. “But of course you will let everyone know in the village that I am still alive!” A nervous laugh escaped from her lips.

  Walking over to the grate, Eliza had taken hold of the poker. At Lydia’s words, she turned and looked grave.

  “We are sworn to secrecy, your ladyship. Sir Montagu says we must tell no one that you are here.”

  Lydia looked wide-eyed at the girl, as if she had suddenly hammered another nail in her coffin. She watched Eliza mend the fire in silence, with a rising feeling of fear.