“And tonight we’d have gout to make your present aches seem nothing,” retorted Darwin.
His companion pulled his leather cloak about him and hunched down in his seat, looking moodily at the road ahead. Its chalky surface ran, arrow-straight, off into the distance, paralleling the canal and earthen dike on their left.
“Three miles to Lambeth, at the last stone,” said Jacob Pole, his thin face gloomy. “And not so much as a barn in sight to shelter in. We’ll be soaked through before we are halfway there.”
“No doubt we will.” Darwin sounded undismayed at the prospect. “And if we are, Jacob, I will be obliged to remind you that it was at your urging that we took this detour from our original plan.”
His friend looked slyly at Darwin’s calm profile. “It was my idea to go to Stiffkey, that I admit. You’ll agree with me when you taste the Blues—the best cockles on the East Coast. But it was no idea of mine to come to Lambeth. Ancient ruins hold no fascination for me, unless there’s something like this inside them.”
He pulled a snuffbox of chased gold from a pocket inside his cloak, opened it, and sniffed a substantial pinch.
“And it was no idea of mine to go to Norwich in the first place,” he continued. “I could be back home now, with Elizabeth and my young Emily. You were the one invited to inspect the new hospital. I had a miserable time. I’ve bargained with men and women across the face of the globe, and I tell you, there’s no slyer, sharper dealer than a Norfolk tradesman.”
“That must tell something about you, Jacob, I’m afraid, since it was only last night that you were boasting about the low price you paid for the Norwich boots you are wearing. But I doubt that you’ll find opportunity to haggle in Lambeth. I expect to find flint pits there, not shopkeepers. Do you realize those diggings were old before the Romans set foot in Anglia? Some of the flints were used to build the Legion’s Fort at Brancaster, and even those were from the newer site.”
As he spoke, the old mare was plodding patiently on. The rain was warm, and not unpleasant. The surface of the canal, reflecting a steel-grey sky, was a broken pattern of small ripples as the heavy drops spattered the still waters. The line of poplar trees along the bank marched steadily away in front of them, shrinking to green dots on the far horizon.
“Ledyard said he will meet with us at the Lambeth Inn,” went on Darwin. “But I fear he may not have received our message from Norwich. The coach deliveries have been worse and worse. He warned me in his last letter that the inn offers bad food and worse beds. I hesitate to go to his home uninvited, until a personal meeting can supplement our correspondence.” He looked ahead, shielding his eyes from the driving rain with his free hand. “Take a look there, Jacob, and tell me if I am seeing true. Is that the Lambeth church ahead? If it is, then that will be Alderton Manor, on the rising ground behind the village, with Alderton Mill next to it. The flint pit should be just west of the mill.”
Jacob Pole peered far ahead, his eyes seeming to pierce the mist of raindrops. After a few seconds he nodded vigorously.
“I see all three. If that’s Alderton Manor, it’s big. I can count three wings, maybe four. But did you notice the horseman ahead of us? He’s coming this way, hugging the edge of the dike. See him, there between the water and the trees?”
The rain was easing a little. Darwin frowned into the thinning drops. “I’m not sure. You know that your sight is better than mine for distances. Do you think that it might be Ledyard?”
Pole had pulled a small spyglass from the leather travelling bag between his feet. He put it to his eye, cursing the movement of the sulky on the rough road surface.
“I think not,” he said after a few moments. “Unless your friend Ledyard has taken to riding sidesaddle. Whoever it is, she’s riding fast. Must be on an emergency errand.”
The two men watched in silence as the mounted figure approached. The woman rode a black stallion, at least seventeen hands high, controlling the big animal with no sign of effort. She pulled up quickly beside them on the roadside, with a clatter of hooves on the chalky surface.
“Dr. Darwin?” she said, leaning far over in the saddle. They looked at her in surprise. As she reined in the animal she had swept back the hood of her riding cloak, to reveal an unruly mass of blond-red hair tightly curling about her head. Darwin recalled the Viking forays into East Anglia a thousand years earlier. Some evidence of their invasions remained. The woman was in her late twenties, with blue-grey eyes and a fair complexion. The set of her jaw removed any suggestion of the china doll hinted at by her other features.
“I am he,” replied Darwin at last. “But you have the advantage of me, madam, since I find it hard to believe that you are James Ledyard, my only acquaintance in Lambeth.”
“Thank God for that,” replied the blond woman mysteriously. “I am Alice Milner. Dr. Ledyard is busy on an urgent case at Alderton Manor.”
“And he asked you to come and meet us for him?” asked Pole.
“No. He told me not to,” the woman replied, shaking down her curls. “He told me to go and lie down and get some sleep. I had to sneak out of the back of the manor and saddle Samson myself.”
“This is Colonel Pole,” said Darwin. He had caught the unspoken question in her look when Pole spoke to her. “We are travelling together. See now, if James Ledyard told you not to meet us, and suggested rest, then why are you here?”
Alice Milner had turned her horse and was walking it alongside the sulky. The old mare, ignoring both the new arrival and the conversation, was proceeding at her own steady pace toward Lambeth. The woman shook the stallion’s reins.
“Can you not go faster?” she asked, impatient at the plodding horse.
Darwin regarded her shrewdly. “No,” he replied. He paused, waiting for her response. “At least, not without some reason.”
The woman looked quickly back at the sulky. “You are Erasmus Darwin.” It was a statement, not a question. “According to Dr. Ledyard, you are perhaps the premier physician of Europe. Will it hasten your pace if I tell you that my fiancй, Philip Alderton, suffered a serious accident last night, and remains now in a grave condition at the manor?”
Darwin and Pole exchanged a swift glance. “It would indeed,” said Darwin, “were it not clear from your manner that there is more than a simple accident involved in this. If it is my medical prowess that you seek, why did not Dr. Ledyard ask for it?”
Behind them the sun was breaking through a rift in the rain clouds. It shone on the woman’s head, picking out the red-gold glints in her hair. She bit at her lower lip and stared straight ahead along the road to Lambeth.
“He does not want a second opinion,” she said at last. “But it is more than that. James Ledyard told me that you are opposed to all superstitions and religious dogmas, heathen or Christian. I rode here to implore you to apply that philosophy to Alderton Manor, and to the village of Lambeth. I cannot persuade them from their pre-Christian mysteries. The simplest accident will lead to a month of talk about the Alderton Pit.”
Darwin had watched her closely as she spoke, noting the frown on her forehead and the hesitation when she mentioned Alderton. He shook the rein he was holding, and the old mare picked up her speed a fraction.
“If I am to help you,” he said. “I will need the full story—not the fragments that you are throwing to us. Give all to us, root and branch. For instance, you lack the Norfolk accent, and I would place you from the West Country. Devon, perhaps, or Cornwall. Yet there is Dane in your appearance, not Celt. How do you come to be here in Lambeth, and what is the accident you spoke of? Remember, I cannot resolve a mystery without facts. I am no magician.”